When I collected the engine I also bought a Garrett T2 Turbo and DIY manifold. I giggled like a little child and the thought of making choo choo noises from my rusty shitbox. Thats when I dug deeper into the conversion....
These engines aren't the most renown for being strong when boost is applied. Some engines have lasted years some within a week. The ringlands are the first to go and with the uncertainty of how long they'd last I'd need to factor in a bottom end rebuild.
The next largest piece of the puzzle was engine management. I was relying on using a Nistune board, but they're not available for the coilpack ECU. Piggyback units like the Det3 and E-Manage Blue are perfectly fine but they dont come about very often, then its finding a mapper local who can do it. The other option was to go full standalone i.e Omex,Megasquirt,Emerald, Link etc which would require a full rewire.
Although this option isnt an inconvience cost was a big factor. Can I justify spending £600-£1000 on management plus the cost of everything else? I said all along I wasn't going to boost it because I have the R34 for power/speed. I guess caving into peer pressure and curiousity got the best of me.
I decided not to go down this route because of the costs to make it reliable. Yes you can do it on the cheap, but finding the 1.4 engines is becoming more difficult and I dont really wanna be replacing the engine every month.
The turbo and Manifold sold today (17/10/20)
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