Has anyone thought about doing the STS trubo set up on our cars (i.e 04 2.0i)? I could see how this setup would be MUCH cheaper than a build your own or worse *shudder* buy from hi boost. Nothing wrong with hiboost's set up but WAY to pricey.

 

got a link? I have no idea what a STS turbo is.

 

are you talking about the STS turbos for like the Silverado, Corvette, etcc?

Those are complex systems. Hell of a lot more piping. And the Hiboost kit is a great kit for a great price.

1 they are the only company that makes a working turbo kit
2 you pay for the R&D. Its easy to peice together a turbo kit, but its the tuning that gets ya. Not easy to through out $100 an hour for tuning when they have to start from scratch.

 

Well i dont know...honestly from me looking at it today you really wouldn't need that much piping if you placed it right after the cat. I looked under there and there is plenty of room for your intake and the exhaust outlet which would bolt straight up to the turbo and your throttle body out of the turbo would be set up exactly how hiboost has there run the piping to the passenger side tire straight across where the radiator would be or the intercooler and straight up to the throttle body. You can buy 2" or 3" aluminum piping from home depot or lowes for dirt cheap and a renting a pipe bender is dirt cheap around here. OR if you really wanted to go dirt cheap you could by pvc piping and spray it black...this pipe can withhold 220psi of water and the last time i checked air weighs a lot less than water and if your pushing 220psi of air to your engine which ,there is no turbo on the market for a car that can press that much, you'd be having a lot more problems than the pipe cracking lol. Honestly the hardest part of this would be to relocate the battery for the intake to go down over the tranny. So, you'd either have to move the battery to the back of the car OR, do what the Puerto Rico guy with his killer 3 and use a smaller series battery and kinda "push" it off to the side...

Part 2 Tuning/fuel maps/injectors ect.
This Kit or build your own kit is only set for 5psi which is nothing for our engines to handle on stock fuel maps and injectors. I don't foresee a HUGE problem...granted, the Haltech FM would help significantly because even with running with such low boost i think the car would run a little lean. but not enough to cause internal damage. Last time I contacted Hiboost on there injectors are only running a fraction of a step up better then what we are running stock and their kit comes at 8psi? I'm still doing some research on this. Hell bolting up the Haltech FM on a N/A engine would even help a ton with basic mods but that doesn't mean the car won't run and have reliability or see the gains of it. Just not the absoulet full potential of the engine and how many of you can say that you have mods done WITH the FM system...slim to none cuz I don't know about you...I don't have $600 extra to drop on it after spending a decent amount of money on other parts.

Oh and last thing...add a boost controller...manual or electronic...they both get the job done...

oh and another last thing if you bought the turbo from sts with no other parts you'd need a waste gate forgot to add that.

here is the link

http://www.ststurbo.com/universal_system

 

This may sound harsh but.....

Stock fuel maps/injectors will run like absolutecrap at any boost. Some kind of fuel mgmt wouldn't be nice...it's critical, you will fail without it, guaranteed. I challenge you to find a single aftermarket turbo Mazda that runs a completely stock fuel mgmt system and runs properly. You won't find it.

There isn't anything special about this turbo other than where they are locating the turbo housing and how they plumb it. PVC is not meant for turbo applications, if it was, it would be used. PVC isn't intended to work in the temperature environment found under the hood of your car. I highly doubt Home Depot or Lowes carry any kind of material that would be suitable for this type of application.

Do you understand the theories behind turbos? Can you read turbo pressure maps (do you even know what those are?) If you think relocating a battery to the trunk is harder than creating a turbo system, you are in way over your head.

As far as cost, I notice you don't have any dyno time accounted for, this is something that is also critical and doesn't come cheap.

That being said, if you think you can do it....go for it and post the results here so that others can learn from your project. My personal opinion is the lesson learned with turbos is you get what you pay for.

(I'm a Mechanical Engineer with an automotive major, that works extensively on cars, both stock and custom, I've fabricated countless projects and I wouldn't try to create my own turbo system on a electronically controlled fuel injected car (one with a carb is a different story, my friend's and I have plans for a twin-turbo 360 foran 85 Grand Wagoneer one of them owns....)

 

Well I don't have much time to post a reply but there is only one thing i really disagree with here and thats the PVC piping. Its not used because its bulky and looks like Sh*t. Youre still thinking about this the wrong you are still in the mindset of a front mount turbo. Think about this a good portion of of your piping sits undernethe the car where the amibent air temp is un-godly cooler then having normal piping run around the engine bay. Nor are you sitting here and putting a blow torch to it the piping doesn't constantly sit at "fire" temp where you would melt the pipe...

How efficient is the intercooling from your tubing?
At 5 to 6 psi we typically get at least 50% intercooler efficiency numbers from our systems and some of the truck systems which have better exposure to cold air are even better. Combine this with a pressure drop of only about 1/4 to 3/4 psi and it makes for very good numbers. Testing on our LS1 produced the following results: Turbo outlet temps at 5 psi boost were 175F and intake temps were 115F which is about 52% efficient. Turbo outlet temps at 8 psi boost were 225F. This is a 50F increase with only 3 psi added to turbocharger boost. For those wanting to run more boost we recommend a front mounted intercooler. We sell bolt-on solutions for the Hemi and the GTO. We will be coming out with more applications soon.

Quoted from the website ^^^^^^ and this is on LS1 Camaro which is going to put out alot more heat in a quick time then our cars. ITs a little hard to compare a V8 to an I4 when it comes to this...but the point still comes across.


I will more than likely do this project and I will have to dyno it and i will do this project the the FM system it will take me longer to save the money..

 

But the sts universal kit is 2,995....why wouldn't you just save the extra thousand?

Unless you have very good mechanical knowledge I don't see this working out for you.

Even with my knowledge of cars I see that dropping 8 hours ofinstall timeand $4000 is more efficant then 150+ hours of fab, r&D, tuning,headache and $3000.

ohh and if you are going to do this...please don't go PVC..lol.

 

PVC holds up real well against rocks kicked up off the road too.

FYI...around Michigan dyno rates are about $125/hr, $400/half day, $600 for full day., with an additional charge of $85/hr for technical assistance, which would bring a 1 day tuning cost (assuming 8 hrs tech assistance to run the dyno, interpret the data, remap the fuel calibrations, etc) would run you upwards of $1280 for a single day.

How quickly do you think you can tune your engine?

 

I have seen dyno rates w. tech advice her in LV for $150 an hour...but even still thats way to much money.

And not alot of tuners are familiar with the Haltech, but thats just from my knowledge here in vegas.

 

I am in no way saying this setup would be anymore less of a headache as far as tuning goes then a front mount because either way I go I have to use the Haltec FM. The shop that I go to is pretty familiar with the Haltec setup and probably wouldn't take them as long as you think...about a half a day/ 4 to 5 hrs. which around here would probably be pretty close to $500...Install is not an issue with me seeing that I know people who have shops with professioal tools that i can use and considering there is pretty much no welding in this system. Anyone with a "mechnical knowledge" , you speak of, with a pipe bender and bolts and nuts, can do this set up...Any dipsh*t can install a turbo system, a person with knowledge though has to tune it. Maybe 4 hour down time installing this and 5hrs to tune...9hr day If it was lucky it could be done on a saturday. Proper planning of this could easily lead to a "weekend warior" job. The only difficult part is tuning but you guys are blowing this way out of proportion...