| 85lebaront2 |
11-04-2019 03:11 PM |
New user, but not new to turbos
Just found this site, it showed in a link I posted to ------------.com where I have been a member since December 2005. I have had and worked on a few turbocharged cars and trucks over the years, My first experience with a turbo was my dad's 1966 Corvair Corsa coupe. I later purchased a used 1963 Jetfire that I had been doing tune-ups on for the owner. I do not remember why he wanted to sell it, just that I wanted it and had the money. The shop I owned with another man was a Rotomaster Turbocharger dealer when they were first starting.
I built a 1985 Lebaron convertible into a 2.2L Turbo II after the original 2.6L suffered the Mitsubishi curse, cracks in 3 of the 4 combustion chambers. I had been interested in the Chrysler turbos and had acquired a pair Lasers, a 1984 that ran fairly well and a 1986 with a bad engine, both Turbo I cars with automatics. The 1984 had a bunch of body damage, so I stripped it and sold the engine as the 1984 is a one year system and I had someone who needed a running engine for a 1984 Chrysler Lebaron. I bought a T1 engine from a local junkyard from a 1987 Lebaron 4dr sedan, when I was cleaning the oily mess up, I found (a) a gray-green color (b) brass freeze plugs (c) a 1-8-88 casting date on the block. When I finished I found a strange crank sprocket and a few other oddities. I pulled the head, with the idea of possibly re-ringing it, still had the cross hatch, bottom end revealed a steel crank and hefty rods, pistons had floating wrist pins. Later found it was a 1988 T2 service engine, after the block change for 1989, all unused T2 short blocks and engines were put into parts inventory as replacements for all 1984-1988 2.2L turbos. This was freshened up, I was given a 2 piece intake, found a 1989 T2 Garrett on eBay, same person who gave me the intake also gave me a socketed 1987 LM to use. I ran this from 2003 until a Mercedes-Benz ML320 tried mating with it, took the entire right reae fender forward about a foot.
I saved the power train and had a 1986 convertible originally purchased as a parts car, so it is slowly morphing into another T2K-CAR (Virginia license plate).
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