Looking for guidance in turbo charging engines
Discussion
Hello everyone. I would like to apologise in advance if I write a wall of text that is maybe lacking sense at some point or is totally uneducated. I am not ashamed and no one is born taught.
I have a dream to turbo charge a car and make it my baby... Like a project car. I just get this weird feeling everytime I hear a modified petrol get in boost... It's a sensation and pleasure that nothing can compare to.
I know some basic thigs about turbocharging, but I would relly appreciate it if your replies are as if you are talkog to a total newbie :P
First things first : the car. I still can't decide on which car I would like to modify... I will chose a car with a smaller engine as I would like to keep my fuel economy under check... And also small engines dishing out 150-200hp is something I find fascinating.
Here are most of the things that I would need guidance and professional opinion about :
1- fuel consumption - tuning a small 1.2-1.4 petrol to reasonable hp withought hurting the every day easy driving economy
2- Reliability - As this would be my first car to try and work on myself and teach myself on, I know it won't be very reliable, but if done right could it be?
3- What would I need to do to prep the engine for boosting (except getting an ecu if the car doesn't have one already)?
4- What might be an easier car to work on except a honda? Maybe seat or fiat( i have no idea)?
5- Making the turbo work - what needs to be done like tuning it up, software etc?
6- Any changes that need to be adressed in regards to regular servicing etc?
I would just like to explain myself regard the aims of my future build - I am looking to make the car realiable with decent hp as I mentioned - 150 to 200 maybe, as well as try to keep it as every day drivable as possible in regards to fuel economy.
Thank you all in advance and again I apologise for the long and confusing post.
I have a dream to turbo charge a car and make it my baby... Like a project car. I just get this weird feeling everytime I hear a modified petrol get in boost... It's a sensation and pleasure that nothing can compare to.
I know some basic thigs about turbocharging, but I would relly appreciate it if your replies are as if you are talkog to a total newbie :P
First things first : the car. I still can't decide on which car I would like to modify... I will chose a car with a smaller engine as I would like to keep my fuel economy under check... And also small engines dishing out 150-200hp is something I find fascinating.
Here are most of the things that I would need guidance and professional opinion about :
1- fuel consumption - tuning a small 1.2-1.4 petrol to reasonable hp withought hurting the every day easy driving economy
2- Reliability - As this would be my first car to try and work on myself and teach myself on, I know it won't be very reliable, but if done right could it be?
3- What would I need to do to prep the engine for boosting (except getting an ecu if the car doesn't have one already)?
4- What might be an easier car to work on except a honda? Maybe seat or fiat( i have no idea)?
5- Making the turbo work - what needs to be done like tuning it up, software etc?
6- Any changes that need to be adressed in regards to regular servicing etc?
I would just like to explain myself regard the aims of my future build - I am looking to make the car realiable with decent hp as I mentioned - 150 to 200 maybe, as well as try to keep it as every day drivable as possible in regards to fuel economy.
Thank you all in advance and again I apologise for the long and confusing post.
Thanks, Cruty. What would you add on to what the book says from your own experience and perspective. I will try to find supercharged tonight and start on it asap.
Edit : I will get the turbocharged book by the sam author since I mentioned that I would like to turbo charge and not supercharge.
Edit : I will get the turbocharged book by the sam author since I mentioned that I would like to turbo charge and not supercharge.
Edited by EddieVice on Friday 14th July 12:33
Any high performance engine lives or dies (often literally) on the quality of the calibration within its electronic management system. A high reliability, high performance engine requires an accurate, repeatable, and reliable management system, and this is even more critical on a forced induction engine because the range of boundary conditions it operates under is so much wider than for a Normally Aspirated engine.
You know it's amazing, all the advice of the worlds experts is available to you. If you think about it that's awesome. They'll even build the engine, develop and map the control systems, advise on hardware and a find a good base vehicle to start with.
This thing called money opens a lot of doors!
Of course it's easy to be flippant.......
A lot of small engines are now turbocharged and can be bought cheaply. Start there and develop. Anything bespoke is spendy. Ask me how I know.
This thing called money opens a lot of doors!
Of course it's easy to be flippant.......
A lot of small engines are now turbocharged and can be bought cheaply. Start there and develop. Anything bespoke is spendy. Ask me how I know.
Guess the answer? Why it's MX5 of course. Loads of people have done it, I even managed to supercharge one of mine perfectly successfully. Cost about 2k and a week or two of working evenings on the driveway, I didn't even have a garage.
The fuel economy was better afterwards and he power went from around 115 to 160 BHP.
Best to start with the 1.8 engine but the 1.6 is doable, that's what mine was.
You need to sort out the timing and fuelling, which is where the Megasquirt comes in. Lots of help and advice out there on the various MX5 forums too.
Good luck, it's a fun thing to do.
The fuel economy was better afterwards and he power went from around 115 to 160 BHP.
Best to start with the 1.8 engine but the 1.6 is doable, that's what mine was.
You need to sort out the timing and fuelling, which is where the Megasquirt comes in. Lots of help and advice out there on the various MX5 forums too.
Good luck, it's a fun thing to do.
Dont know if this will work, but anyway:
It works! Enjoy!
From Jalopy magazine, February 1994
TURBODGING
Inspired by the Blue Peter spirit of adventure,
R. A. Franklin added boost to his Triumph GT6, and lived to tell the tale…..
W
hy do people like me become bod¬gers? I’ve just accepted it. Perhaps it’s be-cause I knew from the mo¬ment 1 started bending the pieces of my Meccano set that it was my destiny. Sel¬lotape and cardboard often found their way into my childhood creations. It was as if I was in a frenzy to get the thing to work, and any¬thing would do so long as it sewed the immediate pur¬pose. Not only that, there was the satisfaction of mak¬ing the kit do more than it was intended for.
Strangely enough, I ended up as a Chartered En¬gineer, specializing in con¬trol systems. The Bodger is still there though, lurking in the background, waiting to be unleashed at weekends. Any bodging exercise of mine has the following rules:
1) It must be safe
2) It must work
3) It doesn’t have to look good
4) It must be the most cost-effective method of achieving the goal
Take rust, for example. What causes rust? Oxygen, comes the deafening reply. So what’s the best way of stopping a car rusting? Yes, immerse it in a bath of sticky oil. Or better still; don’t make it out of steel. Either is preferable to the ghastly and futile process followed by the wash-your-car on¬ Sunday brigade. You know, AAAAARGGGHH, I’VE GOT A BUBBLE ON MY WING, dare I burst it, per¬haps it hasn’t gone all the way through. Oh no, I knew this would happen, I should have had it steam cleaned like it said in the local paper. Should I bite the bullet and burst it? That means I’ll have to chip the lovely paint off, the lovely paint that I have lavished all these Sun¬day mornings on. There must be at least fifty thou of Turtle Wax on this paint, do I really have to? And then what? Rust eater? Horrid black patches followed by disgusting touch-up paint. But I’m definitely not going to look inside the wing. What if there’s more rust? Perhaps I’ll get the hose though, and give it a really good clean. .Then I’ll feel bet¬ter, at least. Perhaps if I just use a hypodermic and inject some Jenolyte it’ll get better by itself? Perhaps.
No, my friend, it will not get better. It will get much, much worse. Your car has cancer. Terminal, malignant and abso-btoody-lutely in¬curable. You have not been a Good Owner. You have given it Turtle Wax when you should have given it Waxoyl, but you’ll still be out there every Sunday, hopelessly sloshing more detergent-loaded water into its cavities, supplementing the corrosive mixture lurk¬ing in the mud plastered into all the little places that your Hyd~o-Turbo-Blasto¬Matic plastic nozzle that you bought down the local market from a chap who said it converted mains pressure to 2000 millibar, can’t dislodge. Sorry.
My old Triumph GT6 was a trifle rusty when I got it. It was also a trifle rusty when I sold it six years later. But that car was not rust¬ing when I sold it, just rusty. Waxoyl, see?
But O, what bodgery I did enjoy with that car. The original 2-litre straight six put out a careful 95bhp. Hardly Boys Own stuff. So, I thought, why not turbo-charge it? I managed to se¬cure a turbo of approximately the right dimensions (oh, all right, a bit on the big side...) but it was a turbo, and all I had to do was fit it! Right, Sleeves rolled up. Cut three inch ex¬haust stubs off that old tu¬bular manifold. Weld them to a two-inch square tube collector, bugger the gas-flowed corner, we’ll have a dead end after the turbo flange and the gas can find its own path.
Next: compression ratio. Easy. One eighth-inch plate spacer, with metal gasket each side - 6.5 to 1, or there¬abouts. Oil feed: straight from the main oil galley. Can’t bodge this, turbos need about half a gallon a minute, at l0psi. That means a specially built pressure regulator capable of handling hot oil, and a drain to the sump, downhill all the way.
Ignition needs an extra spring, on the other side of the vacuum advance dia¬phragm, to back off the tim¬ing under boost. 8psi of boost will need about 6-8 degrees of retardation. If you know the boost and the size of the diaphragm, you can figure out the force sup¬plied by the diaphragm. Knowing the movement of the diaphragm required to achieve the retardation you’re after, and knowing Hookes Law as all bodgers should... I’m sure you can work out the rest (We’re way ahead of you. Ed)
Boost control: no prob¬lem. Radiator cap and neck with extra exhaust ports as a blow-off valve, brazed to the air cleaner body. A trifle noisy on the overrun, but real safe. No possibility of over-revving the turbo, which is not recommended. The blade tip velocity at full boost is around 1000 ft/sec-ond, a bit faster than the bul¬let from a Browning 9mm automatic. You definitely want those blades to stay in that snail-shaped thing.
Fuel: tricky. Blow-through carburettors. Press¬urised float chambers.
Blown seals on throttle spindles. Many, many dif¬ferent needles. You need to add boost pressure to the lower side of the diaphragm of the fuel pump (see diag¬ram), and add an air seal to the diaphragm rod. Very tricky. But it was all worth it for that one ride when the right amount of fuel went in at the right ignition timing for l0psi of boost, leaving the gum-chewing, earring-wearing Capri 3-Litre crea¬ture in a black rage, bouncing up and down in his seat, making a dent in his firewall where the throttle pedal goes.
I did try suck-through carburation. Briefly. After all, no true bodger would be put off by the prospect of a leak in a pressurised system full of petrol/air mixture at stoichiometric ratios or thereabouts, would he? Naaah. Or by the prospect of having to install another (completely leak proof) but-terfly valve downstream of the turbo in order not to sub¬ject the turbo oil seals to full engine vacuum? Er, naah. No, what put me off was the way that the fuel puddles merrily in the bottom of the compressor casing on idle, and virtually puts the fire out when it is eventually whisked into the engine in a huge gush when you open the throttle. Not to mention the dense clouds of black smoke enveloping the poor bloke behind you. Or the supernovae from the rear of the car as the blow-off valve (now vented to the exhaust pipe, well downstream but still hot enough to ignite the mixture) lifted on gear changes and overrun.
But as you all know, you quickly get used to in¬creased performance. Like, the following day. So when the TR6 engine complete with fuel-injection was spotted, it was duly ac¬quired and slotted in. Now the turbocharger was the right size. And fuelling was a matter of playing with springs and fuel-enrich¬ment devices and rolling roads. Boost was up to 20psi. This was war. I had declared war on the car. It pinked. I added water injection. This was pure joy. A plastic water container (stif¬fish) pressurized by boost air through a one-way (yes, screen wash) valve. Squirt¬ing a jet of water through a 0.050 jet straight at the eye of the turbo impeller. It stopped pinking.
It then blew head gas¬kets. I added 0-rings to the head and took away the head gaskets. We saw flash readings of 270bhp at the back wheels.
It munched differential pinions. I bought an XJ6 back axle, and was about to fit that, when the noise in my left ear became intoler¬able. I sold it. She stopped.
But the bodging goes on. Now with a Scimitar (not an SS1, a proper one). The body does what it should, that is, keep wind and rain out. The paint, which is non-func¬tional on this car, does what all paint wants to do, íe change colour and fall off I don’t mind, I won’t have to Turtle Wax it. The chassis has been completely fixed; all the bits that were too thin (from lack of Iron) have been replaced with new bits. And yes, it has been smothered in Waxoyl, in¬side and out. The Ford V6 engine and auto box was treated as it should have been, ie. removed, ham¬mered into manageable pieces and given to a pas¬sing traveler.
Bodging was halted whilst the suspension bushes were replaced as a matter of course whilst they were get-attable. And the brakes were Properly Done, including replacing the pitted and scored discs, sorely tempted though I was to reface them with a big abrasive wheel. You have to arrive at the T-junc¬tion at the bottom of a steep hill just the one time with smoke billowing from the wheel arches, both feet on the brake pedal and the steering wheel bent nearly double, to appreciate the full horror of brake fade... that’s after having the fill¬ings rattled out of your head from the vibration due to thin, heat-distorted discs.
Never again. Oh God, never again...
Oh yes, and a Rover V8 was slipped in. Kind of. But that’s another story.
It works! Enjoy!
From Jalopy magazine, February 1994
TURBODGING
Inspired by the Blue Peter spirit of adventure,
R. A. Franklin added boost to his Triumph GT6, and lived to tell the tale…..
W
hy do people like me become bod¬gers? I’ve just accepted it. Perhaps it’s be-cause I knew from the mo¬ment 1 started bending the pieces of my Meccano set that it was my destiny. Sel¬lotape and cardboard often found their way into my childhood creations. It was as if I was in a frenzy to get the thing to work, and any¬thing would do so long as it sewed the immediate pur¬pose. Not only that, there was the satisfaction of mak¬ing the kit do more than it was intended for.
Strangely enough, I ended up as a Chartered En¬gineer, specializing in con¬trol systems. The Bodger is still there though, lurking in the background, waiting to be unleashed at weekends. Any bodging exercise of mine has the following rules:
1) It must be safe
2) It must work
3) It doesn’t have to look good
4) It must be the most cost-effective method of achieving the goal
Take rust, for example. What causes rust? Oxygen, comes the deafening reply. So what’s the best way of stopping a car rusting? Yes, immerse it in a bath of sticky oil. Or better still; don’t make it out of steel. Either is preferable to the ghastly and futile process followed by the wash-your-car on¬ Sunday brigade. You know, AAAAARGGGHH, I’VE GOT A BUBBLE ON MY WING, dare I burst it, per¬haps it hasn’t gone all the way through. Oh no, I knew this would happen, I should have had it steam cleaned like it said in the local paper. Should I bite the bullet and burst it? That means I’ll have to chip the lovely paint off, the lovely paint that I have lavished all these Sun¬day mornings on. There must be at least fifty thou of Turtle Wax on this paint, do I really have to? And then what? Rust eater? Horrid black patches followed by disgusting touch-up paint. But I’m definitely not going to look inside the wing. What if there’s more rust? Perhaps I’ll get the hose though, and give it a really good clean. .Then I’ll feel bet¬ter, at least. Perhaps if I just use a hypodermic and inject some Jenolyte it’ll get better by itself? Perhaps.
No, my friend, it will not get better. It will get much, much worse. Your car has cancer. Terminal, malignant and abso-btoody-lutely in¬curable. You have not been a Good Owner. You have given it Turtle Wax when you should have given it Waxoyl, but you’ll still be out there every Sunday, hopelessly sloshing more detergent-loaded water into its cavities, supplementing the corrosive mixture lurk¬ing in the mud plastered into all the little places that your Hyd~o-Turbo-Blasto¬Matic plastic nozzle that you bought down the local market from a chap who said it converted mains pressure to 2000 millibar, can’t dislodge. Sorry.
My old Triumph GT6 was a trifle rusty when I got it. It was also a trifle rusty when I sold it six years later. But that car was not rust¬ing when I sold it, just rusty. Waxoyl, see?
But O, what bodgery I did enjoy with that car. The original 2-litre straight six put out a careful 95bhp. Hardly Boys Own stuff. So, I thought, why not turbo-charge it? I managed to se¬cure a turbo of approximately the right dimensions (oh, all right, a bit on the big side...) but it was a turbo, and all I had to do was fit it! Right, Sleeves rolled up. Cut three inch ex¬haust stubs off that old tu¬bular manifold. Weld them to a two-inch square tube collector, bugger the gas-flowed corner, we’ll have a dead end after the turbo flange and the gas can find its own path.
Next: compression ratio. Easy. One eighth-inch plate spacer, with metal gasket each side - 6.5 to 1, or there¬abouts. Oil feed: straight from the main oil galley. Can’t bodge this, turbos need about half a gallon a minute, at l0psi. That means a specially built pressure regulator capable of handling hot oil, and a drain to the sump, downhill all the way.
Ignition needs an extra spring, on the other side of the vacuum advance dia¬phragm, to back off the tim¬ing under boost. 8psi of boost will need about 6-8 degrees of retardation. If you know the boost and the size of the diaphragm, you can figure out the force sup¬plied by the diaphragm. Knowing the movement of the diaphragm required to achieve the retardation you’re after, and knowing Hookes Law as all bodgers should... I’m sure you can work out the rest (We’re way ahead of you. Ed)
Boost control: no prob¬lem. Radiator cap and neck with extra exhaust ports as a blow-off valve, brazed to the air cleaner body. A trifle noisy on the overrun, but real safe. No possibility of over-revving the turbo, which is not recommended. The blade tip velocity at full boost is around 1000 ft/sec-ond, a bit faster than the bul¬let from a Browning 9mm automatic. You definitely want those blades to stay in that snail-shaped thing.
Fuel: tricky. Blow-through carburettors. Press¬urised float chambers.
Blown seals on throttle spindles. Many, many dif¬ferent needles. You need to add boost pressure to the lower side of the diaphragm of the fuel pump (see diag¬ram), and add an air seal to the diaphragm rod. Very tricky. But it was all worth it for that one ride when the right amount of fuel went in at the right ignition timing for l0psi of boost, leaving the gum-chewing, earring-wearing Capri 3-Litre crea¬ture in a black rage, bouncing up and down in his seat, making a dent in his firewall where the throttle pedal goes.
I did try suck-through carburation. Briefly. After all, no true bodger would be put off by the prospect of a leak in a pressurised system full of petrol/air mixture at stoichiometric ratios or thereabouts, would he? Naaah. Or by the prospect of having to install another (completely leak proof) but-terfly valve downstream of the turbo in order not to sub¬ject the turbo oil seals to full engine vacuum? Er, naah. No, what put me off was the way that the fuel puddles merrily in the bottom of the compressor casing on idle, and virtually puts the fire out when it is eventually whisked into the engine in a huge gush when you open the throttle. Not to mention the dense clouds of black smoke enveloping the poor bloke behind you. Or the supernovae from the rear of the car as the blow-off valve (now vented to the exhaust pipe, well downstream but still hot enough to ignite the mixture) lifted on gear changes and overrun.
But as you all know, you quickly get used to in¬creased performance. Like, the following day. So when the TR6 engine complete with fuel-injection was spotted, it was duly ac¬quired and slotted in. Now the turbocharger was the right size. And fuelling was a matter of playing with springs and fuel-enrich¬ment devices and rolling roads. Boost was up to 20psi. This was war. I had declared war on the car. It pinked. I added water injection. This was pure joy. A plastic water container (stif¬fish) pressurized by boost air through a one-way (yes, screen wash) valve. Squirt¬ing a jet of water through a 0.050 jet straight at the eye of the turbo impeller. It stopped pinking.
It then blew head gas¬kets. I added 0-rings to the head and took away the head gaskets. We saw flash readings of 270bhp at the back wheels.
It munched differential pinions. I bought an XJ6 back axle, and was about to fit that, when the noise in my left ear became intoler¬able. I sold it. She stopped.
But the bodging goes on. Now with a Scimitar (not an SS1, a proper one). The body does what it should, that is, keep wind and rain out. The paint, which is non-func¬tional on this car, does what all paint wants to do, íe change colour and fall off I don’t mind, I won’t have to Turtle Wax it. The chassis has been completely fixed; all the bits that were too thin (from lack of Iron) have been replaced with new bits. And yes, it has been smothered in Waxoyl, in¬side and out. The Ford V6 engine and auto box was treated as it should have been, ie. removed, ham¬mered into manageable pieces and given to a pas¬sing traveler.
Bodging was halted whilst the suspension bushes were replaced as a matter of course whilst they were get-attable. And the brakes were Properly Done, including replacing the pitted and scored discs, sorely tempted though I was to reface them with a big abrasive wheel. You have to arrive at the T-junc¬tion at the bottom of a steep hill just the one time with smoke billowing from the wheel arches, both feet on the brake pedal and the steering wheel bent nearly double, to appreciate the full horror of brake fade... that’s after having the fill¬ings rattled out of your head from the vibration due to thin, heat-distorted discs.
Never again. Oh God, never again...
Oh yes, and a Rover V8 was slipped in. Kind of. But that’s another story.
GordonL said:
Guess the answer? Why it's MX5 of course.
I was going to say that. Take an MX5 and you'll have lots of support from people who've dealt with turbo/supercharging that engine. Doesn't sound like you want one of the off the shelf kits, but the lessons learnt over the last 20+ years turbocharging that engine should be easy to find on the internet.Gassing Station | Engines & Drivetrain | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff