my turbo diary

roadsterbloke · my turbo diary

Right , so im installing a turbo to the motor, i will try & document most of the install on here, with pics for future reference & general guidance should anyone do the same, i dont have much of a clue, & will be finding my feet as i go along, so this thread could go on for some time

STEP 1, take delivery of turbo via ebay, its a TD04L (wrx) from a subaru with waste gate included, & cost £68.00 delivered,

STEP 2, unpack turbo, look over, & check shaft for play, all seems fine

STEP 3, give newly aquired turbo a spring clean

BEFORE

STEP 4, trawl internet for info on making manifolds, then think, WHY !!!

To Be Cont'd

5Alive

Hmmm this looks like its going to be a very informative thread which i shall follow with interest.
Good job mine came fitted to the car, good luck with this Chris i look forward to its progress.

dj..john

Yep this is lookin very interestin matey. Will deffo be following this when laptop sorted!!!

roadsterbloke

right after 2 weeks of info searching & talking to people in the know, i have begun,
firstly it became apparent the connections on the turbo where in the wrong configuration for my car,
However after talking to Andy at the tech meet , i decided to clock ( spin ) the turbo until i got the desired arrangement of outlets, this involved removing a large circlip, splitting the turbo into 2 halves, then re-assembling in the correct position.

i did have to remove the waist gate actuator in order to do this, & will have to fabricate a bracket further down the line to reposition it.

roadsterbloke

Then came work on the new manifold i was going to have to fabricate,

again after talking to andy & trawling ebay to find the best & simplest design to copy,

i have a 4-2-1 down pipe on my car so had the luxury of my old manifold laying around doin nowt, so i chopped of all the pipes to leave just the manifold flange , then had a play with various welded bends ect to see what would fit best

once welded up there will be a branch coming out of the manifold to which i will weld the turbo mating flange, sommat like this

5Alive

Nice one Chris !!! Looks a piece o wee wee really dunt it mate

Oh yeah have you been wearing lipstick again n kissing the ground i've laid on

roadsterbloke

ok so after some precision measuring

and trimming of fittings

welding begins, all fittings where tacked in position using the tig set, giving a neater & cleaner tack, then welded using the arc set, purely for speed

once fully welded, it was necessary to grind off the access metal, in a pipe weld this would be left on for strength, but its not needed with what im doing & it adds to the neatness having flush welds.

once all the grinding was finished i put the manifold into a glass bead blaster for that finished look

TO BE CONT'D

roadsterbloke

5Alive

If there's a flat surface . . . . . . .

nathmill85

feck me mate you have been busy! do you not think that design would be a smidge restrictive? with only one exit pipe leading to the flange....

Froglet

flange is such a fantastic word!!!!! Dunno what it is though!

nathmill85

it would appear i have been moderated...

5Alive

colink

this looks good more pictures please

roadsterbloke

ok, next installment,

it was recommended to make the fuel rail into a twin feed, so off it came,

& a third connection was promptly drilled & fixed

also a splitter tee for the fuel pipe needed making

heres the old & new rail, complete with new fuel hose, i decided to replace the hose after reading about a eunos catching fire because of worn fuel hose, seemed the best way to go considering it was all coming out anyhows,

heres it all back in position complete with new plastic outer hose for protection

now heat wrap was applied to all the sensitive areas , near the position of the turbo, this was £15 for a 5m roll from exhausts uk, and is held in place with 1mm tig wire wrapped around & secured

next was to bolt the turbo, manifold and newly made downpipe (which was nearly the end of me ), into the engine compartment,

in the above pic, you can see the oil feed line attached to the top of the turbo, a braided stainless hose, it connects to a tapping in the engine block down near the bottom of the oil dipstick, it is plugged of with a bolt, & is a m10 x 1.5 thread, i found out about this on the flyin miata & again the miata .net forum, it seems to be a common feed for the oil lines that other people have used, & is a more direct route than coming from the other side of the engine from the oil pressure sensor tapping,

then was the oil return line,once again after research on other forums found there was a tapping already in the block for an oil return line, it is situated below left of the oil filter & is a real pig to get to, this is where clive has his returning to,

when you locate this connection it will have the manufacturers blanking plug on it, a blank rubber hose for all purposes about 2" long,

simply remove the clip, pull offthen re atach the oil line with securing clip,

then it was the turn of the water hoses, simply splice into the existing hose as shown in the pics, and by pass through the turbo

to be cont'd

Adamred5

you keep saying SIMPLY fit the blah blah blah and SIMPLY attach the thingy mc'hose none of it looks SIMPLE to me infact it makes me feel SIMPLE!

5Alive

I like Adam despite him being a student

Seriously though mate this is a cool thread

nathmill85

Seen it in the flesh and it looks rather cool! cant wait to see it firing up properly!

roadsterbloke

roadsterbloke

next on the list was the cross over pipe & induction,

this was quite easy, my existing pipercross cone filter bolted to the air flow meter connected straight to the turbo, a bit of silicone hose & a short piece of 2" piping with a 90deg bend fitted straight in,

next was the cross over pipe, a real headache, ideally wanted to hard pipe it with stainless or similar, but the room available to fit it in was not very genorous, plus with being a novice at this wasn't sure what size bore to use, so i decided to keep my existing crossover pipe & just adapt one end to fit the turbo with a few bends & bits of tube,

plus further down the route i wll probs add an intercooler so all this will want altering again, so for now its just suck it & see

this pic shows my old pipe refitted, ignore the pressure gauge, ill explain this later, the second pic shows the few bends & tubing onto the turbo

now i had to set up the waste gate, i connected a nitrogen cylinder to the actautor on the waste gate, & pressurised it, i kept making alterations until i got it opening at the desired 5psi i was looking for,

i then installed a manual boost controller & set it to 5psi with the nitrogen feed, once all set up i connected the hoses to the turbo.

i decided to remove the middle silencer from the exhast to help the turbo breathe, so once the middle section was removed i chopped out the silencer & tacked in a new piece ready to be tig welded

then two welds later, a lick of heat resistant spray, and hey presto

i then borrowed the dump valve from clives & fitted it to mine, turn the key and wahey, one engine running smooth, one turbo spooling , & pashhhhhhh, dump valve heaven when the throttle was lifted, i dont have to tell ya what the look on my face was like, child , sweety shop, springs to mind, im sure clive will add to this as he was present for start up,

the finished article

and how it looked before

i know have to re fit all the under tray & fit heat guards,

to be cont'd

5Alive

Sweet music

Really pleased for Chris.

mxavo

well done m8...the orders will be flooding through now...

sheffmx5

WOW mate. Thats one cool upgrade.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U R DE MAN. Bet it goes like S.. now. Love the thread as you have gone on. Who says engineering is boring

Regards

Craig

nathmill85

F-ing Sweet mate!!!

you road tested it yet???

dj..john

Thats put a right big grin on my face matey. Very impressed and well chuffed for you!!!

andburg

crackin results so far

just shows with the right frame of mind and skills making a FI5 doesn't have to be expensive!!!

roadsterbloke

started the car up the other day, drove it out of the workshop and around our company's yard, tbh i was very dissapointed, the car was running extremely rich, kept back firing, and had a total lack of power, the smell of petrol was only too obvious, hmmmmm

next day , a new day, after chatting with my dad who's a mechanic i had a few things to try, firstly unplug the lambda ( oxygen ) sensor, there was no difference, soooo!! if the sensor was not giving a reading, would the ecu be using default settings and running the engine rich, i wonder!!

after some deep thought i realised i had fastened the wire up from the sensor before moving the car from the workshop, maybe i had disturbed a connection, so i re did the whole wire with new connections, and tried again,

wow, what a difference

car ticking over sweet, a short run round the block & hey presto, the turbo adds a real kick of power

only concern was smokey exhaust, as luck would have it we had a recovery vehicle with 2 mechanics come to collect one of our broken down transits, ( a busted turbo of all things

)

i know these guys & one of them has built various kit cars & has an mx5 in the family,

cue the question, richard m8, would you look at my motor, he's been aware of the turbo build & gladly obliged, happy to say he gave the car a clean bill of health,

that said i now need to test it on a decent run for reliability,

nathmill85

do i hear a woop woop?? or is that premature???

it was popping and farting like a goodun!

andburg

how are you regulating the fueling chris?

got a fuel pressure regulator on?

wouldnt wanna be running it for a long period or using the accelerator much on base fueling, at 5psi you're essentially running a 2l nasp on a 1.6 fuel load so will def be underfueling

Adamred5

nice one mate! mine next

hehe

roadsterbloke

roadsterbloke

after trial n error,

i now have the car running fine, fuel pressure regulator set up, boost gauge, boost controller, and ive added a fifth injector into the inlet manifold, this is controlled by an adjustable pressure switch set to 4psi, this is when the injector kicks in, ive had 9psi on the boost gauge & the car runs fine, the pinkin / knock that used to appear when under load has know dissapeared, just needs taxin now

5Alive

Burt · WOW

Absolutely brilliant!!!! Well done.