Hi guys,
Well i finally convinced myself that the maggie had been atop my LS1 for long enough and it was time to have some fun with a set of twin turbo's from Martin and the guys at www.ls1turbo.com.au - keyboard fingers were in need of some exercise and besides i also needed to dust off the tools in the garage
So the smaller of the two kits (the GenTT, not the GenTTR) was ordered and we took it all out to my good mate Mario's workshop at Autotechnique (www.autotechnique.com.au) to begin the supercharger to twin turbo conversion on my 2002 Holden Monaro.
After we relocated the PCM and the battery, we were ready to begin.
The supercharger, intercooler and headers came off easily and it was at this point we also decided to remove the engine. My car has a large cam in it and some heavy valve springs, since we were going back to the stock cam for the turbo's, the heads have to come off to change the springs and also we wanted to check out the bottom end to see what shape the bearings were in. Given you need to drill the crankcase for the oil returns for the turbo's we decided engine out was the easiest way. We were fitting a new clutch and flywheel so the gearbox had to come out anyway.
After the engine was out we took a look at the big end bearings, which were in great condition so a set of ARP rod bolts was all we did. Drilled and tapped the crankcase for the oil return fitting, swapped the cam, a new set of lifters and valve springs and the engine was ready to go back in again.
This kits uses extension pipes from the stock cast manifolds (lucky i kept those things from 5 years ago) that are swapped left to right so they face forwards. The turbos then mount on a flange with the inlet facing towards the headlight. Dump pipes run back alongside the manifolds and between the chassis rail.
We put a lot of heat shield tape on the AC, heater lines and anything else close to the turbo's and pipework to prevent failure.
Mounting up the LH manifold and extension pipe.
The intercooler is a good sized thing and fits very well between the AC condenser and the intrusion bar. The AC receiver-dryer needs to be moved up into the right corner to clear the intercooler. The power steering cooler mounts were trimmed off and it is mounted using ties to the AC condensor. There is lots of room to work with. We also made some small top brackets to hold the cooler sightly off the intrusion bar so it wouldn't rub or rattle. It's a very solid mounting.
A bit of cutting is required to get the pipes up under the RH headlight. a small piece off near the end of the chassis rail and also under the headlight itself. about an inch or so needs to come of the end of the intrusion bar also.
The kit uses regular bosch BOV's that are mounted nicely in the bar area.
The LH side requires some cutting to get the air filter tucked away in the corner. If there is a weak point of this kit then i would say the airfilter setup is it, we couldn't help thinking the turbos could have been set back a bit further to alleviate the squashyness of it all around the headlight area, however i'm sure it is a vehicle specific problem and a differnt extension pipe for each vehicle type would probably drive the cost of the kit up. Anyway, a very minor issue on an otherwise straightforward install.
a front view showing all the pipework, at this point we were thinking, oh dear, i wonder if the bar is gonna go back on.. The answer? hell yeah!! think we had to cut maybe 1/2 inch off one of the spotlight mounts to clear a pipe and that was it!!
The completed RH turbo, with all oil/water lines connected and heat bags on. The kits comes with excellent braided lines and t-pieces so its just a bolt together exercise.
The LH side.
The whole engine bay, you can see the top mounts we made for the cooler to intrusion bar here.
And the final product with the front bar on. The install is totally stealth and a coat of black paint on the cooler would make it basically invisible - no i won't be doing that
With the stock cam, and cast manifolds, thru turbo's the car still has a nice exhaust note, anyway with the whoosh of the turbo's spooling to 12psi and the sounds of the BOV's between gears has bought a whole new aspect to drivingAnd i thought blower whine was cool
(it still is BTW).
We're just sorting thru a couple of minor clutch issues and should be hitting the dyno tomorrow for a good workout and what i think will be some impressive numbers! The force of the seat pushing in my back tells me so...
Thanks again to Mario, Cam and the boys at Autotechnique for helping me out with this install.
Chris...
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Originally Posted by Chris@HPTuners
I couldn't even complete a full pass, it was disapppointing. So after 2 more attempts at easing it off the line and shifting A LOT slower, it was clear it was getting worse so i just gave up
