Turbo upgrade on RV8

[ZoDDy]

Boosted LS1 said:

That's mental chap and it's you doing all the laughing, lol!

haha no, I just do the silent chuckle.. the laughing is the kids..
After a few wild WOT´s and some corner drifts he became so inspired that he talks about building his own
vintage turbo car..

He´s a lucky guy coz his dad is a quite skilled Hotrod builder and craftsman..
That won´t be a problem for him to build something similar.
And the fun part it won´t cost any life savings either.
Turbo conversions is absolutely wonderful and lot´s of bang for the buck if planned correctly.

Aim low and slowly step it up is my advice instead of planning for years and invest loads of £££££
just because you have seen pessimistic posts in forums..
Better to get it up and running and practise the "learning by doing".

When you stress something beyond it´s original purpose, things will break sooner or later..
IMO, That´s a part of the game, and if you´re not prepared for that you should do something else or drive
a boring standard Toyota 1,6

BTW Here is some facts and build pics of my car.. It´s under construction!
http://www.garaget.org/ZoDDy

Edited by ZoDDy on Sunday 2nd February 12:32

[Boosted LS1]

My 4150 wasn't smoothed out like yours. Your one looks like a Demon, did you blend it yourself? Are those Nitto's legal on the street? They look well grippy!

Edited by Boosted LS1 on Sunday 2nd February 16:14

[ZoDDy]

Boosted LS1 said:

My 4150 wasn't smoothed out like yours. Your one looks like a Demon, did you blend it yourself? Are those Nitto's legal on the street? They look well grippy!

Edited by Boosted LS1 on Sunday 2nd February 16:14

It´s a standard 4150 DP that i use now.. nothing done to it, I don´t even milled the choke horn and this really affect the flow, it´s totally new and never been rebuilt. I have one of those Powerjection lll throttlebodys in one of the pictures but this one will be used the next season, it´s not in use on my turbo conversion in the movie clip.

Yes the Nittos are street legal on a vintage car here. They are DOT approved and very grippy even there are better ones to buy.

[Sardonicus]

Zoddy your car is a Peach shape, colour, wheels, the lot good taste the Turbo conversion is good too

[ZoDDy]

Sardonicus said:

Zoddy your car is a Peach shape, colour, wheels, the lot good taste the Turbo conversion is good too

Thanks chap .. I had this car for a long time and it has a story that comes with it. For me It has been some sort of test bench
for lot´s of unproven experiments that nobody believed in.. amazing how ppl can be attached to mechanical things.. i´m one of them!

Edited by ZoDDy on Monday 3rd February 20:04

[Alun450]

Zoddy, as they say
Dont mis conceive common consensus ,,,,,,,,, as fact!
Brill car.

[Boosted LS1]

Sardonicus said:

Zoddy your car is a Peach shape, colour, wheels, the lot good taste the Turbo conversion is good too

It's his pimp ride, lol. Fast though

[ZoDDy]

Boosted LS1 said:

Sardonicus said:

Zoddy your car is a Peach shape, colour, wheels, the lot good taste the Turbo conversion is good too

It's his pimp ride, lol. Fast though

It´s a retro style car.. it´s the way they looked around 1970 overhere..
The body is 99% original except the paint and the wheels..
It´s standard blue metallic with a thin layer of mirra flake.. hard to see unless you take a picture with a flash

[macdeb]

I can't believe I've just re-read this post all 40 odd pages of it and am still non the wiser

[QBee]

macdeb said:

I can't believe I've just re-read this post all 40 odd pages of it and am still non the wiser

I gave up on page 27. You lasted longer than me, as the bishop said to the actress......

[ZoDDy]

macdeb said:

I can't believe I've just re-read this post all 40 odd pages of it and am still non the wiser

But what do you want to know? All turbo conversions are simply great if they are done with some common sense.
Smooth engine character. Lot´s of torque and power and reliable, The turbos won´t boost when driving normally so the
fuel bill will be ok too. The downside is the plumbing when you choose twinturbos, and you will need to fight some underhood temperature

If going twins you will have serveral options at the scrapyard.. Pick the turbo(s) like i did, My 4.6 split in half will be around 2.3 liter like most 4 cylinder turbo cars.. buy two identic ones in good condition and then you have a god start.
My choice is the Mitsubishi.. available, very efficient and no lag. You will find Mitsu TD04 on Volvos and some Saabs.
The Saab TD04HL-15T turbo in twin config is good for 450-500 aggressive horses without pushing them to the limit. (if the engine can flow that amount of air)

I have done some reading about my turbos and the Saab ppl pushing the TD04 charger to almost 300 hp at the wheels on a Saab!
i´ve seen boost numbers up to 1.7Bar but i would never try that on the 15T. I doubt it´s possible to keep that boost all the way to redline! A more realistic maximum boost is more like 1,4 and maybe up to 1,5 BAR

My tiny twins make 400 easy at very low boost.. And the car is seriously aggressive and fun to drive!!
And even the system is far from optimum when it comes to manifold flow and other scientific calculations.. it works great anyway!

[QBee]

ZoDDy said:

But what do you want to know? All turbo conversions are simply great if they are done with some common sense.
Smooth engine character. Lot´s of torque and power and reliable, The turbos won´t boost when driving normally so the
fuel bill will be ok too. The downside is the plumbing when you choose twinturbos, and you will need to fight some underhood temperature

If going twins you will have serveral options at the scrapyard.. Pick the turbo(s) like i did, My 4.6 split in half will be around 2.3 liter like most 4 cylinder turbo cars.. buy two identic ones in good condition and then you have a god start.
My choice is the Mitsubishi.. available, very efficient and no lag. You will find Mitsu TD04 on Volvos and some Saabs.
The Saab TD04HL-15T turbo in twin config is good for 450-500 aggressive horses without pushing them to the limit. (if the engine can flow that amount of air)

I have done some reading about my turbos and the Saab ppl pushing the TD04 charger to almost 300 hp at the wheels on a Saab!

There were 5 Saab Turbos on an airfield TD I did in 2012. They had come down from Scotland IIRC. None were less than 450 bhp. I can probably track down some contact details if you are interested. They were insanely quick for a nearly 2 tonne car.

[Boosted LS1]

ZoDDy said:

But what do you want to know? All turbo conversions are simply great if they are done with some common sense.
Smooth engine character. Lot´s of torque and power and reliable, The turbos won´t boost when driving normally so the
fuel bill will be ok too. The downside is the plumbing when you choose twinturbos, and you will need to fight some underhood temperature

If going twins you will have serveral options at the scrapyard.. Pick the turbo(s) like i did, My 4.6 split in half will be around 2.3 liter like most 4 cylinder turbo cars.. buy two identic ones in good condition and then you have a god start.
My choice is the Mitsubishi.. available, very efficient and no lag. You will find Mitsu TD04 on Volvos and some Saabs.
The Saab TD04HL-15T turbo in twin config is good for 450-500 aggressive horses without pushing them to the limit. (if the engine can flow that amount of air)

I have done some reading about my turbos and the Saab ppl pushing the TD04 charger to almost 300 hp at the wheels on a Saab!
i´ve seen boost numbers up to 1.7Bar but i would never try that on the 15T. I doubt it´s possible to keep that boost all the way to redline! A more realistic maximum boost is more like 1,4 and maybe up to 1,5 BAR

My tiny twins make 400 easy at very low boost.. And the car is seriously aggressive and fun to drive!!
And even the system is far from optimum when it comes to manifold flow and other scientific calculations.. it works great anyway!

What he said. It's not rocket science. A high c/r is good for normal driving, low boost with additionial power boost bhp reward but for bigger power you need to lower the c/r to get massive torque gains. It's really all about what static compression start with.

Edited by Boosted LS1 on Sunday 9th February 23:10

[Boosted LS1]

Rovers are big engines as opposed to say a 1600cc unit. They have lots of exhaust gas flow. The wrong turbo's are the cause of lag. 9:1 c/r makes for a very sharp response but is boost limited. I tend to build at 7 or 8:1 as this allows more boost. Neither of those ratio's would dissapoint you on the road.

[phazed]

So, given a 10:1 CR on a 5.5 with forged pistons etc, would I get away with a pair of decompression plates?

If so, very approximately, what CR would they give?

[macdeb]

phazed said:

So, given a 10:1 CR on a 5.5 with forged pistons etc, would I get away with a pair of decompression plates?

If so, very approximately, what CR would they give?

depends on plate thickness Peter as they come in varying forms. Thing is do you know what gaskets you have at present? So you'd know their thickness. Also, what bore you have and stroke? I suppose you could still play around with some figures working backwards and adding to the swept volume.

[phazed]

macdeb said:

depends on plate thickness Peter as they come in varying forms. Thing is do you know what gaskets you have at present? So you'd know their thickness. Also, what bore you have and stroke? I suppose you could still play around with some figures working backwards and adding to the swept volume.

I'll have to speak to Rob as I haven't a clue.

[spend]

phazed said:

So, given a 10:1 CR on a 5.5 with forged pistons etc, would I get away with a pair of decompression plates?

If so, very approximately, what CR would they give?

Personally I'd steer clear of plates, instead of having an explosion in the middle it is being encouraged going down the sides of the piston/bores, which apart from obvious harms putting more stress on rings/pistons/bores also means less power to the crank (where gains come from pressure pushing the piston like you find with ignition timing are also affected by how you direct the 'boom' at the piston)?

Certainly in your case with presumably a 96mm bore alternate pistons should be available for reasonable costs off the shelf ~ ask Rob or look over the pond..

Problem you get with bigger engines is that the longer stroke inherently creates higher CR's and messing with the shape of the space left at TDC can have much more effect than apparent.. I'd try to keep the charge in a nice ball above the centre of the piston is the only sensible approach unless you have very deep pockets & patience for tons of development & testing?

[Pupp]

Whilst I fully agree with Dave that it's not the ideal way to get a viable CR, the reality is that it does work in practice well enough for loads to get really good results... Maybe not for extreme temps and pressures on an out and out screamer, but on a moderately boosted RV8 with sensible timing everything I've read indicates that's not going to be the cause of problems...

[carsy]

I`ve read before that de compression plates aren`t really liked but why ?

I`m assuming they are just a plate exactly the same as a head gasket but thicker. Not doubting what you say Dave but how does this force the flame down the sides of the piston.

Surely its just the same as the piston not coming quite so far up the bore.

How do they seal? Head gasket either side of the plate ?. I know neal1980 had no problem with his.