Hi guys, I have a weird question. I'm planning on turboing my car in the next few months and I would like it to remain reliable and have decent gas mileage for doing long road trips occasionally. So I was wondering if it was possible at all to bypass the turbo for such occasions. What I mean is I could reinstall a regular cold air intake and stock MAF sensor and reconfigure my megasquirt before going on such trips. My concern is what will happen with the exhaust headers and such. Is there a way to bypass the turbo through there? Thanks in advance!

 

No.

 

You would have to make something like this to replace the turbo, and even then it's highly unlikely to be any more fuel efficient.

 

Like this:

 

I originally did it like this because turning a CHRA plug was quick, but it was laughably slow, and for you would definitely hurt MPG.

 

I think my car is more fuel efficient than before.

 

I see, I guess the easiest solution is to simply be more gentle on the throttle for fuel efficiency! I will consider your solution however, at least for the reliability side of things.

 

Really? Do you have upgraded injectors?

 

Yes, but I'm not sure going from ev1 to ev6 style injectors made much difference. Tubular manifold, 3in turbo back with no cat and the big straight through Magnaflow muffler, GTX2867R with the anti-surge ports, ported 95 head, titanium retainers, light double springs, low compression forged pistons.

It feels like the intake charge is being helped along even when it's in vacuum. The small amount of restriction in the exhaust seems to be no problem and the turbo seems to provide a ratio of more power through a small amount of extra work.

I'm using a lot of timing in the cruise cells just like we've seen mapped on these stock ecus. I can't remember the numbers now but they were somewhere in the 30s or 40s. They will let you run a nice lean cruise AFR. There are some threads around here where somebody pulled that data out of a stock ECU.