Anything new, been thinking about doing a budget / turbo project?
WEll, I am probably not someone who should comment on that because the turbo project Freddie and I embarked upon, is anything BUT a budget project.
I have, neveretheless, been interested in just how smart it would be to embaark on a project that used junk-yard parts and had no intercooler, and made use of a 500cfm Holley 2-bbl carb on a Super Six manifld.-
The whole idea of subjecting yourself to all this travail, is to end up with a car that has a significant amount of performance potential.
I hate to say it again, but speed costs money; how fast do youi want to go?
Tom Wolfe did an interesting experiment, I think, when he bolted a junk-yard Buick Grand National turbo onto a hundred-thousand mile slant six that was in his 3,300-pound Dart. He used the stock exhaust manifold, but put a 4-bbl carb on it.
It had a stock cam and valve train, no intercooler, a points-type distributor, and the head never came off the engine. Other than the 4bl and the turbo, it was totally stock.
He ran 12.9 and 102 mph with that engine.
But, he used 18 pounds of boost to do it. That old engine would not survive that boost level for long...
So, when you begin lowering thw boost level to ensure engine longivity, you lose performance in significant amounts.
You can do two things: You can lower the boost to, say, ten pounds, leave everything in the engine (including the cam, head, valves, etc.) STOCK and end up with a quarter-mile (3,300-pound A-body) time in the low 15's...
OR
Spend th money for a set of forged pistons and K-1 rods, O-ring the block, leave the head alone, and build an engine that has virtually NO speed parts in it, and get your performance by running more boost (20 pounds) with an alky injector to stave off detonation at the increased boost levels.
That should get you into the high elevens... a safe distance from a stock 340...
I know that K-1 rods and Wiseco, forged pistons are not cheap, but having them in your engine allows you to crank up the boost and now, a thousand dollar ported head, a $500,00 cam/lifter/valve spring setup, a $$$ header (use the el-cheapo PISHTA system) and an aftermarket intake manifold (ours was $400.00 from Australia,) are all
unnecessary...
That's all money you would not have to spend, with this engine.
More boost may be just as effective as speed equipment, like a ported head, big lift cam and big valves.
But, you need to habe a basic, well-built short-block to hold the forced part of the induction. It doesn'r do any goot to put it in the top, if it's going to come out the bottom...
ARP makes a heavy-duty head bolt stud that can be special-ordered for this engine that has 220,000psi rated strength compared to only 180,000 for their off-the-shelf stud. That would be a smart buy, if you can afford it. Not likely on a budget build, but it might save a blown head gasket, down the road, if you decided to run 20+ pounds of boost.
Worth lookin' into I think...
rayer:
