ActiveAero
04-13-2003, 12:58 PM
Just giving you guys a little update to what I've been up to lately. One of my friends Chris finally got his dream car. A 1991 MR2 Turbo (the cool body style) with the 3SGTE engine. He has been into cars for a while but now he is really starting to learn both about cars themselves and how to drive a manual. :wink: The car looked in pretty decent shape, the red paint a little faded, but besides that the interior was good. Then we took the car out for a little spin (his uncle brought it to him). The first thing we noticed was what seemed to be a bad exhaust leak. No big deal or so we thought until we actually floored it. I didn't want to say anything so I politely asked him "what are these things suppose to run again". Stock they are a high 14 to low 15 sec car and lets just say it wasn't running that. I personally couldn't feel any boost coming into play. After that we decided to start ripping the car apart up at my dads shop.
The first thing we did was hook up a boost guage and take her out. I was right, 1psi of almighty boost :? , definitely a problem. We started undoing all of the intake piping and exhaust systems and after about 10hrs of work finally had the turbo and exhaust manifold off of the car. The MR2 doesn't exactly have the biggest engine bay ever. Thankfully we did have a lift. The turbo seems to be in good shape. It spins freely and doesn't have any play back and forth. A major problem was with the exhaust manifold. Its usually good to have all of the studs right? Well he was missing two and the manifold gasket was pretty much destroyed. The turbo to downpipe gasket was also cracked. Basically he was leaking everywhere.
So now he is sending the exhaust manifold to a machine shop to have it replaned and getting new studs put in the manifold that connects the turbo to downpipe because a few of them wrung off. At the same time he's sending the turbo to Turbo Specialties in B'ham to let them rebuild it with TO4E-46 (I think. Not a big turbo guy) internals. Add that to a nice downpipe, intake, and boost controller for what should be a pretty fun little car. With a SAFC and aftermarket intercooler we should be looking for whp in the 260-270 range on 16psi.
The first thing we did was hook up a boost guage and take her out. I was right, 1psi of almighty boost :? , definitely a problem. We started undoing all of the intake piping and exhaust systems and after about 10hrs of work finally had the turbo and exhaust manifold off of the car. The MR2 doesn't exactly have the biggest engine bay ever. Thankfully we did have a lift. The turbo seems to be in good shape. It spins freely and doesn't have any play back and forth. A major problem was with the exhaust manifold. Its usually good to have all of the studs right? Well he was missing two and the manifold gasket was pretty much destroyed. The turbo to downpipe gasket was also cracked. Basically he was leaking everywhere.
So now he is sending the exhaust manifold to a machine shop to have it replaned and getting new studs put in the manifold that connects the turbo to downpipe because a few of them wrung off. At the same time he's sending the turbo to Turbo Specialties in B'ham to let them rebuild it with TO4E-46 (I think. Not a big turbo guy) internals. Add that to a nice downpipe, intake, and boost controller for what should be a pretty fun little car. With a SAFC and aftermarket intercooler we should be looking for whp in the 260-270 range on 16psi.