legacycentral bbs

next spring thinking of upgrading the turbo. not worried about power just want least amount of stress on the engine. will a bigger turbo increase or increase the stress on the motor

What do you have in mind? The turbos on these cars are pretty low stress to begin with. They operate safely at stock levels without an intercooler. Are you wanting to raise boost safely for more power? Lower boost but keep the same power? Power and stress isn't directly related to boost. It is more related to airflow and fuel. If you go with a larger turbo you have fitment issues and potentially need an intercooler. Plus it will be more taxing on the engine (hence the needed upgrades) unless you lower the boost. Some of the waste gates on these larger turbos keep the boost levels higher than our stock turbo.

I would suggest leaving your car stock until you do some more research and can get a handle on how a turbo works and affects the car, what work is required to change along with additional changes to support it, and what your actual goals are.

The simplest thing to do for your car would be to leave it stock and make sure everything is working correctly (ie correctly functioning bypass valve, no vacuum leaks, etc). Other than that get a non turbo, making the engine less complex and less prone to unintended stresses due to a more complex system.

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my question more of the air flow. ie lil turbo is more restricted that a upgraded turbo. i know i'll have to do injectors and fuel pump uprades. but i'm not looking to get 300hp.

Unless you're running some form of aftermarket engine management, you will not be able to get 300 hp on the stock ECU.

To add to what Ryan pointed out, I would suggest setting up a plan of what your goal is and then layout the equipment and costs to acheive that goal. (Also, are you wanting 300 crank hp or wheel hp) For example, if you want 300 wheel hp, you'll likely injectors larger than 550 cc/min, a cam for the stock heads or different heads, larger turbo, engine management, etc etc.

Laying out your plan will help you make the goal attainable and layout a path to accomplish it. If you just say you want 300 hp.....there are still a lot of questions as to how are you going to achieve that, what's it going to cost, etc.

i'm not worring about hp. i'm talking restriction. kinda like putting a 3" exhaust on a car that came with 2" exhaust. because it flows better.

The turbo isn't going to be a restriction. You may reach the limits of what it can do and then you'll need a bigger one, but until that, I wouldn't really mess with it.

ok cool. thanks josh