legacycentral bbs

After almost a year of talking to some guy I met from another forum about buying his turbo, he finally sold it to me. He said he was always too busy, so he couldn't pull it off the engine. And when he told me that he got it pulled and to send the money, I thought maybe I was about to get scammed. But I wasn't and the turbo is finally here. Not bad for only $300.

Now, a question for you all. Being the poor and somewhat mechanically inclined college student that I am, will I be able to switch the turbos myself. It doesn't look too complicated, but I don't know if I have the tools that I may need. All I have is a standard 3/8 in. socket set.

Also, how would I keep the oil and water lines at bay if I should continue the project myself?

Holy crap, you have two Sport Sedans? I live 1 1/2 hours away from you, we definitely have to meet up some time. Find out who did all your work and all that good stuff. Ummm... about the turbo, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure you'll need more than a standard wrench set.

I'm pretty sure you'll need new fittings for the banjo bolts as the two turbos have different size fittings. Talk to Adam at Z1 performance. He should be able to tell you everything you need to install the turbo.

we needed to swap the oil line from the stock turbo to the TD05, as well as modify the water intake line to the turbo ( points in the wrong direction ) .
There is a bit of moving things around to get it to fit in there, it BOLTS up but there are hoses/lines that are kinda in the way, its fine but a little tedious.

MAKE SURE to spray some WD-40 or something like it on all the exhaust bolts and let it sit a little before you remove them, they like to strip if you dont.

I think thats all the really nessicary info you need, um, I think a genral set of metric 10,12,14,17mm, sockets and wrenches should do it.

Good luck and have fun!

-Nate

Well, I think I may just attempt to do the job on Saturday, and Sunday if need be. I'm usually pretty determined once I get started, so long days shouldn't be a problem. Maybe I'll see if my mechanic/cousin can be there to supervise. I'm trying to learn to do things for myself, so I don't have to call him every time I need something done. Hopefully the results are positve, and I'll let everyone know once I'm finished.

Brat, you are more than welcome to come down here. If you are into autocross, we can go autocrossin at one of our club competitions. There's a schedule at http://www.ovr-scca.org.

Don't be fooled by my two turbos. The project is far, far, far from being completed. I've put it on the backburner until I can get my daily to a satisfying level.

The project got delayed a week, but we finally started. My friend and I started about 8:30am and worked until 10:00 without any problems. I sprayed all of the bolts last night, and the downpipe bolts came of easy. Then we tried the uppipe bolts. They didn't want to budge. We only have a 3/8 socket set, so we figured we weren't getting enough torque. The socket and extension started to flex and were afraid that or the bolt was going to break. To try to get them off, we went and bought a small portable torch. We got the nut blazing red and tried to loosen it. Didn't work. Tried it again, and the socket turned, but the nut didn't move. Turns out we stripped the top of the nut.

A friend works at the Midas next door to us, so we had to wait until 1:00 for him to get in. He used a torque bar to get the two bolts in tact out, but had to torch the stripped bolt out.

We both had to work, so we called it a day. We are getting up early to start on it. We can visibly see exactly what has already been mentioned. The coolant inlet hose has to be modified. Vaccume hoses have to be moved, and since the compressor outlet is at more of a 90 degree angle with the uppipe flange, we have to make a new intercooler pipe.

I do have two questions. What's the best way to reconnect the coolant line directly beneath the turbo? Also, is it alright to move the black module on the left side of the intake manifold?

First off id just like to say hey my names Nick, im the friend helping out with this one. Im new to Subarus and boxer motors all together but ive worked on a lot of engines including a 4G63T, almost every 4cyl honda/Acura engine you can think of, 3SGTE, 7MGE, 420A, and to top it off a few GM Quad 4's so that pretty much says i can handel my own in the engine department So now that im done with my resume lets get to the point.

This is/was far from a quick and easy. This turbo could not be anymore difficult to put in. When we talked about doing this i was under the impression this was a DIRECT BOLT IN PART... meaning you pull one out, new one in, every things peachy..... FILE THAT UNDER NEVER. It has been a real nightmare on time. No real big problems but just enough little ones to cause one to become a raging alcoholic. Dispite all of Andys choice 4 letter swear words and panic, weve tackeled every problem thus far one at a time. Between my experience and skills and his knowledge of the engine itself, we seem to be able to figure things out pretty easily and w/o too many question marks. It has been quite a job though. I worked on it for a few hours last night and relocated all water inlet/outlet lines, all oil inlet/outlet lines, waistgate lines/fittings, and if that wasnt enough, i had to take a hack saw and cut hoses out of the project car to make the necessary extensions and such for the daily driver. Most of this of course was done in a parking lot after dark. Ive tackeled everything but the intake pipe now so hopefully thismoring i should be able to get this puppy up and running again and see what it can do. Any Q,C,or C's about this swap are welcome and i can try to help in any way possible for anyone who wants to do it to thier ride cuz it realy is somewhat troublesome to handel blindly. Updates and maybe video of finished project to come. Peace.

- Nick

any update or pics to come soon ?

i might have to do that swap... but my engine will be on a rack, might be a bit easyer to do the work

Hmm...pics. Well, I think I can get some pics together.

The biggest problem other than the uppipe bolts was rerouting the compressor outlet pipe and the misc. oil and coolant lines. If I had it to do over again, I'd change over the fittings from the stock turbo to the TD05 and figure out how to "clock" the outlet side as it wasn't pointing in the same direction as the stock turbo. It was pointing directly at the throttle body.

I am very satisfied with this turbo and think it was well worth the money and wait(waited for over a year on a guy in the UK to finally sell it to me).

Humm, what was the issue with the uppipe bolts ?

they were jammed, or it didn't fit ?

morgie, I just went to the garage and took some pics of my setup with my picture phone, but for some reason pictures aren't loading on my computer. I can send them to you if you can give me your email address.

We didn't have a breaker bar or impact, so we were trying to loosen the uppipe bolts with a 1/2" socket set. We couldn't get any loose, so I went out and bought a personal size torch. After heating it up several times, we ended up rounding the edges a little. We stopped and pushed the car over to a Midas that was near by. They had a breaker bar and we got all of the bolts except the rounded one off using it. The one that was rounded had to be torched out.

FrmRgz2Rchz : ok that's what i thought, same kind of problems that I had. Thanx for the infos !


BoostJunkie : just send them to nicolas.vallee@cgi.ca (in a zip file preferably) and i'll host them on my server

Sending them now . . . can't zip them on my phone, tho. Hopefully, they came out okay, or at least good enough for you to distinguish the mounting position/clearance of the turbo. If you need any other angles, let me know.

could i have some pics if you still have em chaznbecky01@enter.net
thanx peace

They are all there :

http://public.fotki.com/morgie/morgie/o ... _runner_3/

Sorry about the quality. The pictures were taken with my camera phone.