How the F do you tighten the turbo down with the tony pipe on?!@@$
 

so yeah I'll let the photos do the talking for me. We cant get our open ended wrenches on them and cant get a socket and cant hand tighten them more.... GOD WHY DOES THIS CAR HAVE TO GIVE ME SUCH HEADACHES!

you can get an open end on those it might need to be a short one if that fails get somes crowesfoot wrenches.

Welcome to the wonderful world of turbo miatas.

It's excruciatingly difficult, but it can be done. I put mine on last month, and as Bill from FM likes to say, swearing helped. It seems like you’ve already got that part under control ;) Think of it as a rite of initiation… “When to the manifold a turbocharger you can bolt, only than a Jedi shall you be.”

My first advice to you is to get the downpipe bolted to the turbo and test-fit first, with the lower-half installed. In my case, I had to open up the holes in the downpipe flange (where it meets the turbo outlet) with a dremel and a carbide bit so I could rotate the downpipe somewhat relative to the turbo. When I first went to install, the downpipe was hitting the bellhousing right at the flange, and would not allow the turbo to be bolted down without putting stress on everything.

Once that's done, remove the bolts to the turbo flange once again, but leave the pipe roughly in place. You'll need the wiggle room, but getting the pipe in and out is tough with the turbo in place, as you probably already know.

I found it helpful to loosen the band clamp which holds the center section to the turbine housing so I could rotate it, as though I was clocking the turbo. This gave me enough clearance to reach both bolts on the compressor side with a socket wrench. You'll have to remove the oil drain pipe to do this.

Beyond that, it’s just a matter of sweat and profanity. I managed to get everything in place with nothing more than a socket wrench and a small combination-end wrench. It took several hours and a lot of beer, but it worked.

A small word of advice- have you purchased new bolts, or are you using the ones that came with the kit? If you are, immediately throw them away and go to the hardware store and purchase some class 10.9 bolts. (ok, take them with you to the hardware store for sizing comparison, then throw ‘em away.) The bolts which they gave you will immediately turn to blocks of solid rust, and snap when you try to remove them a year from now. Same goes for the washers.

After I was finished, I wondered to myself whether it might have been easier to assemble the whole thing out-of-car (turbo, manifold, and downpipe) and then bolt it to the head as one complete unit. I think when my manifold cracks I’ll try it that way instead.

That would be M8 automotive studs and matching grade 8 13mm nuts.

werd i got my studs and washers and nuts from FM... vibration res washers too.

the only two "GReddy" bolts im using are two nuts on the manifold because when taking the stock header off we fucked those old lucking nuts bad and the ones we bought wouldnt fit the bottom left and bottom right of the manifold due to being to big.

Yeah I dont have this "band clamp" that holds the center section to the turbine housing...

to get the Freaking DP in we had to take off the manifold then to put the manifold back on and have enough room to Torque the FREAKING thing we had to take the turbo off the DP.... now we are tryin to mount the freaking turbo.

i found taking of the compressor and center section helped alot. just take of that metal ring deal holding it all together disconnect the WG and drain to unless you just want to put it forward abit.

does it go back together easily if i take off that "center section"?

yes if it is anything like mine it should just dont beat up the blades on the turbine:) be sure it is aligned correctly before you torque it donw so your wg doesnt bind other than that it is easy.

Sure you do. I've highlighted it in green on one of the pics you posted. There's a nut on the away-from-the-engine side which holds it in place. Loosen this and the whole compressor and core section will rotate freely relative to the turbine casing.

Trust me, it's painful but it can be done. I attached the manifold to the head first so that I could get my torque wrench in there, then loosely bolted the DP to the turbo and dropped both of them into place. At this point I very loosely bolted the turbo to the manifold, and then attached the lower section of the DP- I'm ssuming you have the 2-piece version. If not then I apologize, you're probably right about the manifold having to be out.

Good call on the studs and washers from FM- I bought their washers too, but used bolts instead of studs. In all honestly though I'd try to find better nuts than the Greddys for your manifold. The last thing you want is to break off a stud in the head a year from now.

Incidentally, there's no such thing as grade 8 metric hardware- they use a different system. Metric class 8.8 is roughly comperable to SAE grade 5, and class 10.9 is the metric equivilant of grade 8. One upside to using class 10.9 hardware is that it seems to be much less prone to rust, corrode, and seize. Avoid stainless hardware- it looks pretty, but has a tensile strength less than half of 10.9. Here's a small article on the subject (scroll down to "Stage 2"):
http://www.thedieselstop.com/content...amic%20Coating

Yeah my stuff is 8.8 came from Carquest there is no place around where i live that sells 10.9 and im not going to order some 10.9 and start over... this car needs to be running by the 25th. yeah yea i have the 1 peice DP. and again i've been to EVERY hardware, car, anything store and we cant find small enough nuts to fit the bottom far left and bottom far right so we had to use the GReddy nuts. btw if i meber right the studs are like uhh m10x1.5 or 1.25 right? and here is another photo showing the two places we couldnt use the nuts we bought... hell we had to dremmel the washers a bit to fit... and we also had to replace 4 of the stock studs due to when taking off the old headers the nut didnt come off but the freaking stud came out.

ok just the one by the wastegate now needs to be tightend! argh 3 down and the hardest one to go!

I have the stock greddy bolts in right now...Im waiting untill I get my IC untill I get the new studs... Just because I am having too much fun driving the car right now since it was down for like 2 months

You can do it! :D

The suspense is killing me. :D

X2

off topic: joe, do you have an IC on your setup

got it lol had to get a 4 inch racheting wrench

bout time now how does it drive.

dunno still have a **** kit and an exahust and wiring to do