Since matt's theory sticky is locked I thought I would start a discussion on this. I had a couple questions that I was curious about. 1) How do you do the water lines on the rotated? Are these affected much when going rotated? 2) Same question with oil feed and return lines. I know on the stockers it basically just comes out the bottom and drains back into the sump. How does this work with rotated? I have heard on BB turbos you need much less oil pressure than on the journal bearing models. How do you go about reducing the line pressure? 3) What options exist with the up pipe? I have heard Matt mention that there are adapters that people have made for the stock up pipe. Are any of these available or is it something that would have to be custom fabricated? 4) What differences do people see between like the GT30R vs the TD04 S or E models? I know we have both Matt and Mike that have these, what are your impressions on spool and top end between the two. 5) On the oil feed only turbos like the T3/T4 and TD04s is the life of the turbo affected? 6) Can you just fab the down pipe? I mean really, it seems like it would be a fairly simple thing to fab up. Why spend $600 for one? 7) Wastegate options...how big for what turbos when you are dealing with external wastegates?
You have to make new ones, its fairly easy there is a feed and a drain. One goes to the coolant tank, one goes to the block. I like to weld a fitting onto the coolant tank so that you can use braided AN line but its not necessary. There is an adapter that threads onto the oil line for the pressure feed and the drain goes back to the stock location. As far as pressure goes ball bearing turbos use less oil therefore there is a restrictor that threads into place in the top of the turbo. We make an adapter kit to run a rotated kit off the stock upipe but we only sell it installed because we have never jigged the downpipe. Honestly the cost is very similar to what I can sell you the Perrin upipe and downpipe for. There are so many turbo options available that it is unbelievable. The GT30R that I run is really only kind of related to the GT30R. You have to base your turbo decision off what you do with the car. If you want to come by we can go over your turbo options. Its just one of those things thats easier to talk out in person. Ball Bearing turbos pretty much always last longer The downpipe is not that hard to fab up, its much easier than the upipe. You are only going to save about $100-$200. A 38mm is big enough....but its a POS. They always leak etc.... I would go with a Tial 44mm, they just work, I"ve never had a problem with one. Matt
Do most people retain the stock turbo coolant reservoir? Also having helped weld up downpipes for other vehicles, it seems like it would only cost around $100+- for the materials. I mean it is just 3" pipe with a couple mandrel bends welded in after all. One thing I am hoping to see in this is various people's impressions of their rotated turbos. For me, I know what I am looking for. Something streetable and not a 5000hp turbo that only starts to spool at 6500 rpm.
Unfortunately, we do not have that many members running rotated setups that I can think of. I could be wrong though.
Making the downpipe isn't that hard but its usually 3 to 4 hours worth of work to get everthing to fit just right. You are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood or 3 to 4 bends, 2 flanges(4 if you want a test pipe) 1 flex section if you want it, and 3 to 4 feet of stainless. At that point it just depends on how nice of a material you want to use. How long are you planning on keeping the car, are you going to return it to stock etc... Lets say you bought all your material from Burns Stainless because you either A. Like really nice stuff and you want your exhaust to be really nice. B. You are going to keep this car forever and you don't want to use cheap steel that you know is going to fall apart within 10 years. 3 Ubends 2 feet of straight, 2 flanges, = 560.00 Labor for tig welding and design = $240.00 Now with all that being said...no one uses material that nice on turbo kits, why you might ask...because no one would buy them. Now if you did it out of cheap mild steel, or really crappy stainless you can do it for about a quarter of the cost and it will probably last you 7 to 10 years.
Oh and on the subject of turbo size you can tell a lot from a dyno chart but you can't tell everything. A GT35R is still a fine turbo on a road course car. Its also very nice on the street but I personally would rather have a GT30R for the street. Matt
Buy a kit and be done with it. You can keep the stock upper pressure tank. Keeping it in the stock location depends on the design of the inlet pipe. Otherwise it usually gets relocated to the strut tower, or you can get the smaller 05+ plastic tank and it should fit with almost any GT30/35. 42 I'm not sure of.
On the subject of fabbing a downpipe, if you aren't that experienced with it, cutting and fitting pipe will take longer than you expect. the actual welding part takes about 20 minutes. you spend 90% cutting and fitting, and 10% welding. it sucks I just finished fabbing up a bunch of stainless for my still (I get it free from work out of the stainless scrap dumpster) and used only a sawzall, a 4" angle grinder, and a file. very labor intensive. I cut two saddles for 90* tees by hand. TIG'd it up. pain in the ass. If anyone wants some scrap 304/304L SS, I can get boatloads of 4" pipe. I'm sure you know this, but look into smaller hotsides for the turbo for spoolup, and try to do everything possible to retain energy in the exhaust manifold/uppipe
I think the Perrin Stuff is 316 and the ultimate racing stuff I'm not sure at all about but its coated so it may be mild steel. A lot of the time you spend measuring, cutting and grinding directly relates to how nice your welds look. If the pipes but up to each other perfectly then then the welds will be nice and small and will require no filler rod. Those are the kind of welds that I prefer. Its also one of the reasons it took so long to get the parts cut for my catch cans. Matt
agreed with the fitting. my TIG has pulse settings, and with fusion welding you can set it and turn out really beautiful welds
And honestly, for a quarter of the cost, I can deal with something that will only last 7-10 years. Who knows, in that amount of time, I might go back to stock and sell the car, or whatever. I do realize it is labor intensive. Like I said I have worked on some other exhaust before. Basically using J bends and such. Is it a pain? Yeah! But is it worth saving $1000? Yeah! And honestly the end result will not be as nice as the $1200 piece, but I am sure the flow difference will be very close when all is said and done. As for turbos, again, one reason I wanted to start this thread was for the driving impressions that various people have had. I have yet to have even been for a ride in a car that had a rotated set up. The fastest Subaru I have been in was Milo's car. It was pretty quick! But I am still really interested in the rotated turbos. Matt and Mike (liquidforce) are the only two that I know of that have rotated set ups on their cars. But I am sure there are more, just not sure if they are on here.
I would let you drive mine if it was together. Dan has a GT35R on his I'm sure he will be happy to take you for a ride. The Ball Bearing turbos seem to have better response. What I mean by that is when you come off the gas and get back on the gas it goes back to life quicker, some of that may be the bearing design and some of it is the fact that they are matched wheels.
The Ultimate Racing Counter-Clockwise kit is GORGEOUS. It fits beautifully and wouldn't cost much less to custom fab out of similar materials. Once you go rotated you'll never look back: "Hmmm, I think I want to try a .63 hotside", 2 hours later your done. "Oh no, I've got bad turbo seals." (not very common) Pull it and send it to Garret $200 later you've got new seals. "I think I've outgrown my 30R" Two hours later the 35R is in... "Oh no, I lost a V-band clamp" Walk to the closest guy with a turbo car and he might have one that fits... "I want to run 19 psi without a boost controller" "Tial, I'd like to order your 19lb spring set" Two hours later... You get the point Siegel
The only problem I have with the Ultimate Racing stuff is that it looks like crap and at random their stuff just doesn't fit. 4 of them work fine....1 doesn't....8 work fine 1 doesn't etc....
I like the brushed look... All their "full kits" have always fit well for us. Their "EWG UP for stock location" fitment is ridiculous... It always shocks me that a company that does such nice full kits can have a product (their UP) that's so bad... Siegel
We did 2 last week, 1 40R 1 35R one fit well one didn't. Both cars were for the same guy. I wish he would let me post the numbers for the 40R kit. But he doesn't want me to.
See to me those welds are just ok, especially for a company that is know for producing turbo kits. They aren't bad mind you they just aren't as good as they should be. Note I am in no way implying that I can weld better. Oh and what is with the black paint on their upipes. Matt
pretty welds are nice, but I would be after strength and penetration. However, those two usually are associated with nice looking welds. I think I will be fabbing up my own. I have a fully built 257 shortblock in the garage, but it's my DD right now so it wouldn't be such a great idea.
^^^^^^^ Agreed. All that I care about is that the welds don't leak or break. The welds on the IC piping is much cleaner looking. You can't see the welds on the DP, so that doesn't really matter to me. As long as they hold, and I have no doubt that they will. I will say this, I did LOTS of research when shopping for a rotated kit, and UR fitment being bad hardly ever came up. Can't say the same for Perrin kits...
Oh the Perrin kits are horrible. The welds on them look great but you have to pull the upipe to change the clutch.
How is that 35r for daily driving? Lots of good information flowing in this thread. Thanks for all the input everyone.
It's great. Starts coming on pretty hard around 3700rpm with the .63ar hotside and man is it a wild ride all the way to redline. If I had it to do all over again, I would do NOTHING different.
I have a GT30R .82AR hotside and it's very streetable. Boost onset is about 3400RPM reaching full boost at about 4000RPM. It's nice, because unlike the stock turbo, I never go into boost just cruising around town, which helps out with gas mileage... if that's even a concern at this point. But as soon as I decide to "get into it," she takes off like a raped ape. Boost response is pretty linear, it's not like sledgehammer acceleration, more of a feeling like getting gently pushed into the back of your seat and being held there. She pulls all the way to redline, so I have tons of mid-range and top end. I can't speak on the GT35 equipped cars, as I've never been in one. But I REALLY like my GT30. =)
I'm not rotated yet but will be. However I do have UR's EWG uppipe for the stock location turbo and mine fit with no issues.
That is actually really good results on 91 octain! That is one of the 3 turbos that I have been considering. I have not heard a real complaint yet about the GT30R equipped cars.
Brian also has a rotated GT30R, and I believe a large topmount too. His car was pretty fast the one time I ever rode in it.
just wanting to say that my friend and i put my perrin gt30r kit on in one day. both of us had never done it before. just went by the instructions. 2 days later doug was tunning it!:bowdown: there was only one part that kind of held us up,and it was not the turbo kit. it was the perrin fmic kit. it didnt really want to line up with the turbo. but, as the ppl that will see me 2marro on blood mountain........we figured it out.
I have the t3/t04s and Vince has the t3/t04e. I may be building another car soon and it will definately have a rotated kit. The only problem I have had with rotated kits have been ones where the turbo mounts to the uppipe using nuts and bolts. It is a real pain (aka impossible) to get 2 wrenches in there so I have just disconnected the uppipe from the header and pulled all of it out. On the ones where the uppipe to turbo flange is threaded it is so much easier to swap them out. So far I prefer the UR kit but the last Perrin one I worked on was much better than an earlier version I did.
That was my rotated setup that Mike is speaking about, it is a custom fabrication done by Knowledge Performance 4 yrs ago. It has held up well, but as Mike has mentioned above it was a royal PITA for him to swap out the turbos. I really have nothing but praise for the job he did, what patience! And to think he swapped two turbos for me !!
I am really surprised there have not been any ebay kits that have popped up for these. I mean if people could do it for a more reasonable price, it would make it a much more popular swap.
I cant seem to find the thread on nasioc anymore but Buschur Racing had posted up a prototype kit that they had fabbed up that turned stock mount turbos into rotated mounts for better intake/exhaust flow. Seemed like an interesting concept.
Well, can't seem to see the benifit of that as you still have the same size inlet. The tube may be a bit straighter, but still same diameter. Exhaust flow may be better though, who knows. The main reason I plan on switching to rotated when I do the 2.5 swap is to gain the advantage of larger turbo housings and larger intakes. Seems most of the larger turbos like the GT30+ are using at least 3"+ compared to the tiny stock ones...what is it? like 2" or 2.25?
Whatever kit you end up getting pay extra if you have to for a v-band exhuast housing and wastegate setup.
Stock inlet is 2.4", most larger aftermarket stock-mount turbos are 3" inlet and require TGV deletes to fit such a large pipe under the manifold. I'm not sure how big the GT30Rs and whatnot are, I know they look much larger than 3"
i bought my kit off ebay. it was like $1500 cheaper from ebay (this is including the turbo kit and fmic) and it was shipped straight from perrin. i know that this hurts companies like ts and btl grd:wtc:, but can you really blame me? i am going to ts for the meth kit though. just trying to figure out if i want the trunk or the hood kit.
This man speaks the truth... v-band is the way to go unless you like the frustration of trying to seal up any leaks that you may end up having to keep going back in to find and fix. And just to add, mine is not a true Perrin kit. I had orginally bought the .63 hotside kit but then decided to go with the .82. My .82 hotside has a GT style flange, so I had the downpipe cut, got rid of the 2.5" taper, and welded on a GT style flange to mate up to my new hotside. So I have a true 3" from turbo back. There are tons of thoughts as to if it's actually benificial or not, and I believe Perrin has since changed their kits to have the GT style flange instead of the 2.5" older flange that tapered out to 3". I don't know as I never even ran the 2.5" flange on mine. The only real problem I had with install on mine was going from the turbo to the first section of FMIC piping. The boost tube that was included on the Perrin kit did not want to connect without putting a huge kink in the silicone coupler. I solved this by buying another silicone elbow from hose techniques. Again, I believe Perrin has remedied this in the newer kits. Also, the intake that came with the Perrin kit is not used on my set up. I have a custom intake designed and built by Harman Motive. With the Perrin intake, we had problems getting the car to idle and fast deceleration would sometimes cause the engine to stall and shut off. I believe this was an issue coming from the MAF sensor being located too close to the inlet of the turbo. The Harman Motive intake re-routes the filter and MAF sensor into the fender well and she idles like stock now.
Yeah I had looked at the v-band. Looks really simple, but I do wonder how it seals so well...seems like it would leak, but I guess it works.