CUSTOM TURBO

"Turbos make everything better" - Albert Einstein.

Back in early 2014 I bought the "best" turbo kit available at the time an AVO Stage II. Now at the time there were no other proven(common) turbo kits so I was none the wiser. I had a lot of fitment issues as I had the GTS Variant of the 86. These come with headlight washing jets and they seriously get in the way of the intercooler piping (not an issue with the GT version). At the time we addressed this by making custom piping with different routing. This kit proved to make 200kw at the wheels on E85 by Coyote Tuning. I was stoked and it drove great..

About 1 1/2 years later the turbo ingested the silicon piping from the intake pipe that comes with the AVO kit. It destroyed the turbo but luckily did not break apart and destroy the engine.

TL:DR? - I had an AVO Turbo kit and it broke

Any sensible person would have just replaced the turbo for the same unit and called it a day. But I had crazier ideas. I wanted to put a ball-bearing turbo and a water-to-air intercooler in.

I called up Adam at 999 Racing in Brisbane and ordered a GTX3067 ball-bearing turbo, next I went on eBay and ordered myself a water-to-air intercooler kit and then onto Amazon to order a OEM Grade W2A pump for reliability.

When it came to fitting it all together, I realised I bought an intercooler which was too big to fit with the bonnet shut (DOH), instead of calling it quits and buying a different cooler I just decided to put spacers on the bonnet mounts.

The car did not make any more peak power than before but had great response compared to the cluster f^ck of piping that the AVO kit comes with plus ball-bearing turbo vs shaft, I was satisfied.

THE NEW SETUP

Recently, I decided to make my turbo setup less road-kill-special and more mature.

The mission for the new set-up:

• Reduce the number of bends in the piping

• Re-position the intercooler to allow bonnet clearance

• A better looking engine bay

I went back onto eBay and bought myself a different style of intercooler (pictured above). Before I bought the intercooler, I made a 1:1 Model of it to make sure it fit. I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.

This setup would allow me to couple the intercooler directly to the turbo and uses minimal piping on the cold size of the intercooler as can be seen below.

Money shot

I can already feel the improvement in throttle response and I am still getting used to my bonnet being shut flush.

Aside from having to re-route the water lines for the intercooler and turbo, this was a painless conversion (I did the whole thing in my apartments garage without having to lift the car at all). There are still areas to tidy up (like all never ending projects) and to reinstall the BOV but I am in no rush and will take my time.

This intercooler conversion can be done on any AVO kit and is a great way to increase throttle response. But the old saying goes.. if it aint broke don't fix it...

As always thank you for reading and I invite you to follow 86Bible_ on Instagram and 86Bible Facebook for daily images and occasional write ups just like this.