Just wondering what most people are shooting for with their turbo setups.
This started with doing some calculations of how my favorite IHIs from T-birds would work on 1.6 and 1.8 liter motors. Seems that they will not be too efficient at boost levels above maybe 13-14 psi. On a 1.6-1.8 liter motor, it appears you could get about 210-220 hp at 7000 rpm. How high do those motors rev anyway?
For 20 psi these things are totally unsuitable.
Erich

 

i made 240whp with a t-bird turbo at only 11psi, and that was even with full stock exhaust and cat, so i'm sure it would have been closer to 260whp with a nice open exhaust. you say "1.6 and 1.8" liter motors, but it depends, the 1.6's come in sohc or dohc, the dohc 1.6 (b16) rev's up to about 8100 in stock form, the 1.8's are dohc, but come in vtec and non vtec, the non vtec 1.8 (b18a/b) rev's to about 7200 i believe, and the vtec version (b18c) also rev's to about 8100. on a b16 or b118c, you could probably squeeze 300whp out of one of the bigger t-bird turbo's.

 

i was wondering about the size of an IHI t-bird snail??
its sounds like there are diff ones
there is one in the classifieds but i am unsure if it big enough for my LS

 

With those 7-8K redlines, it seems like the larger T3s from the t-birds would be needed.
Projekteg-which t-bird turbo were you running? Were you hitting like 7.5 or 8K rpm?
Erich

 

LS's redline at 6800 and loose power well before that.... 6500

 

yeah, i couln't remember where they redlined, i used to have one, but forgot.

erich- i was using the garrett .63/.60, they come on the 84-86 turbo coupes, it was still making power at 8100, but i didn't rev it any higher.

 

That must be pretty cool pulling under boost up to 8100. Seems like those 63/60 garretts are really a great all around turbo. They are perfect on a TT 5.0 setup too. Block-splitting power as they say (5.0 blocks get iffy over 450 hp).
Erich

 

my buddy's working on one right now

 

There was a .63/.60 on a Thunderbird? I know where I'm getting my next turbo for my new project.


JP

 

Or else they redline at 7200, depending on era, and the power from 6000-7000 rpms is flat - but not dropping.

If you are losing power by 6500, then you are strangling the engine with a tiny *** waste of time turbo. Also, if you run a tiny *** waste of time turbo, you start pumping the engine full of hot air, strangling the engine so it can't get rid of all the overly hot exhaust gasses, and melt it down when only making a **** poor tiny amount of power. When a larger turbo, making more power, would have been safer. IHIs are a waste of time, unless you're trying to boost a 1.2 liter like the Turbo Justy.