Turbo Conversion

[Ragtop68]

How difficult would it be to install a turbo and intercooler onto my wife's 94 900 Convertible? I've got a line on a complete Turbo set-up from a late 80's Saab, and I was wondering if there were some real deal breakers in making this work?

Thanks,

Al T.

[vk3kbr]

It can be done, I'm assuming you 94 is a clasic 900 and not the ng900 that was introduced laiter that year. You can bolt on the exhust manifold, turbo, blow off valve intake pipes, intercooler,etc without to much trouble, the fuel injection system will compensate without modification. If you run a vacume hose from the turbo housing to the waste gate acuator, the turbo will run as - if it was in base boost. You could put an adjustable valve in this line to adjust the boost level, a dual stage eltric mecinisim would be ideal, allowing a performance and a around town setting.
This set up would not be as good as the factory APC set up, that is the APC is much safer as it monotors head temp and looks for engine knock, and turns the boost down if it finds either. But if you were careful to not set your maximum boost to high and installed a boost guage to keep an eye on things, it should be ok. Personaly I would also look at water injection as an extra saftey precaution. Ben.

[vk3kbr]

The other thing to deal with is the oil/colant supply to the turbo, the pipeing can probably just be transplanted, but you would need to check it out, the turbos have an oil cooler, I'm not sure if the N/A version has, it not you would need to change it to, or install a affter market one (which would probably be better if you did it properly) Ben.

[mbunakeith]

the pistons are different in the n/a car and bolting a turbo on that will have poor results. a better bet, would be to just bolt a used turbo longblock in there. swapping a turo onto the n/a car would be too much of a pain in the neck.