Well it hasnt actually taken me 5 years to 'do' the turbo conversion (i took it off the road for just three weeks) but i did build the engine and put it in the car 5 years ago telling myself that i'd just run it in beofre i put the turbo on.......
Anyway heres a pic.



It helps that i work as R&D Manager for Forge ! Lots of fabrication needed as it was mostly custom. The manifold is off an old Blitz kit that they used to sell years ago, but its been modified to accept a Tial 38mm external wastegate.
The turbo itself is a KKK K3T which is a hybrid K26/27 and was actually used on the Blitz twin turbo conversion for the Nissan GTR. Its got a huge compressor but the turbine is relatively small. Its very laggy though. Wastegate is plumbed back into the exhaust, which is 3" turbo back. We made the downpipe here at Forge, and i got the 3" exhaust from someone on the Uk forum ages ago. I know the filter location is s##t but its all i could do quickly to get the car running, ive still got to plumb the DV back into it at some point too.
Radiator was custom made at Forge and is 3" shorter than normal so i could come up the side of it for the return pipe from the intercooler to give a shorter boost pipe run, and also allowed me to run the -10 oil lines to the front mounted oil cooler (just in front of the hood latch). Would have gone crossflow on the rad, but beggers cant be choosers and we had this 43mm core on the shelf, so its just a moved inlet port, and works well with the coolant reroute as it takes EXACTLY 1 metre of megaflex hose to get from the rad to the port on the back of the engine. Used a 12" Spal fan on the back to gain a bit more room but didnt need the room in the end.



Close-up of the rose jointed turbo/manifold brace. You can make out the spacer plate i had to make between the turbo and the manifold so the compressor housing cleared the no.1 manifold runner ! You can also see where i 'massaged' the frame rail to get the compressor to fit... Hopefully the turbo brace will do its job. Its double rose jointed with a decent seperation angle to counter any way the manifold wishes to expand..........wish me luck. We also built it from stainless so it should expand with the manifold. The turbo/manifold/wastegate is pretty heavy - i think it was 19kgs all in !!



Here you can see the wastegate routing around the exhaust - it rejoins the downpipe a bit further down at a shallow angle. EGT sensor is the braided line running to the manifold. I had to replace the heater hose return to the water pump inlet as i couldnt refit the stock hose, so used Mocal -12 braided hose and welded a -12 fitting to the water pump inlet which you can just make out through the exhaust manifold. Still got to think about a washer bottle...


Heres the shortened rad core with the slimline Spal fan (recommended, very quiet, very slim, and on this one at least, clips straight into the Miata harness). You can see the oil cooler in front of the hood latch. Nearest the camera, the sensor on the top of the rad is for my Defi water temp gauge, sensor on the intercooler pipe is air temp for the Motec. The boost pressure take off just beside that goes around the back of the engine and feeds the bottom port of the external wastegate. The top port is fed from the same source via a Greddy boost controller.


Heres the power graph. Not bad for such a small amount of boost (10psi), but you can see the laaaaaaaaag. Boost controller failed so this is just running off the wasteagte spring. Might get a bit of spoolup back but what i think i really need to do is swap the turbo out for something smaller - luckily i have a K26 lying around which should still be good enough......

 

Very nice numbers for 10 psi! That manifold brace gave me a hardon. What have you done as far as the motor and engine management?

 

Very clean! How's your suspension?

 

Engine is an FM shortblock so Weisco +1mm pistons, carillo rods, ARP mains. Head is a '99 with Ferrea +1mm valves all round, sealed power springs, and headwork (deshroud, port and polish etc.)
Engine management is a Motec M4 Pro. Dont know anyone else on Motec but it works well.

 

 

I have a hunch that removing that filter would yield substantial gains. I have seen on multiple occasions K&N filters, which probably flow better then that one, rob over 40whp, though those cars were making a lot more power. Also i would think that with such a nice setup something larger then a k26 would be desired, then again i do not know this cars purpose so that is just an assumption.
something like this would probably spool faster and make more power up top, pricey though.
http://www.jayracing.com/index.php?m...oducts_id=1582

 

whats the CFM of the K26? Cause the current is definitely prupose driven: if you wanna drive fast in a straight line.

 

^ not at said psi, 230whp is not enough power for a car intended to drive straight. At least not when there is sooo much more potential.
I have never seen an EGT probe positioned like that, you ever dyno it without the probe to see if it has any negative effects on spool? I did a little digging and found that there are a few 240 owners using that same turbo on sr20s with the same slow spooling issues, they report 14psi a about 4600rpms, id bet you could achieve that easily.

 

^ not at said psi, 230whp is not enough power for a car intended to drive straight. At least not when there is sooo much more potential.
I have never seen an EGT probe positioned like that, you ever dyno it without the probe to see if it has any negative effects on spool? I did a little digging and found that there are a few 240 owners using that same turbo on sr20s with the same slow spooling issues, they report 14psi a about 4600rpms, id bet you could achieve that easily.

 

Fantastic setup!

I was about to say you need a catch can, but I see you have one, only its just on one side.

 

UK dynos under read, (or US dyno's overread :P) in comparison to US dynos, you can take the f/whp figure and it'll roughly be your whp figure.

 

Might sound weird but i only did this to prove that i could....... ! Im not interested in chasing numbers but 300bhp goes well. I just need more down low.
The car is primarily fast road/track - its all caged up with buckets. The turbo on there is a K3T which is a K26 2670. The other K26 i have is a K26 2664 - the compressor housing is markedly smaller, but without taking the hosuing off i dont know the in/ex sizes on the compressor wheel. Heres a pic during mockup when i was using the smaller turbo (it has the same footprint as the K3T so is a direct swap). The only compressor flow graphs i have are metric in m3/hr and i dont know how to convert to cfm !

 

off some conversion web page:

"M3 / hr = 35.314 ft3 / 60 = 0.58857 CFM"

 

Man, that looks really good. I'm very impressed! I hope to get my cleaned up to look that good some day.

 

Really?? I don't think so.

That means I'm at 323 WHP on a US dyno?

 

Maybe I'm wrong then, but that's how I thought it worked?

 

I'm pretty sure WHP figures are the same everywhere, but in the UK they guestimate the power at the flywheel by measuring the drag the wheels create on the over run.

 

And it has everything to do with the brand/type of dyno. Some have giant flywheels and some have water or mechanical brakes.

 

Sweet setup, that turbo brace is super super syck!


Cheers!

Welding and fabrication is top notch.