Elan #2, "Whitey"

[lotusgirlmarie]

Now you have a taste of what it took to do the Garret turbo's for Ekapol and myself. 16Hrs each to machine/polish just the compressor housing. Looks nice though.

[nitroman]

Thanks, not sure where finishing the polish-job lies on my project priority list as its become too long for the base-10 numeral system!

The center-housing turbo core is out for ceramic coating; they made me disassemble the innards 1st (the bastards).

You must have contol over time itself to devote 16-hours to polishing. I do without sleep enough simply to finish things.

[lotusgirlmarie]

control over time.... no.Just an extreme dedication to an end result.

[nitroman]

Yeah, OK Joan of Arc. Hey, I'm the one who has OCD around here, and don't you forget it.

[Doc Fizzix]

Matt

Sorry to think out load but now that I have my T-Bird turbo on the car I am wondering why you polished-up the original T-Bird compressor housing adapter

Are you planning on using that thing? How are you going to make that work? Sorry, just curious

[nitroman]

I'm building it as a COMPLETE bolt-on system, from the exhaust manifold to turbo/downpipe (with 21mm wastegate), everything ceramic coated and ready to swap-out with the same OE unit(s) on the car if they ever start to show any degradation in performance.

[Doc Fizzix]

Here is what my instillation looks like

[Doc Fizzix]

Just from what I know after doing the job, I think it would be very hard to position the T-Bird's compressor housing at the angle Ashaman's is at AND still be able to hook-up Bill's intercooler pipe (if you still have it). I had to play with the positioning of the housing quite a bit in order to get the perfect angle in order to hook-up the Bill's intercooler pipe. THat is why I had to machine my adapter.

[Ashaman]

Doc, you are right - the angle works out wrong unless you use custom piping. What I wound up doing is cutting a wedge-shaped piece out of the intake to "adjust" the angle how I wanted it.

If you make a good clean cut, it is an easy thing to weld it back in the position you want (or have your local machine shop do it.)

[nitroman]

Speaking of intake, I bought a "sealed" unit made in the USA, the same principle as a Pipercross but larger & designed for there to be piping from each end. I can't remember the name offhand, but it was their universal unit where you must fabricate the tubing yourself. I was gonna let it use the same air-source in the LF-fender.

[nitroman]

Here 'tis

[Enright]

On my test-ride tonight even with the boost set low it spools so fast (NO lag at all!)

Sorry if this has been covered before, or takes the thread off topic, but why does changing the compressor housing to a T-Bird one eliminate lag?
I thought lag was due to the bearings and the inertia of the spinny bits, and that the T-Bird bits were bigger.
That indicates that more force would be needed to move bigger stuff through the same bearings, and so lag would increase.
Why is this NOT the case, and if it's that good a modification, how do we get the bits here in Blighty?

[nitroman]

Sooooo many questions.

Well for one, Doc Fizzix said so, Bill's Isuzuperformance said so, and what I think the reasons are is:
1) The inlet & outlet of the upgrade unit are much larger, allowing more air to flow-through & be pumped by the compressor-wheel. Old Bill said 400CFM of flow vs 200CFM of flow-OE.
2) The upgrade compressor-wheel has much larger blades which can "catch" more air. The blades also stick-out into the air-flow area VS the tucked-in look of the Elan's blades.

As to how you get the parts in the land of the limey, I am not an expert. The unit would have to be off a Ford or Mercur with a 2.3l turbo engine. The basic locate & retrieve operation I posted here.

[Doug]

sweet! I want to hear about some English junk yard raids soon!!

You know you want the upgrade, chaps

[Enright]

That makes a lot of sense - thanks.
I have a mate whose seriously into tuning Ford 2.3L engines - I bet he'd know off the top of his head if one of them has been turbocharged in the past 20 years.
Alternatively if any of you spot an auction for one over there, would you mind posting a link to it please?

[dapinky]

Alternatively if any of you spot an auction for one over there, would you mind posting a link to it please?

Or if you are prepared to do a scrap-yard rummage, I'm sure that others (as well as Neil and myself) would be interested in taking a box of bits as a delivery into the UK

[nitroman]

Removed all EGR components; replaced with stainless-steel blocking-plates.

[nitroman]

Other changes.

[Doug]

Looks beautiful!

But you just know "someone" was going to say,



what's with the different bolt types??!!
(I'm sure you have a matching pair in the making).

[nitroman]

Yes, that was not the plan. You can't see the one on the left with the TB in place; what with the human-head not being the size of an insect. The one on the right is a better bolt for the application, and bought for that purpose... I just couldn't find bolt #2 while doing the install!