My GTA Turbo Project

[stephendell]

Impressive figures. Still on standard (albeit upside down) manifolds?

Ready for a last minute Macon entry...

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Morning Stephen, they are standard manifolds, and original fitment ie they are not reversed, nor are they wrapped... so there are no tricks in there, cams are specific that I had ground for him to match the hybrid turbo spec, but otherwise it is all OE, and the bottom end is as Lee built it before the head gaskets extrude tuning first time round..

And yep that's on a Renix 1 ecu ... it may be old, and rather limited, but it has done it's job getting this old girl to perform

Update time:

As you may know my car has been off the road a while, as Martin has posted above he has been working his magic on the engine side of things. Well we now have MOT and Tax and although we've uncovered a miriad of problems along the way I'm glad to be able to say that once more she lives!!

I'll leave Martin to elaborate on the finer technical details but boy has he gone to town! The sheer amount of thought, planning and sheer hard work simply beggar belief.

There has been upgrade work to all aspects of the engine to add to ugrades previoulsy fitted such as fuel pump, chargecooler and exhaust. We now have bigger injectors, cams, head work and turbo upgrade and work as listed above.

So today we took it for a final tune up on the rolling road:



http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g340/f305upe/F53260D0-0238-440B-B5F2-07A9568A80C4-1041-0000009E50390003.mp4

There are simply too many stories to write here about the trials and tribulations of arriving today but to put it simply it was more than worth it!!!



Yep thats:

Engine bhp 353.4 (flywheel 346)
Wheel bhp 307.3
Engine torque 362.9 lbft
Wheel torque 329.9 lbft

Amazing!!!! You cannot believe the difference in drivability, power and sound. The car feels so much more nimble but also has a truly monster punch as the figures would suggest.

Having watched (and mostly got in the way) Martin work over the last few months I have learnt so much and cannot help but be amazed by what he has achieved. He truly deserves the recognition that these incredible figures will surely bring.

I'll look forward to learning how to drive this monster but in the meantime a big thanks to Martin for persevering with this project.

Mofo your an Alpine legend.

Thanks Jon for the kind post, it has been an experience! And I know you will understand the depth of meaning, laugh. Yes it was a great result, and I'm so pleased that the old girl came to achieve a nice result! I have to say I did enjoying driving her back down during our swap car stint, be careful with that clutch now!!!

Enjoy

Crikey !!
Well done guys

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Thanks Lee, yes I'm pretty pleased with it as an end game.

Jon, that's 346hp at the flywheel corrected, the 353 is the uncorrected number, but quite frankly I'm sure most people on here will allow you to say you have a 350hp GTA 2.5ltr turbo ... just don't go playing with that boost adjuster knob, I know you can bag more, but keep it safe, and enjoy it!

So there you go chaps, with the right setup the OE headers aren't causing that much of a restriction as I have said for years, that's 75% more power than OE, and I built the turbo on a 49mm exducer T3 turbine shaft (same size and technology as OE), albeit the turbine inducer is uprated, but effectively the same back pressure as the OE setup when fitted to the same turbine scroll housing (note the wording)... I didn't obviously, but you get my meaning. No issues with heat as the right amount of advance was dialled in, and not retarded as the OE ecu. Do I think you could push them much further, probably not, but I'll get some data behind that in due course, didn't have time yesterday as we had started out thinking we were just going to be using the time to get her to run on all 6 to start with! That was following an electrically dead car at 4am... laugh, and I was nearly on the get-away to bed, Jon was rather quick with the mobile phone

Big thanks to Peter at Peter Burgess Tuning as ever for sticking with us, and buying the bacon butties

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PS Jon, I think you need to change your number plate, pity it's F305..

[BIG_MVS]

Wowsers What a result! Well done guys. I remember 250 bhp was max on "standard headers" was all that Mr Gentleman would say....

[stephendell]

I remember 250 bhp was max on "standard headers" was all that Mr Gentleman would say....

He used to say 280 - 300.

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PS Jon, I think you need to change your number plate, pity it's F305..

F350UPE. I like the sound of that

Excellent result guys. Well done again Martin.

Good smooth power & torque curves as well. That looks like something that would have come out of the factory.

So is it laggy or do the cams smooth that out?

It's really not laggy at all unless you do something like try to floor it at 2000rpm in 5th. It just goes and goes and goes with more and more power as you go up the rev range. The really great thing about it generally is the ease of use- no sudden uncontrollable surge mid corner just lots and lots of controlable power...

Hi Darren,

Well, the peak torque of a standard GTA turbo is 207lbf/ft, Jon's car now has an average torque figure of 225lbf/ft, and a peak of 363lbf/ft. The average exceeds the OE car, and has a peak considerably higher. I know which one I would rather drive

Sorry, to your point, as I digressed, it certainly didn't feel laggy to me, just simply kept hauling a_rse ever faster. Mitigation is the entire induction tract is less restrictive, so off boost the engine is less throttled effectively, and hence the VE is higher - cams, heads etc, so yes as you say smoothed out somewhat.

Cheers,
Martin

Couple of questions: What clutch? Don't these figures take the gearbox well into the danger zone for snapped 5th and/or input shaft coupler?

I echo the sentiments above. A set of cams and valves from Mr F in a DeLorean made the clutch slip on half the boost it was running before the change. Ran a lot cooler too. We haven't revisited that car yet to sort out it's smoking yet

well into the danger zone

In a Kenny Loggins way? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siwpn14IE7E

I feel the need, the need for speed!

Couple of questions: What clutch? Don't these figures take the gearbox well into the danger zone for snapped 5th and/or input shaft coupler?

I echo the sentiments above. A set of cams and valves from Mr F in a DeLorean made the clutch slip on half the boost it was running before the change. Ran a lot cooler too. We haven't revisited that car yet to sort out it's smoking yet

Hi Martin,

Yes it would probably on a dry grippy surface and a peak torque start.. but the likelihood is Jon won't be treating it that harshly. As you highlighted before the couplers are available uprated, please post the link again, I can't remember where you posted that now sorry. As to 5th, same again, don't try a peak torque pull in 5th, do all that work in 4th, and tickle along in 5th. I think he will be fine, besides he has a soft start with his clutch at the moment being the weak link

Glad the cams ‘n’ things worked out good – Faulksie inside . Don't push the boost if you're getting oil introduced to the chamber if it's there... have you checked the turbo oil drains are not flooding?

Thanks,
Martin