Should I Turbo My 86 Isuzu Troopoer II?
 

I have a 86 Isuzu trooper II. It's my mud truck and daily driver sometimes, but I don't rely on it as it's quite unreliable at times. Right now it needs a driveshaft. It has a 8 valve 2.3 liter motor rated at 70HP from the factory. It runs great. Motor is in excellent condition, high compression, etc. Has a winch, brushguard, 33x12.50's, 10 lights, cold A/C, a centerforce dual friction clutch, and a few other goodies.

I'm thinking about turbo charging it this summer for the hell of it. It is way underpowered with the 33's on it. I'm thinking if I do this, it's gonna be a ghetto cheap turbo setup. I'm thinking make the manifold flange and weld some pipe from lowes to make a manifold, similar to Loki's ghetto tastic one a while back, maybe more ghetto. Ultimate performance doesn't matter, just want it to work, I'm doing it for fun. I have a new Holley 600CFM I could use, just tie the vacuum secondaries shut and it's a 300CFM carburetor. I'd rig it to the intake of the turbo I guess. I have two tiny ass intercoolers off of a millenia, I could just cut the hood and let them stick out to get cool air. The carb and airfilter can also stick out of the hood.

It has a distributor so I'd just retard it some for "timing management". Nothing fancy. I'm thinking it could be done for a 200-300 dollars. I'd need a cheap turbo, which I can probably find one in a junk yard off of something (ideas?) I have two tiny IC's so I'll use them. Got a carb. Use PVC pipe for charge pipes since I have plenty of that. No BOV.

What you guys think, should I do it? Any and all ghetto cheap ideas are welcomed. :) I'd love to see just how cheap I could do this.

You better turbo something or :gtfo:

lol sure if you want to waste pointless money go ahead :D(join the club)

is this thing fuel injected or carbureted from the factory? either way i'm thinking you could do without the pre-turbo carb. maybe try remote mount the turbo?

It's carburetted stock. It has a Weber conversion on it, which suposedy ups the power to a mind blowing 85 flywheel HP. :giggle: If I do remote mount I'll need a scavenger pump. How much are those? Also the stock exhaust sucks so I'd have to redo it to go remote mount, though there is plenty of room to put a turbo back there. There's plenty of room under the hood too, so I'll probably put it there to keep things simple.

More good news: My trooper has a 2 piece oil pan, so I can simply unbolt the lower sump and drill and tap it, install a drain thing, then reinstall it. Also oil feed will be easy too.

EDIT: To keep it cheap, I may cut a pipe nipple in half and weld that to the oilpan, then use a 1/2" pipe to 1/2" barb fitting and a piece of hose to the turbo. For oil feed, just T off the 1/8 pipe by the sending units and a line to the turbo.

Don't have any specifics yet but I'm hearing that the manifold/turbo from some year Isuzu Impulse will "bolt right up" to the exhaust side. I know little about the impulse so I'm researching, it looks like they are quite rare though, and only some of them were turbo. Looks promising though. Would be cool to find a manifold/turbo that just bolted right up for cheap.

I co-raced an '89 Impulse Turbo for a couple seasons, and was the in-car mechanic for several enduros. Let me know if you have any questions about them. They're pesky little buggers.

sidenote: we were actually hunting for a Trooper block to put in the Impulse ;)

I would focus on finishing your twin supercharger setup.

+1

I think your just going to make it worse. It would be a cool project, but I don't think a $200 Home Depot turbo kit is the way to do it.

I don't think the carb will work pre turbo. Won't the fuel pool in the intercoolers and damage the turbo fins? Pretty sure you will need a blow through.

stick the twin screw on the trooper and turbo your miata, done!

Yea, nothings stoping me from doing the SC project this summer, I was just thinking this could be done afterward. It seems like it could be done cheap and easyily. I found out any Impulse with a 2.0L turbo will fit my 2.3L, or a 2.6L if I ever do the swap. Hell the 2.6 swap is nice it's 110hp I think, my 2.3 is 70hp. I'll keep my eyes out for that turbo and manifold I guess, If I could pick that up for say 100 bucks, that's half the work. Even the downpipe can be used on my truck. There's a guy who did a 2.6 swap and turbocharged it and ran 14PSI on a stock 2.6 for 8 years. Aparently these motors are stout.

Also, when I say it's unreliable, the truck is unreliable at times. It was a POS when I bought it. 2500 dollars later, it's much better. It did great for about a year, then I pulled up tree stumps for a few hours with it one day, really really overworking it, snatching on stuff, and broke the rear driveshaft. Wasn't really the trucks fault as I was giving it HELL! I had a strap rated at 20K pounds doubled up, and kept breaking it. Finally got some 1/2" chain and quadrupled that up and got the stump out yanking on it at 15MPH in 2nd gear. Next day the truck threw a driveshaft:eek5: