First Field Install of TCD Track Turbo Stage 1

[Specter325]

Gruppe

Some friends have thought I have fallen off of the face of the planet as I have not been to the track since July. Well I had some plans for some work that stretched into a lot of work and now the car is finally coming back together. Rear subframe came out, reinforcements were welded in. Gas tank came out, was cleaned up, new lines went on. Some unseen surface rust was cleaned up above the gas tank. Entire area was cleaned and painted. Subframe went back in with powerflex black race bushings, solid front diff mount, and Turner swaybar reinforcements. New TCK adj lower control arms. Powerflex black RTABs. New upper and lower bearings in the trailing arm. Pulled the cover off the diff and replaced the speed sensor which was cracked and the cover gasket as it was old as dirt. That took care of the rear end stuff. Now comes the fun things.

I started this weekend putting the TCD Track Turbo Stage one prototype kit on the car. It will be in the 325 HP range at 8psi with a T04e-50 turbo. It differs from the normal kit in that the turbine is sized a little smaller than normal for the size of the motor and turbo to spool quickly and be at full boost earlier for more linear throttle response. I have just finished getting the intercooler mounted and have hung the exhaust manifold with wastegate. I plumbed the oil feed off of my trusty UUC Oil Center and drilled and tapped the oil pan for the return. The tranny is out for a UUC clutch upgrade and while it is out I will replace the seals in the transmission.

One thing that was kind of unexpected was the lack of a cross member in front of the radiator. It apparently was discarded after the deer hit a few years ago by the body shop guy and not replaced. I fabbed up a cross piece from aluminum flat and L stock. Came out decent if I say so myself. Waiting on some maintenance pieces to come in right now for some "while I am in theres" and the car should be finished in a couple days once that stuff arrives.

Looking forward to FI fun and games in December at VIR.

[tspool]

Congrats on progress! Interesting intercooler setup. Is Tdc going to make a few more of these kits. If so, how much?

92 328? did you swap it with 2.8 OBD2?

[AirDoc]

Damn Ryan......I never thought you were gonna do this....now I have to get my hand primed to give you the passing signal eh?....or maybe not...

Subscribed...I wanna some boost one day too....

[Specter325]

TCD will be making these kits available. I believe he has production kits on the shelf ready to ship. Tuning is the thing that holds most people up. He has a pretty good off the shelf tune for the average OBD1 setup. Stray from that though and you need it tuned for your car. Easy if you have a dyno and an internet connection. Hard if you don't.

My car is a non-vanos early 92 car swapped to vanos ECU from 93 325 and a 2.8 out of a 96 328 reverted back to OBD1. Really is a frankenstein car now.

TCD will be bolting this kit with a larger turbo to an OBD1 converted 98 M3 in November. OBD2 tuning is available AFAIK just takes a little more $.

My car will be fairly benign as far as turbo cars go. I need it to last at the track. But once we get going we will see what turns up. I do have M3 cams and a thicker HG on the shelf for more boost once I figure out what the oil and water temps are going to do.

[Bromaguire]

Everything looks real nice. I can't wait to hear your impressions of the kit once its running. How do you think the quality is so far? Did you get a ceramic coated manifold?

I will be having Todd put a GT35r kit on my car as soon as my engine build is done in a couple weeks, should be fun.

[Specter325]

So far the kit is great. All the hardware is first class. Everything is coated somehow. The charge pipes are powder coated very nicely. The manifold and downpipe are both ceramic coated. I am very anxious to get it finished but like I said I am now waiting for some other vendors stuff to come in(new engine mounts, tranny mounts, clutch kit). I actually had a nice UUC clutch kit supplied by TCD but it was for the 2.8/M3 240mm flywheel. Since my car is a crazy combination of a lot of different things I have kept the nice JB racing lightweight flywheel that I had on my non vanos motor. This is the smaller 228mm unit. Since I have that unit already and do not want to get a different flywheel right now and I am not shooting for maximum power I am just going to swap out the clutch package. So those couple things are what I am waiting on and then the rest of the kit will go on. The most time consuming thing so far has been to get the oil return line plumbed but that was me being AR and not an issue with TCD's stuff. Just checked the shipping status of the stuff and everything should be here by Friday. Cant wait.

[Specter325]

Painted the front bumper and trimmed the support to make it fit. 1/4 inch is the clearance needed so I drew a line at 3/8 and sawzalled behind that line. Paint colors go together pretty well if I do say so myself.

[MikeE36]

Painted the front bumper and trimmed the support to make it fit. 1/4 inch is the clearance needed so I drew a line at 3/8 and sawzalled behind that line. Paint colors go together pretty well if I do say so myself.

Beautiful! Very interesting intercooler sizing though - not quite the "normal" shape. Looks like a Ford turbo diesel or something that stands tall like that.

Anxious for results, fire that sucker!

[tspool]

This kit should work on non-vanos as well right? If it's tuned properly, of course. How much was the kit?

[Deadphan]

Beautiful! Very interesting intercooler sizing though - not quite the "normal" shape. Looks like a Ford turbo diesel or something that stands tall like that.

I'm also curious about the intercooler. Are you concerned that it will block too much flow through the radiator?

[Specter325]

The intercooler was sized for the max power that might be possible out of the turbos available for use on the manifold. So it is a bit overkill in my setup but it still cools the charge air extremely well. It flows very well through front to rear also and at speed there will be no issues with air getting to the radiator. Which by the way is an S54 M coupe unit. Now sitting still with just an aux fan to pull air through both cores in smoking hot air temps it might be an issue but on the test bed car there were never any water cooling issues. With hard track use we will see though. Cooling is always an issue when running hard on the track.

Pricing is still up in the air as far as I know. But I am pretty sure all pieces will be available separately.

Turbo is also here now. Notice nice V band fitting on exhaust housing.

[dcvee]

I'm also curious about the intercooler. Are you concerned that it will block too much flow through the radiator?

Yeah, caught that too. I'd be worried in a racing situation. But you never know until you try it.

Don

[Specter325]

Well that is why it is a prototype and why I am going to flog it when I get finished putting it together.

As far as why the size was chosen the system could ultimately be in the 500hp range on built motors. TCD wanted to be able to accommodate that level of power without re-engineering things like the intercooler and it's mounts. The core flows extremely well as measured by pressure loss across it, and charge temp drop across it. For it to be this efficient it has to flow well front to rear also. This sounds good standing in the garage but until it sees hard use it is still just engineering talk. I should be at VIR the first weekend in December so that will be the first acid test.

[turnerNCM3]

Cool. I am in the home strech with mine. Turbo, downpipe and waste gate bolted up today. I can't wait to see your oil drain. This is always a hot topic in the FI section.

[Specter325]

After some time off to "work" in LA for a month, and some more time off to pay the SO back for taking care of two kids solo for the same time I have done some more work on the car. Turbo went on. Tranny with UUC clutch and pressure plate went in. Downpipe and exhaust went on. Notice all the v band joints on the exhaust. Nice.

[Don Nguyen]

Very nice. I talked to TCD a while back about turbo stuff.

Hopefully everything goes together nicely. If it turns out good, I will have to ask myself if I want to have two turbo M3s for daily driving haha. It would also be interesting to compare my custom set up to TCD's set up as well though.

[clevertd]

glad to see everything is coming together ryan

[raoke]

Dang.. I need to find me a t04e with v band.. ones on ebay are 5bolt..

tagging along..

[Skeen]

You gonna make it to Road Atlanta in March? Hope the holidays are going well for ya.

[Fissionx]

Just a helpful tip, i would rotate those v-band and t-bolt clamps so that the threads and bolts are not at lowest part, these tend to scrape and tear up on lowered cars.
Looks great man! You even put in a catalytic converter too. Reminds me of my old turbo 328

[GGray]

Get ready..If you have a stock radiator and no oil cooler Chances are very high you are going to have heat soak problems...You need both plus a vented hood to extract the heat for extended track use in the heat of the south.

The intercooler design isn't going to help any. No one else in the FI section runs the IC set up that way it kills the airflow to the radiator. No air flow= heat soak...Ask me how I know. I ended up pulling the AC out of mine to get more airflow across the nose of the car on the track. And i have a huge oil cooler and fluydyne radiator.

The turbo will be good for insta spool but you may find on track its slightly to small since you spend 80% of the time above 3500rpm. I have the following on my car T3/T04E .63 a/r .57trim, .60 a/r .58 (hot side) on track it needs more up top. I would stick a .82 housing in mine if I kept it for a track car. for the street mine is absolutley perfect feels like a big V8!

I had numerous chats with Pablo (VADER M3) who had the European Car track E36M3 turbo project. We discussed numerous things since back then he was the only one really tracking an M3 with a turbo. from all the chatting the two things I learned from Pablo was the turbo housing of .60 was to small and I needed to vent the hood to duct heat out.

A turbo car is a hoot on track. I was amazed at how fast i was going while short shifting the first track day since I was doing a shake down to see how it ran...

heat is your nuber one foe...

Also skip the MLS gasket and studs...they have not proven very reliable on FI cars at the track...Get some pistons and a stock gasket with L19 studs...There are a few other head tricks to keep the gasket alive to. One cost a crap load from PPF...

Good luck! You'll have a ton of fun with it after you get it sorted out...

[Turbo Charg Dynam]

Get ready..If you have a stock radiator and no oil cooler Chances are very high you are going to have heat soak problems...You need both plus a vented hood to extract the heat for extended track use in the heat of the south.

The intercooler design isn't going to help any. No one else in the FI section runs the IC set up that way it kills the airflow to the radiator. No air flow= heat soak...Ask me how I know. I ended up pulling the AC out of mine to get more airflow across the nose of the car on the track. And i have a huge oil cooler and fluydyne radiator.

The turbo will be good for insta spool but you may find on track its slightly to small since you spend 80% of the time above 3500rpm. I have the following on my car T3/T04E .63 a/r .57trim, .60 a/r .58 (hot side) on track it needs more up top. I would stick a .82 housing in mine if I kept it for a track car. for the street mine is absolutley perfect feels like a big V8!

Turbo is a straight T4, not a small T3 like your setup. It is more than sufficient size for the power level Ryan is going to be running.

Part of Ryan's job is to test the system on the track. He'll give us real data about the efficiency of the systm and the ability of his cooling system to cope with the additional power.

IMHO, the intercooler system is far superior to everythng else offered in a kit. It flows almost 1000cfm at 1 bar. The tank design is very efficient. Combined with a proper size turbo it will provide lower charge temps than any other kit available.

The stock cooling system has been fine on the street but the track is a whole other ball game. Ryan will be able to tell us how it goes.

Todd

[Turbo Charg Dynam]

Dang.. I need to find me a t04e with v band.. ones on ebay are 5bolt..

tagging along..

Our turbos are straight T4 that are delivered with a 4 bolt flange. We machine them to v band on a lathe.

[GGray]

I didn't see it was a straight T4 he should make some good power with one of those! The manifold is nice with the direct bolt on wastegate.

I can tell you, more than likely, he will have heat probelms with the stock radiator and intercooler set up. Pulling through the IC, AC, then Radiator is the main problem I had.

Ventign the hood is key. A extractor vent needs to be around 11 inches back from the roundel onthe hood, with side venting on both sides of the hood.

I also had problems with my charge pipe hitting crap. I had to flaten it out. My nexy car will have a diffrent charge pipe routing...So I can run lower ride height.

Looking forward to seeing another turbo track car!!!

[Turbo Charg Dynam]

I can tell you, more than likely, he will have heat probelms with the stock radiator and intercooler set up. Pulling through the IC, AC, then Radiator is the main problem I had.

Ventign the hood is key. A extractor vent needs to be around 11 inches back from the roundel onthe hood, with side venting on both sides of the hood.

Looking forward to seeing another turbo track car!!!

Ryan's car is basically a dedicted track car. a/c is gone and it has a an aftermarket radiator.

I am sure he can do the hood vent if necessary. Thanks for the insight.