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Supercharged/TurbochargedThe increase in air/fuel pressure above atmospheric pressure in the intake system caused by the action of a supercharger or turbocharger attached to an engine.
Hey guys, I've been working on this turbo project for a while, and I thought I would start logging some progress here so people can follow. I want to give some details before I begin though so you know what I'm planning and where my progress is.
I have an 02 with the stock 3.5L, equipped with an automatic transmission. Named it Stephano for a very dumb reason. This car has been overly cared for and loved, even though it sleeps on the side street. Almost 140k miles, but no signs of stopping any time soon. Healthy and powerful with no oil consumption or leaks. If the motor becomes an issue though, I've got no problems replacing it at this point. So all in all, my goals are to get about 350-400whp with a turbo installed and tuned. I'm wanting to put the turbo right under the hood, ideally where I (or others) can easily get to it for any sort of maintenance or servicing of the car, so where the battery normally is. I'm also wanting this to function well as a daily driver, so the turbo install and tuning need to be well refined. All around safe.
Here's what I have installed on the car now that go towards this project: (updated 16 Feb 2016)
- NWP Torque Brace
- NWP 75mm TB
- NWP 7 piece Phenolic Spacers
- NWP VIAS BOP
- BRM 3" Exhaust
- 3" Straight Pipe (cat delete)
- HD2 TransGo Shift Kit
Here's what I've got laying around for this project's install, most of which was gently used by Maxi's before mine:
- UTEC w/ harness
- SSIM
- 660cc Bosch injectors
- Dual feed/return fuel rails
- Fittings for rails
- Stillen fuel regulator
- Aeromotive Stealth pump
- Trans cooler
- AEM wideband w/ O2 sensor
- Boost Guage
- Turbo
- MAP sensor
- 3" MAF housing
- TIAL BOV
- TIAL WG
- 4th gen headers
- 2.5" intercooler piping w/ fasteners & rubber couplers
To have Fab'd:
- Crossover pipe
- Downpipe
On the way:
- AdminTuning Oil Catch Can
- Oil lines
- Return fuel lines/modified fuel hanger ($$$)?
Where I live, I have a couple reputable tuning places. Being the racing capital of the world, I'm surprised I cannot find more that cater to tuning. I'm planning to try to have them build my piping if I cannot collect more here. Not many people have built stuff for autos, so I'm probably going to have to have them do it, which isn't all bad since I know they can make it work. I didn't want to go with any cheap ebay kits though, so here I am. I need a shop to do the install, so I want a good place so I can know it will be done right.
This has been a learning experience for me. I never pictured myself doing this... ever, but I am. Hell, I want to go to art school. Getting to choose the parts and learn about how this stuff works was fun, so I'm really excited to (hopefully) enjoy the outcome. Thanks to the guys who sold me this stuff, Moncef for a lot of help and parts, and to you guys on the .org for sharing so much info. I hope this project of mine can help others too. I am open to all sorts of constructive input and advice!
Going large with a turbo could mean anything. Some people consider a GT35R large some consider it a medium turbo pick a size. i forget who it was but he had a PTE 6262 on his car which is around the size of a GT35 and he actually when smaller to a 5858 and made more power with a better powerband so going big might not always be the best especially for a car that will see DD duty.
Turbo sizing is one of the most crucial part of a turbo build, along with wastegate selection, fuel system and engine management.
The powerband and range of operation depending on the application/type of use the car has to do. I'd go with a GTX3576R if I would be building a turbo 5.5th gen. 5858 is also a very good choice, depends if your a Garrett or Precision turbo fan.
I'm sticking with the UTEC, especially now that I have a harness. I have decided that a larger turbo is suitable for my driving style... or rather how I'd like to use it. I'm looking for boost at higher RPMs. I don't really care about improving mpg or sacrifing driving comfort, as long as it's nothing extreme.
I'm sticking with the UTEC, especially now that I have a harness. I have decided that a larger turbo is suitable for my driving style... or rather how I'd like to use it. I'm looking for boost at higher RPMs. I don't really care about improving mpg or sacrifing driving comfort, as long as it's nothing extreme.
yea you need to specify what turbo, just saying large turbo can mean anything. I can make a GT30 perform better than a GT35 by playing around with the A/R size. Also is it going to be a T4 or T3 housing? what about the size of the compressor wheel vs the turbine? What trim is it going to be? Before you start buying stuff like down&feed pipes wastegates and BOVs as well as injectors. Not to mention clutchs and so forth so spend some time looking around at what works on a VQ35.
Lets start here how much horsepower do you want to make. Not whp and dyno BS. How much max power do you want to make at the flywheel. Start there. Slow down and start thinking about that stuff dont just buy thinking "Imma put on a large turbo yo0". Its not going to work. Remember a stock block VQ35 will only reliable hold around 450hp, the transmission if its a 6spd will barely equal the block and just saying large turbo im thinking GT42s actual large frame turbos and etc, you will break your block and transmission faster than you even know what happened. Secondly by the time you get into boost you'll only have around 1000rpm until you have to shift up a gear then your back out of boost, it will be pointless must NA cars would laugh at you as they blow past. Turbo sizing is extremely important focus there and build around that not the other way around.
i've tried to do it the way you have explained it did not work. Build around what the motor can handle and the turbo's output not around easily replaceable components and pipe dreams.
Deciding how the turbo will be used, and what I'm expecting from it, is why I've left the model I want to be a later addition. When I say large, I'm not going HUGE. Perhaps saying large wasn't the best choice in words. I'm currently planning on putting in a BorgWarner S366, with a t4 frame with .88 a/r, and a 66mm compressor. This turbo has been put in at least a couple Maximas already. This is what I've got lined up, so I think I'm gonna take the deal. I figured this is more than enough for what I want from my car.
Also, to reiterate my power goals and what my car can handle, speaking for HP itself, I'm wanting around 400, 450 tops. This car is an automatic with a HD2 kit and cooler, which raises other areas of concern opposed to the 6 speeds, but it's a road less traveled. This was my first point in research on limitations. It should be interesting to see how the auto handles boost. Not really wanting to discuss transmissions though.
I think this turbo should deliver a lot of power in higher RPMs, and that's what I'm wanting. But I'm not here looking to push the motor to risky limits, while I also don't want to limit myself so early if I do decide later that I want to build the motor a bit and want to expand the power of the turbo. It's not a size of the turbo show-off game. I really couldn't care less about the part, so long as it's reliable and performs to my desires.
In then end, as long as it meets my power goals, and is at a reliable tune, I'm going to be happy with the pieces I've selected for this build. And of course, piping is the very last thing, especially since I will need some piping custom built.
Going large with a turbo could mean anything. Some people consider a GT35R large some consider it a medium turbo pick a size. i forget who it was but he had a PTE 6262 on his car which is around the size of a GT35 and he actually when smaller to a 5858 and made more power with a better powerband so going big might not always be the best especially for a car that will see DD duty.
I believe the person your talking about is ranmas2004 who had a precision 6266 and made 404whp @8 psi on a downpipe that started at 3" then went to 2.5" then went to a precision 5858 and made 411whp @9 psi on a full 3" downpipe so he didn't make more power on a smaller turbo if you actually think about it not to mention his feedpipe had some wrap around turns which isn't the best design for trying to get the exhaust gas as fast as possible to the turbo so it can spool
With that bogwarner you'll reach your power goals no problem but its a matter of how you like the feel of your car when the boost come on. Some people like the fast spool some don't. Me personally I don't like the fast spool because on one of my previous maximas I had a t3 turbonetics turbo that spooled fast and all I did was kill my tires. Recently I had a precision 6162 t4 and never burned up my tires but that turbo didn't come alive until I pushed 14psi through it but everyone has their own opinion you have to find whats right for you
With that bogwarner you'll reach your power goals no problem but its a matter of how you like the feel of your car when the boost come on. Some people like the fast spool some don't. Me personally I don't like the fast spool because on one of my previous maximas I had a t3 turbonetics turbo that spooled fast and all I did was kill my tires. Recently I had a precision 6162 t4 and never burned up my tires but that turbo didn't come alive until I pushed 14psi through it but everyone has their own opinion you have to find whats right for you
That doesn't make much sense, especially talking about spool times, it didn't come on until you pushed a lot of boost? Regardless these are fwd cars they are going to spin. I had traction issues in 1st and 2nd gear stock so adding power is only going to make it worse. Im all for large turbos, i have one myself but a 66mm....I have a 62-1 which is a 62mm 700hp turbo, .81 A/R for a a 450hp car and i have 3500rpm spool, which is a laggy setup, and i have a flowy HR motor. with a 7000rpm redline that gives me 3500rpm worth of boosted powerband to play with.
BUT of course i could be wrong, autos are different from MTs, hopefully somebody like Streetz chimes in. i think a S360-362, with an A/R in the low .80s would be perfect for him. It will still spool late but it will spool early enough that when he wants to feel his turbo it will come on and give him a good solid kick in the back. It will be a more fun car with room to expand in the turbo. because lets be serious, how many FWD cars can use past 400whp? Just buy a rwd or awd car, it's just better.
Last edited by Crusher103; 09-08-2015 at 01:00 PM.
That doesn't make much sense, especially talking about spool times, it didn't come on until you pushed a lot of boost? Regardless these are fwd cars they are going to spin. I had traction issues in 1st and 2nd gear stock so adding power is only going to make it worse. Im all for large turbos, i have one myself but a 66mm....I have a 62-1 which is a 62mm 700hp turbo, .81 A/R for a a 450hp car and i have 3500rpm spool, which is a laggy setup, and i have a flowy HR motor. with a 7000rpm redline that gives me 2500rpm worth of boosted powerband to play with.
BUT of course i could be wrong, autos are different from MTs, hopefully somebody like Streetz chimes in. i think a S360-362, with an A/R in the low .80s would be perfect for him. It will still spool late but it will spool early enough that when he wants to feel his turbo it will come on and give him a good solid kick in the back. It will be a more fun car with room to expand in the turbo. because lets be serious, how many FWD cars can use past 400whp? Just buy a rwd or awd car, it's just better.
Actually I make plenty of sense and you misread and misunderstood what you highlighted when I said "but that turbo didn't come alive until I pushed 14psi through it" come alive meaning the turbo felt weak up until I pushed 14psi through it then it felt alive like I was making some real power
I wrote a bunch of stuff here, but accidentally left the page, so it's gone. Oh well.
So to make this response quick, I'm interested in what results I may get using the turbo with the automatic. I hate how the auto N/A tends to drag so much in 2nd gear when giving the car anything near WOT, but I'm not sure what to expect with the turbo and a tune. If I can get a good pull later in 2nd, and more in 3rd, that will make up for it, but who knows. Guess I will find out.
Not to beat the driving style question to death, but in response to the above.
I don't tend to find myself in tire slaying situations too often. On a rare occasion, maybe, but most of the time when I find myself pushing the car more is from a roll, anywhere between 20-50mph, so very rarely from 0. I'd like to take the car to a strip sometime to race, and get some times, but setting records, and traction perfection isn't too big of a deal to me. The car won't really be used that way, and I'm not looking to set any records, so that's no big deal to me.
Anyways,
I decided to keep the MAF and swap it into a larger housing, and along side that, I will be adding a MAP sensor to the UTEC. Got a lot of stuff coming. Just need to decide on a BOV and wastegate.
Alright, I'll see what I can find. I've asked and searched around, but are there any designs I should look for? For this application, what size should I look for? Seems any larger size will do, but cost wise, I'd rather buy something that's a little more than what I need than way more than what I need.
Alright, I'll see what I can find. I've asked and searched around, but are there any designs I should look for? For this application, what size should I look for? Seems any larger size will do, but cost wise, I'd rather buy something that's a little more than what I need than way more than what I need.
Look for the older f38 wastegate. The fseries is much more stout imo. The spring is much beefier too. Mvr/mvs are just not as big as the fseries. This is important because to run a big turbo with low boost you need a strong wastegate with strong spring. Short of spending big $$$ on a 44 or bigger I think for the 250 an fseries can be had at is the way to go. Mine has yet to fail to control boost. Just watch out for fakes on eBay. I also love my tial 50mm blow off qseries. Make sure you get 1/4 or 6mm inside diameter tubing to run your reference lines. That is what tial recommends.
Look for the older f38 wastegate. The fseries is much more stout imo. The spring is much beefier too. Mvr/mvs are just not as big as the fseries. This is important because to run a big turbo with low boost you need a strong wastegate with strong spring. Short of spending big $$$ on a 44 or bigger I think for the 250 an fseries can be had at is the way to go. Mine has yet to fail to control boost. Just watch out for fakes on eBay. I also love my tial 50mm blow off qseries. Make sure you get 1/4 or 6mm inside diameter tubing to run your reference lines. That is what tial recommends.
The turbo came in the mail! It's a Borgwarner S366 and all the fittings and adapters. Paired with that, I also have a 3" MAF adapter, MAP sensor, and oil fittings. Moncef is going to make and ship my oil lines once can measure the lengths I need. I'll post some pictures of the turbo and any other interesting stuff when I get time to open it up again. Still waiting on the boost gauge, wideband, and o2 sensor to arrive.
I also picked up some H&R springs assembled on KYBs that I've got sitting in the hallway, ready to install.
I've determined that all that's left that can't be bought at the autoparts store is the BOV, Wastegate, oil pan spacer for the turbo oil feed, and some cheap headers to chop up. I'm also adding an oil catch can, which I'm sourcing from Moncef. Not sure if he's advertised this yet or not. If you're interested in a custom one, he's got a pretty awesome catch can design specifically for the 3.5.
I start school in less than a week, so this should be an interesting first semester since I'll be working every moment I'm not in school trying to squeeze dollars for this project.
Goal install is March/April. Will be quite the birthday present to myself.
I have some pictures on instagram, but that's personal too, so it's a mix of everything. You can find me on there under "cotozic". I have officially ordered everything - and almost received everything I need. I think I'm missing a fitting for the fuel return, but that's all I can think of.
News for this...
I got my gauges, 2.5" intercooler piping, Tial BOV+WG. I've ordered the 4th gen headers for use to create the crossover pipe, and OBX oil spacer w/ feed on the way.
This is literally all I can think of that I will need for this build. I also got the H&Rs on the car, and so that's a treat to enjoy while I wait to install this stuff.
EDIT: I'll try to upload some more pictures very soon for this thread. Everything else is on Instagram.
Originally I had planned to take my car with all this stuff to a local shop and I had needed them to fab the hotside for the turbo. My first choice turned me down with no explanation, and the second I met in person, and they said they would take a month just to make the hotside and couldn't tune, so that was a no.
Everything worked out though... Gave Moncef a call and now I'm taking the car across country to get stuff built, installed, and tuned right. Driving it over on Saturday and coming back in my friend's GTI.
Alright, so I had an interesting trip to Arkansas to drop off the car. Packed the car up and left at 8AM yesterday and headed out for my 8.5 hour drive, that became more like 11. The car is in good hands now with AdminTuning, and I'm excited to see how it turns out. I miss it already.
Here's a couple pictures. I know Moncef has already posted some of these on Instagram. I won't post pictures of everything. Don't want to spoil all the fun. Admintuning is assembling all this stuff for me, and they've got some more stuff on Instagram. Definitely follow them.
Okay, another update not because I necessarily care to update, but it's about all I can think about and I'm way too excited. I added a Mishimoto oil cooler kit to the build. The original OEM oil cooler literally snapped in half when it was removed, so we'll just be removing that. The amazing headers and up pipe have been fabricated and connected up to the turbo, but the up pipe doesn't clear the stock radiator fans, so we're swapping in 14" fans that are narrower so they'll clear. Small upgrade there.
So, what's happened in two weeks that I know of...
Turbo kit is done. Hot side has been wrapped and it's all put together and on the car for the last time. Fuel system is in and I'm pretty sure it's done. Swapped to Admintuning's setup, so I've gotten rid of the barbs for the lines going into the fuel rails and have a new FPR. Intercooler piping is done and the manifolds are back on. Oil cooler and trans cooler are also in. All that stuff is done for the most part. Just small things here and there.
Electronics are the latest. Gauges are in and look great. Jeremy is working on wiring for them now.
I'm picking this thing up on the 15th. Don't try to stop me
As of Sunday, I'm officially part of the club. Picked it up and drove it 500 miles back to Indy. It's definitely taking some getting used to, but I hadnt forgotten how much I loved having this car and the turbo is making it amazing. Not only that but the guys did an amazing job with the car. The build quality is spot on and it looks amazing. A lot of time and care went into this and it was worth the longer wait.
It's a bit weird to drive it with the auto transmission though because I'm finding it very involved. I used to manually shift, but I'm finding it better to shift to manage getting boost only when I want it right now. I haven't pushed the car too hard because of some maintenance I need to finish, but I'm learning more about driving it each day. The car pulls super hard though. I mostly did pulls in 3rd but in 4th it's just crazy, but that's where some shifting problems were happening, as well as MAF.
Shift problem was because the battery tray was no longer there to mount the shift linkage for the auto transmission, the lack of tension from the missing mount caused the shifter in the cabin to not place the car into the drive gears properly. For instance, putting the car into the normal 2nd position was also 3rd, and the normal 1st was being read as 2nd gear. It would also cause the car to slip out of D into N when the car would auto shift at lower speeds. Jeremy and Moncef only noticed this the last day and there were no notes on adjustments for it in the FSM, so I drove home just using D and 3rd but I played around with it today and fixed it with a cable tie. I'm actually relieved it was so easy.
Being that this is my first time dealing with major mods and tuning, I'm definitely having to take adjustment to the feel of the car and telling what might be going on when things don't work quite right. The MAF doesn't seem to be getting along with the boost in certain gears which we think is a problem unavoidable because of the reliance of UTEC. I've been struggling with the, now less frequent, Limp Mode encounters. Now that the car is shifting under my control, I've been working on finding what causes limp mode. The car will pull hard in any gear, but can get kind of funny in high RPMs in lower gears once it starts entering boost, which as of today is where I shift regardless. It usually works well to shift to 3rd from D in interstate speeds to ease into building boost, then ideally pedal down into D(4th) for max pull, but I've struggled with going into Limp Mode with this, but this was before I fixed the shifter linkage and I have yet to try again.
I've been hesitant to push the car since I got home Monday because of the shifter linkage which I fixed, and some regular maintenance that needs to be done. Ive hit the books and done the research, and I've done smaller maintenance, but I've got to get down to business on doing the work myself from here on out. I'm really loving this setup though. I cannot wait to really sink my teeth into it.
The feel of the car though... Starting it... Running it... I thought the BRM exhaust and the open intake for motor sound was amazing, but this is a whole orchestra of sounds. The new motor mounts hold the motor solid so you feel the vibration along with the cylinders. The turbo spool and BOV after boost. It's so different and it's just all around mean. I didn't know what to expect, but it doesn't just pull like crazy. The feel of the car matches the power and I like that a lot. With the gauges and the noise, there's a lot to focus on, but I'm slowly taking it all in.
I have some future plans for this build. Once I get the smaller stuff taken care of this week, I'll move on to refining stuff then later expanding in other areas of the car. Can't be too fast because the wallet has gone uncomfortably flat, and I'm moving in the next couple weeks... But at some point.
Alright, so here are some pictures soon before and after I took it home. Oil... and hopefully spark plugs to be changed tomorrow along with my friend's GTI. I haven't taken this manifold off to do plugs with the NWP spacer set, which is held with permatex, so should be interesting to see if I can manage to get it off. Fortunately I'm able to use my neighbor's garage.
08-26-2015, 11:26 PM
Update? Been almost two weeks!!!!
