Better turbo design

[GrapeApe]

What an education! Thank you for all your hard work researching this.

I have a 1982 Buick Regal Limited 4 door with 83K miles on it. Literally driven by an old man and his wife locally and does not have a dent on it. I am going to turn it into a sleeper. I live a few miles from dismantlers heaven, Pick-Your-Part. I have seen many 3.8 Turbos in Regals, GN's, Monte Carlo's etc.

Well... sleeper and camping trailer tow vehicle lol. This crash course you laid out here is fantastic. This is going to be a fun project for sure

[charlief1]

More than happy to help you. Since you're using a 4 door you might want to look at changing the rear gear to a 3.42 or 3.23 and use a 2004R tranny. That will let you get the best out of the combo and make a decent sleeper that gets good gas mileage.

Now since this turbo is almost like an 86-87 design, there are more upgrades you can do to it. Right now the redesign has already been tested on the track by one of my friends and has gone 11.87 in the quarter so far. The really nice thing is that you can now upgrade the turbo and put a larger compressor wheel in it. The TA 49 design can be made out of this which increases the flow even more. If you want even more flow you can use the turbine off the TA 49 and use a TO4B 60-1 compressor wheel and make it flow even more.

[dmoberg]

Awesome info. Last part of my 78 LeSabre SC rebuild is the turbo setup. Put the motor back together, found one of those hard to find quadrajets...brand new ordered thru the local auto parts house, and even put new tires on it....just need to do the turbo. I ordered a kit for the stock turbo, with the bearings and such....doesn't look too intimidating but I've never worked on them. Pretty handy with most other stuff so I figured maybe I'd try this turbo rebuild. Need to source parts, I have the original turbos from both the 78 LeSabre and the 86 GN. Was thinking about spending the money and getting a new turbo for the 86 so I can cobble parts from the two I have. Will follow up and probably ask a few hundred questions.

[charlief1]

This is really the tip of the iceberg. If you've got a stock turbo and just want a simple and fairly cheap upgrade then change the compressor wheel to one off an 84-85 HA car. The compressor will go right in without modifying the compressor housing but you will need to balance the assembly. If you do a search for work turbochargers the owner is Reed Partridge and he can help you with further upgrades for the stock unit. If you want to go with the TTA compressor housing check evilbay. They come up every so often and are usually at a decent price, then get hold of Reed to help you do the mods you want.

If you go with a TTA housing then there's 1 more upgrade you can do but this is a max power effort. You will basically have a TE-62 DT (draw through) which flows close to three times what the stock turbo flows. Again, this is a max power effort and you need to know all you can on tuning ect to keep from blowing the engine.

[dmoberg]

Still not sure I should tackle this without adult supervision, but I'm thinking I should give it a whirl. If it ruins it that would be no big deal, it's all dirty and sticky from sitting for 15 years so it's no good as it is anyway. Don't be surprised to hear me whining on here later.....standby, I'm going in!

[charlief1]

Thought I update this slightly. There are a few of these on cars now and one of the 301 TTA guys has upgraded to the TE-62 DT. If you expect that all you need to do is upgrade the turbo to a larger one you will need to do some other changes. The torque converter will need a higher stall as well as some tuning on the carb. If you go with the TE-62 DT then you will need a 3200 stall converter and if you just go with the TTA compressor and 86-87 turbine and housing then you'll need a 2600-2800 stall converter. This will allow the turbo to spool properly. The TE-62 DT on a 301 TTA requires a 2800 stall or it will be slow to spool. To see what the stall speed of the converter is, put the car in gear while holding your foot on the brakes as hard as you can. You will need a boost gauge to do this. As you press the gas pedal down watch the boost gauge until it gets to 0 boost/vacuum. Look at the tach and this is the stall speed. On a V6 car this usually will be 300 to 500 RPN's below the rated speed, since most converters are rated for a V8.

One addition to adding performance it getting a J&S controller, which can be used to control knock issues much better than the stock system. If using a 78 to 80 model design it will take the place of the turbo control center, and if using any of the 81 to 83 units you can adapt it. The J&S boxes come in different versions so you can pick a basic one or a more advanced one that will let you do timing staging for each shift of the transmission. It also can retard timing per cylinder rather than all the cylinders like the stock unit. That means if you have only 1 cylinder that detonating it will retard only that cylinder rather than all of them. This means you can also run more timing like the IC cars can as well as boost.

[Keller]

http://www.jandssafeguard.com/