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Turbo/ Supercharge question

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pbballer33

New member
So i have a 3.8l non turbo. I am looking at putting a turbo kit in it.. What exactly do i have to do to make this happen? any suggestions on kits, etc? Thanks
 


It depends on who you ask. Some people will tell you that for $400 you can make 450whp. Other people have spent $4,000 on their kits and still only made ~300whp.
You need quite a lot of odds and ends to make it work and if you can't fabricate things on your own it can get expensive quickly. Some people sell entire kits but they start at about 3 grand and I'm not sure they come with injectors at that price.

In short, you need;

turbo, crossover, downpipe, wastegate, BOV, injectors, valve springs, all sorts of misc hardware, oil lines, misc gaskets, and a tune. That's a bare bones kit that's not going to make a ton of power. To make more power you'll need custom manifolds or P-logs and an intercooler. At that point you'll probably want a fuel pump and even bigger injectors, unless you went to big ones right off the bat.

It's a huge job even for seasoned wbody guys. IMO you shouldn't listen to anyone who says it's easy.
 
Like snowflake says it's not easy. I'm building for a turbo and have spent right around 2k just on supporting mods. And that's with nothing ported and polished.

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You'll want to do your homework and get information from multiple sources before you get too carried away. I feel that some members of this forum bend the truth on what it cost them to turbo their vehicle. If you are determined, however, you can find something that meets your goals in your general price range.
 
There are many approaches to it. The Z3 kit from zzp is probably the most bang for your buck right now. Either that or a used kit, with a used kit you're not going to get much support putting it in and you get what you pay for. The hardware is used, may be missing fasteners/bolts and may have some hidden problems.

You don't need to go too extreme at all starting out, actually that's a common mistake for some. A stock engine with a turbo kit, injectors and a decent tune on 91 and low boost 9-10psi is still enough fwd power for most. Anything past that and you need to start putting money into a tranny, fuel pump, valve springs, the only problem is that it's very easy to turn up the boost and you start finding that you need those things. So just leave it on low boost until you are very comfortable with everything that's going on.

I disagree with it being that big of endeavor, first time I installed the kit it didn't take that long, one afternoon I believe. It would have taken less if I had stock manifolds and downpipe still in it. I've taken the kit off/on a few times now doing various stuff and it's not that bad at all considering its a CT kit. Hardest part is the lower downpipe to upper downpipe bolts and after you do it once, it's pretty easy to figure out the next time.

It's a huge job even for seasoned wbody guys. IMO you shouldn't listen to anyone who says it's easy.
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IMO you shouldn't be telling people how hard something is if you've never done it before.
 


I think he was leaning more towards building your own turbo setup as opposed to buying a ready to bolt in kit.

Biggest expense I can see is getting a built tranny to deal with the abuse the turbos put down once you do want to turn that happy knob.
 
GTP131 said:
You'll want to do your homework and get information from multiple sources before you get too carried away. I feel that some members of this forum bend the truth on what it cost them to turbo their vehicle. If you are determined, however, you can find something that meets your goals in your general price range.
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I wouldn't doubt it, but the reality of it is that most of us bought things that we didn't really need to reach our goals. We have had enough time to look back and think about what we would have done differently, skipped out on or found cheaper. We offer our input and then we get a lot of grief by people who believe it isn't that cheap or easy. Up front the cost is larger, but in the end it is the best bang for your buck. But like I said before, a common mistake is to go all out right away. Keep it simple.
 


Never actually owning a turbo wbody ≠ no experience with them and/or turbo concepts.
This might be a hard thing for you to grasp but everything I told him is spot on and I base those statements on Experience.
 
Okay, I'm going to toss that idea out the window. haha ideas on what to do? will a chip help performance at all? New headers maybe?
 


Chips are fake.

A tune with a tuning software will help or you can buy a tune from a vendor.

Headers are always a great mod and are needed if you want to really mod it past a intake.

Read up on mods and what is needed to do them, troll the forum for answer. The L67 (supercharged) section has a modding thread that you find some good info in.
 
If you want to maintain a power level that's fun, but won't entirely ruin your transmission I'd just do a cheap intake, set of headers and a 3.5-3.6 pulley with a custom tune. Super cheap and pretty impressive gains.
 
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