What's up guys? been lurking this forums for awhile now, and I love the DIY scheme of things as it pretains to my character. Anyway, I'm about 2 weeks away from putting the kit i've pieced together on, and I noticed most people recommend -3 AN feed and a -10 AN drain.. well I got a set of lines with nice Earl fittings for dirt cheap, but the only problem is my feed is -4 AN and my drain is -8 AN.. so, I obviously need to run an adjustable restrictor on the feed side. What is the best way to find out where the optimal oil pressure for the T3/T04E 57 trim turbo is? I know turbonetics/garrett recommend a certain pressure for the turbo, but how is that measured? obviously the oil pressure of the engine will not equal that after the restrictor..

A few other questions I have;

I know to crank the car a few times with no plugs to get oil flowing into the turbo before it runs, but how can I check it's actually draining properly on start up?

is there anything else you guys can add for safety precautions during the first time I crank it? I'm good on the tune so there's no reason to mention that.

 

check for oil leaks after you crank her, every ------- turbo civic ive seen without the stealthmode lines leaked, every ------ one

 

I'm using full steel braided with Earls AN fittings.. it's better than stealthmode in my opinion, there's no barbed hose fittings at the drain.

I was mainly worried about the oil pressure.. but the garrett site says there's no restrictor needed for journal bearing turbos until it's smoking/oil seeping from the turbo.

 

u could use a 1/16 of a inch restrictor...and if u want to make sure ur is getting oil just disconnect the feed line from the turbo and put the line in a can or something and crank the car u will see the oil come shooting out

 

Bah. That's cause when people use ---- like hose barbs, they don't get the right hose to go with it. I'm using a combo of brake line to the turbo from the firewall, and barbs with summit twist-tite hose w/ clamps from the pressure sensor to the firewall. No leaks here.

oh yeah one coat of teflon tape never hurt.

 

restrictor = good idea

 

Definitely use the restrictor or you may end up with oil issues down the road. I never used Stealthmode lines either, always used solid brake line from my oil T right to the turbo and a properly sized drain line for the fitting I'd weld to the pan. Only time I every had massive oil leakage was when I built up so much positive crank case pressure I blew the dipstick out of the tube. :1

 

What 'issues' do you speak of?


And please tell me you had the hood up when that happened.

 

steathmode oil restricter works wonders leave your drain tube off your turbo if oil comes out of it its draining fine the only problem ive had was my oil level was above the drain on my oilpan an it backed up but that was all my fault.

 

Running no restrictor at first may be ok and not push oil past the exhaust seal for a little while, but as the turbo starts wearing in more it the oil pressure will push oil past that seal and into the exhaust. My basic rule of thumb for turbo oil pressure was a minimum of 5psi at idle and a max of 35-40psi at peak rpm/engine oil pressure.

And as for the dipstick popping out, no the hood was shut and I was beating the snot out of the car. I only had a vent tube coming off the breather box pointing towards the ground, so it ended up building too much crankcase pressure and spewing oil all over. It was a big mess. Honda motors really don't have the greatest PCV setups to begin with, and it only gets worse when you boost them.