turbo q's

I have a b20b and want to get an OEM turbo to start off with, I only want to boost about 5 psi or thereabouts, really anything would be nice to upgrade that whopping 126hp... I can fabricate any required piping. What would you suggest I do? I dont need anything that looks fancy, functionality is all that matters to the poor man. All that it needs is to work and be somewhat cost effective.

I'm looking for any suggestions you can give me, down/charge pipe sizing, intercooled vs. not, what turbo to pick, and anything else you can think of.
I'm pretty mechanically savvy, so no need to state the obvious. And don't bother to worry about upgradeability, either this will be good enough or I'll end up spending some real money to make it nice.

Joke disclaimer: I realize completely that this wont be a race car and thats alright.

Thanks everyone,

definitely go intercooled for all turbo applications is my opinion.. if you can.. why not? my friend was looking at some nissan turbochargers for his civic that he's turning into an ice racing machine, so you might be able to look into that.. also, i got a suggestion to use a turbo off an old late 80's ford thunderbird turbocoupe... apparently they can be found frequently on ebay... this thread may be able to help u a bit..
http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=201824

Thanks, can anyone else recommend the ford turbocoupe turbo? What nissan turbos is your friend looking at, are they new or used? I figured intercooled is better, but I thought there might be some issues with running an intercooler and such low boost, like the pressure drop being a big factor, I guess it couldnt hurt You could always turn the boost up a bit, I don't think I'd be pusing the limits, a whole 6psi then... :eek: I saw in your post a discussion about the headers that I think I'll expland/intrude upon.

hmmm, well, if you were to push up the boost a little, it would compensate for the pressure drop.. right? your engine wouldn't see a difference because the amount of air being forced into your cylinders would be the same as if you were running less boost with no pressure drop.. correct? just a thought

Anyway, the header creation webpage posed in the fourm you linked was very helpful and im going to do that. There isnt a large selection of anything for my car so thus I'm gonna have to fabricate it all. Thanks to the website I have the headers to the turbo figured out, and I can get all the intercooler/charge lines pretty well I think out of aluminum tubing, however what do you do about the down pipe, is it made out of stainless, or will normal aluminized steel do, whats a good size for all these pipes? Does anyone have a suggestion for downpipe, charge, and header pipe sizing?

Thanks in advnace,

definitely go with the stainless steel downpipe... 304 or greater quality.. and you might want to get it ceramic coated or thermally wrapped so you don't go metling anything in your engine compartment.... usually the diameters for downpipes is 2.5-3"... depends how much airflow there is... i'm going with the 3", but i'm running pretty high boost

You can safely run more than 5 psi. If you intercool it, get a higher volume fuel pump, get some high lift shorter duration cams, and knock back the timing a little i would bet you could safely run 8 to 10 psi. I dont know if thats what you want to do, but you could.

So what I plan on doing is make my header based sort of on the website in your linked thread, getting a turbo from an old ford turbo or a mitsubishi turbo. Then make a about a 2.5in downpipe (maybe bigger, 2.75) out of stainless steel (which I bet is going to suck to weld). And if I can find an intercooler for a decent price Ill add that in there with some bigger injectors/pump and a timing retard so I can run a little more boost.
I've always been thinking of the vtec conversion and if I wanted to do that and the high lift cams Id need new pistons, so that probably wont be all happening very soon.

What can you use to connect the downpipe to the turbo, and hopefully anywhere inline, becuase I don't know how to weld stainless, what should I do about that, Just try, or is there some other way?

Thanks for the input,

Rx7 twin turbo, turbo alright for use? I don't know exactly how it works so I don't know if its possible to hook it up.
Thanks,

if i'm not mistaken you can use whatever turbo you want. you just have to get the exhaust manifold fabricated to fit it.

You can safely run more than 5 psi. If you intercool it, get a higher volume fuel pump, get some high lift shorter duration cams, and knock back the timing a little i would bet you could safely run 8 to 10 psi. I dont know if thats what you want to do, but you could.

He doesn't need new cams. Shorter duration than the already short B20's would only hinder his performance.

The RX7 turbos are on a wierd-ass manifold, and would be more trouble to try and get working than they are worth. My advice is to call up wired speed lab and ask for Kyle (800 947 3380) tell him your goals, and he'll set you up with a good kit. Probably something like a revhard stage 2 with hondata. Take it to a good shop, get the hondata tuned, and enjoy your smooth running turbo car.

I'm just kinda throwing out ideas I see on ebay that I think might work, I was gonna buy the dual turbo (small and large) but someone got to the buy it now option before I did....

I see a lot of T3's w/.42 .48 a/r setups, I looked up all the common compressor maps and figured out that If i got a T3 I'd want a 60 trim compressor. Becuase I'm in the lower section of the map the're all kind of hard to read, but I found a website that lets you calculate air consumption and I calculated that my car on 6-7 lbs of boost is going to take about 120cfm at 3000rpm (where I expect the turbo to start kicking in) and 230 at 6000rpm (redline is 62-6300) that results in about a 1.3 pressure ratio, Should I be worried about the fact that all the smaller turbos maps (that I've seen) dont extend out to 230cfm at 1.3? or can someone just tell me if a .42 -.48 setup will work from experiance? (I've got a stock b20).
When I ask if it will work, I mean is it gonna be adequate for my uses (max 10psi) on a daily driver, It seems like whenever I look at the smaller compressor maps they just dont put out enough air at anything less than 14.5 psi (2 pressure ratio)

Boosted, I would call a specialty dealer, but I don't have thousands of dollars to spend on this, every turbo kit I see is like 2-3000$. I was planning on taking advantage of my somewhat fabrication ability to cut the cost. Thanks for tryin though,

Thanks in advance,

A T3 60 trim would be better suited to your motor. You can find these on 80's thunderbird turbo coupes, most of them came with .48/60 and .63/60 T3's, either of these would work good on your setup. Like I said, don't skimp out on a good fuel management system, going from an FMU and a missing link to a hondata will make all the difference in the world.

I do think that the whole check valve thing is kinda jacked up, but... What would you need to use a hondata? I assume you need injectors and a fuel pump, probably find them from an old mitsu talon in a junkyard? And then you'd need the boost upgrade for the hondata, thats gonna set me back, what 500$ for the hondata and the upgrade? If it were like 300 dollars I might be interested becuase of all the versatility it has, but I think I looked it up before and I couldn't find my ECU. Ive got a 1997 CRV, Noone makes anything for my car. If you know otherwise I'd like to at least look at it.
In fact I'm gonna do a little hondata searching, Are there any other cheaper standalone systems that I should consider also?

Edit: My car is an automatic.

Thanks,