I just purchased a stock 87 gn. did all of the main mods. Fuel pump, hot wire, catback, terry houston down pipe.I did some research on turbo's and want to upgrade to the ta-60. The ta-49 is a good choice with the 36# injectors and stock converter, but I want to get bigger and upgrade everything at once, including my stock converter. So my setup is the above with the ta-60 turbo and msd 50's.
Now torque converters are chinese to me. What are the benefits of a torque converter, how do they work, and what do they do? What kind would I need for my ta-60 turbo, what brand of company, what rpm stall 2000, 3000, non-lockup or lock-up, where do I purchase one, and how many hours to install. How would I take off with this converter once I purchase it and install it? Thanks for the help for my many questions.
Well for starters I would go with a Vigilante torque converter from a company called Precision Industries. I am biased toward these because the high quality materials used and they are pretty much built-proof at least in my experience. Just for the record a torque converter does exactly what name implies it converts or rather multiplies torque.Lets say your engine is spinining at 3000 rpms and at this rpm your engine makes 400 ft. lb. of torque. The iput shaft of the transmission is in effect feeling 1000 lb. ft. of torque at the stall speed of 3000 rpm(Vigilante converters I beleive have a torque multiplication of 2.5 at their stall speed). The engine is spinning at 3000 rpms but the input shaft of the transmission is not(your foot is on the brake or you have a trans brake etc.). So your stall speed is the maximum engine speed you can acheive without the transmission input shaft turning. You can also think of it in terms of gear ratios and how they multiply or divide torque based on the difference in the number of gear teeth between two gears. Hope your not too confused. At any rate what you get is a better launch because there is more force(i.e. torque) to assist you off the line. Now if your car is a daily driver you will want to get a lock up converter. From my experience driving on the freeway I acheived gas mileage of approx. 28 MPG with the lock up. Not bad I'd say. As far as stall speed goes match it up to the stall speed recommended for the turbo. Installion is not that difficult provided you have the right tools to get the transmission out. Its really just remove the old converter fill the new converter with fresh trans fluid and install taking care to make sure the torque converter is seated correctly in the transmission. Hope this helps.