Turbo30 Build

[hasa]

Looks like manifold is too thin for longevity. "Homemade" mild steel manifolds are usually about 3mm thick to last the heat without cracking.

[Turbo30]

Looks like manifold is too thin for longevity. "Homemade" mild steel manifolds are usually about 3mm thick to last the heat without cracking.

Yeah the manifold is garbage. Going to have get something better.

[varg]

That looks like a fairly clean E30 from the tiny glimpse we got, it's a shame the person who swapped it cut a hole in the hood. I can't find my pictures of the engine bay but I know a guy with an SR20 swapped E30 and he uses a top mount with a larger turbocharger than that (the car makes something north of 500hp). I think the turbo is a little bit further forward and lower. The downpipe goes down between the engine and the booster but because I can't find the pictures I couldn't tell you which booster it is. In any case, the vertical 4cyl and ample space is a great candidate for a DIY equal length divided manifold.

[Turbo30]

That looks like a fairly clean E30 from the tiny glimpse we got, it's a shame the person who swapped it cut a hole in the hood. I can't find my pictures of the engine bay but I know a guy with an SR20 swapped E30 and he uses a top mount with a larger turbocharger than that (the car makes something north of 500hp). I think the turbo is a little bit further forward and lower. The downpipe goes down between the engine and the booster but because I can't find the pictures I couldn't tell you which booster it is. In any case, the vertical 4cyl and ample space is a great candidate for a DIY equal length divided manifold.

I'm also disappointed with the hole in the hood, but all things considered, that may be the least of my problems. Pictures would be really helpful. I've been scouring the net for pictures of similar swaps.

Generally speaking, I'm having a hard time figuring out what is going on with this car. Some things are very well done, but others it seems were done with bargain-bin E-Bay parts. I've sourced a manifold, turbo, and wastegate to replace the parts that were on the car. I plan on swapping to a e90 brake booster. I'm hoping that I can fit a 3" pipe between the e9x brake booster and the block.

[varg]

The owner of the car I'm talking about is bigjamaican_e30 on instagram, older pictures are on bigjamaican25. You might be able to reach out to him and ask for more pics or a build thread link (I've never seen one). This is all I saw there and you can see the setup has changed a lot over the years, the third picture shows an old setup which clearly has a BMW booster in the stock (or close to stock) location and the later picture #1 things have been relocated for the larger exhaust and turbo.

[Turbo30]

So Santa came (a little) early for me this year and he brought some car goodies!

If you are following along, you know that I've had a looming hot-side configuration debate for this setup... Well I think I've laid that to rest. In talking to some friends in the industry and getting some rough measurements for manifolds, I decided that I could make a top-mount work reliably and the market for top mount sr20det turbo manifolds seems to be plentiful.

Ebay is filled with cheap manifold solutions, but I don't want to find myself in the same position down the road, so I decided to buy something a little more higher quality. After some networking, I was able to score a really high quality setup. The turbo manifold is made by Doc Race which is better known today for making 135i N54 turbo components. As it turns out, they used to make sr20det and 2jz manifolds long ago, and even though you wont find these parts on their site anymore, they are still coveted pieces in those communities. Behold the manifold:


The welds on this thing look amaze! The collector is symmetrical the runner are very thick! this thing reminds of the FULLRACE manifolds that were popular in the Honda crowds in the mid-2000's. For comparison, It is almost twice as heavy as the cheap Ebay piece that came with the car.


The guy I bought this from, sold me his entire setup (turbo, WG and manifold). He had purchased it from someone else and didn't really know the details of the turbo. In chatting, he mentioned it was a T26, Which I've never heard of but assumed it was some sort of stock equivalent that was slightly modified. He did mention that the previous owner had it rebuilt and upon inspection, this looks to be the case. Upon receiving the piece, It was obvious that this thing is much bigger than the stock turbo. I plan on taking it apart to get some measurements so I can figure out the proper injectors and boost pressure to run it at. Stay tuned for more on that....

The turbo on the left is the stock T28 that came with the car.









But will it fit??? I did a test fit and I am really happy with the clearances. I am still going to have to do something about the brake booster, and I'm leaning towards a e9x booster, so anyone that has done the swap and can offer any tips and tricks, it's appreciated. I don't plan of venting the Wastegate out of the hood, as the pipe would suggest. I'd love to route the dump back to the exhaust, just past the turbo depending on what sort of space saving the new brake booster gives me. More to come....