Twin turbo V8 systems, can you beat on them???

[shortrack]

Man they make some impressive horsepower like 6, 7, 800hp but can you really lean on them?.....Im talking a track day type situation not 10sec 1/4 mi.....like 45 min straight of on and off the gas flat out four or five times a day take it home, do some basic maintenance then do it all over again next weekend......do they hold up?

does anyone know of anyone who uses this type of system in their track rat??

[Larry Callahan]

I am working on figuring that out now. I sure hope I can beat the snot out of it any time I wish. That was the plan. Beat on it a lot and just change the oil often.

[Nessumsar]

Absolutely. So long as your cooling system is up to the task...

An import 2.0 liter making 300hp is under much more stress than a 6.0 liter V8 making 600hp. You almost can't go to a track day without seeing a Subaru, Mitsu, Mazda...

[shortrack]

Absolutely. So long as your cooling system is up to the task...

An import 2.0 liter making 300hp is under much more stress than a 6.0 liter V8 making 600hp. You almost can't go to a track day without seeing a Subaru, Mitsu, Mazda...

Fair enough, but thats an import....is anyone actually doing it with a V8??

I remember Car & Driver used to test those Callaway Corvettes years back and they never seemed to make it through an event....I know that was a long time ago but thats the last ones I can remember....if theres been anyone else doing it Id love to hear about it.

[shortrack]

I am working on figuring that out now. I sure hope I can beat the snot out of it any time I wish. That was the plan. Beat on it a lot and just change the oil often.

I'll be interested to see how things work out because you cant ignore them from a power output point of view.......did the engine builder do anything different for your application as opposed to his "normal" street driver or drag race builds???

[shmoov69]

Well I did the Midwest Muscle Car Challenge this summer and beat on it for 2 whole days and did not have any problems. The car had never been on a track other than drag strip before then. The only issues with the "system" was that the turbos I have are too small and the EGT's were pegging the guage at the end of the front straight....the guage goes to 1600!! And it was doing it EVERY lap!! And I made 40 of them! Lol! The other problem was the oil pump pickup tube fell off that day sometime. I still did the 99 mile cruise and the speed stop challenge and the autoX the next day also. Needless to say the oil was totaly dead and then on top of that it had zero pressure when I was on the brakes. But the next weekend (after changing just the oil) I drove it about 300 miles to a car show/cruise and the weekend after that down to the dragstrip and ran 5 or 6 passes and back home! Then I pulled the engine to put an oil pump, pickup and went ahead and slid new bearings in it. Actually just drove it for the first time again tonight! Lol!

So, to answer your original Q, yes they can be beat on without problems. My suggestion would be to have some kind of killer heat insulation inside the car or on the pipes or something (which I don't have!) and to have an oil cooler (which I don't have!) on it. And run GOOD gas while you are beating on it (which I did do!).

[PhillipM]

How about putting the turbos in the back.?.?. I would expect that to lower temps up front.

[Nothingface5384]

just make some turbo heat sheilds

syntehtic oil will help with oil temps if you feel oil coolers are more of a restriction then a helper..

alki/water injection and intercooling help with heat soak

[shortrack]

Well I did the Midwest Muscle Car Challenge this summer and beat on it for 2 whole days and did not have any problems. The car had never been on a track other than drag strip before then. The only issues with the "system" was that the turbos I have are too small and the EGT's were pegging the guage at the end of the front straight....the guage goes to 1600!! And it was doing it EVERY lap!! And I made 40 of them! Lol! The other problem was the oil pump pickup tube fell off that day sometime. I still did the 99 mile cruise and the speed stop challenge and the autoX the next day also. Needless to say the oil was totaly dead and then on top of that it had zero pressure when I was on the brakes. But the next weekend (after changing just the oil) I drove it about 300 miles to a car show/cruise and the weekend after that down to the dragstrip and ran 5 or 6 passes and back home! Then I pulled the engine to put an oil pump, pickup and went ahead and slid new bearings in it. Actually just drove it for the first time again tonight! Lol!

So, to answer your original Q, yes they can be beat on without problems. My suggestion would be to have some kind of killer heat insulation inside the car or on the pipes or something (which I don't have!) and to have an oil cooler (which I don't have!) on it. And run GOOD gas while you are beating on it (which I did do!).

Very good, a real world testimonial......I have a lot of questions, mainly how long have you been running with the above set up? how much power are you putting out? did you do anything special to the engine to prepare it for the turbos? could you give a quick run down on it? is there much lag? and is there a build thread for your car?....thanks!

when my car is (cough) done I'll be running a mild engine I have laying around the shop then I'll work towards the big gun keeper engine and you cant ignore these modern turbo set ups. D

[shmoov69]

Very good, a real world testimonial......I have a lot of questions, mainly how long have you been running with the above set up? how much power are you putting out? did you do anything special to the engine to prepare it for the turbos? could you give a quick run down on it? is there much lag? and is there a build thread for your car?....thanks!

Well, there is no build thread. I did the turbo setup in 2000 (when everyone said it couldn't be done with a carb!) and it has prolly 50,000 or so miles on it since then.....that enough?!?! LOL! Yes there has been changes since then, but the majority of the "setup" has been the same. The current engine has 4 bolt block. Blower dish pistons in it with a Scat crank and Eagle Sportsman rods. The heads are mildly ported Vortec stockers. Super Victor intake. Holley 650 puddle dumper that we modded. The cam is a custom grind Comp which is now a roller since last summer. The trans is a TH350 that I built and put good TCI stuff inside and converter. Turbos are junkyard T-3's and a good air to air Griffin intercooler. Pretty basic stuff in all reality. The power output is around 550 rwhp and 650 rwtq with a fairly mild tune. Rear is a 9" with 3.00 gears. Best pass at the strip is a 10.97 @ 125 with some ET Streets.
Since I put the MSD 6AL-2 in it, the thing has just a little lag since I now have timing down low. For the first 8 or so years I just had the timing locked at 24* which ran my EGT's high at cruise and caused some lag. Should've done that YEARS AGO!!
The first engine that lasted 2 1/2 years was a stock 2 bolt with cast crank, stock rods (and bolts) with factory replacement pistons on a "hone job" block! It lasted that long and 17,000 miles before the skirts broke off the junk pistons (in a loose bore) and caused the cyl wall to split. Actually at the dragstrip when it started puking water badly.
I have no idea what "real" turbo power will do on a road course, but little weenie turbo power does fine!

[shortrack]

wow 550/650 at the rear wheels, running 10.90s and been running since 2000......nice! theres a case for turbos if there ever was one.....man this place complicates things lol..... btw how much boost does it put out and how high do you rev it? and did you build the engine or did a shop build it and who came up with the..."formula" of what parts/pieces to put in the engine??

thanks for your patience!/ D

[MonzaRacer]

Jimmy, My friend I have new respect for you. As I thought of twin turboing my Monza I now have a pic of your engine and intend to whip up something similar but use LT1 intake and FI.
You are now my hero I do believe. And since cheap turbos are available from Ebay,,,.

[shortrack]

Jimmy, My friend I have new respect for you. As I thought of twin turboing my Monza I now have a pic of your engine and intend to whip up something similar but use LT1 intake and FI.
You are now my hero I do believe. And since cheap turbos are available from Ebay,,,.

speaking of Ebay....what does everyone out there think of the kits available from there???...they seem almost insanely reasonable.

[John Wright]

I'm a little skeptical about the cheap turbos on ebay....if you loose the bearings in one of those things, that crap gets pumped throughout the whole engine. Think about cheap bearings in a piece that spins a bunch of rpms.

[ProdigyCustoms]

The heat is your biggest problem with turbos

[DButler]

I just got my twin setup working. I am using ebay turbos and they seem to be fine. Still finishing up tweeking the tune on it. I have to wrap my exhaust because frank you are right. Mna those things produce tons of heat. I have a front mount intercooler as you do and I am running a black magic fan setup and my car barely gets over 180. I let it set there and idle for as long as I want and it never gets above 195. So hopefully all works out I am still new at this so I am testing mine to see if it will hold up to abuse and being street driven where ever. I have a few friends that live and breath turbos and thats the only thing they swear by. They seem to like them really well so I guess we will see how my works out.

[shmoov69]

Ok, on mine I got it at about 12 psi on just pump gas premium and can go up from there with good gas, about 18 psi or so. Just remember that psi is somewhat measuring back pressure and not necessarily "boost" in every case. If I had good turbos, I could make the same or more power on less "boost".
I put the engine together myself, just had the machine work done at a shop. And the "formula" so to speak was from stuff that I had laying around, but a good cam......mainly because I had a friend that worked at Comp tho!! There is all kind of info on the turboforums now, just didn't check it out when I was doing it way back then. Heck, I don't know if it was around then?! Oh, and no need to turn rpms with it, I can shift at 5000 or 5700 and it won't make a bit of difference at the strip!! Lol. But that is my combo, others may vary.

Now the eBay setups....I think the "kits" are pretty much, well, cheap! From the headers that I have seen, they are thin and the welds suck. The turbos I have heard both sides, junk and good. I have heard of a few guys buying the cheap turbos and sending them off to be balanced by a pro and them lasting just fine. Heck there is a guy in town that has an LS T/A that is a street car that runs mid to low 10's that way.

On wrapping the headers, I had a buddy that did that on his Typhoon and the mild steel basicly disenegrated after just 2 years, supposidly from condensation. So consider that with custom made headers before you wrap them.

There is INTENSE heat underhood tho. I got a "heat island" going on in one spot that has litteraly ignited #2 & 4 plug wires. They were not touching anything and stay a minimum inch from any metal. That was after about 20 minutes of idling in traffic and the engine temp getting up to about 235 or so. But the car won't run ANY cooler than 195 at any time for some reason.

The biggest problem with me is that now that I "got" the power, I can NEVER go back!!!
Go for it!!
Sorry for being so long winded!! Lol!

[Charley Lillard]

I have twin turbo cars and also a LS9 supercharged car. Between the two the supercharged setup is better for the track than the turbos. The turbo setup holds up just fine but there is always a turbo lag issue that doesn't happen with the blower setup. The blower setup gives you a much flatter torque curve. You know exactly what you are going to get with the supercharger. With the turbos you don't want the boost to hit right in the middle of a turn. Turbos tend to give you a big hit all at once versus the supercharger and that is not good on the track. That was a issue with the early turbo Porsche. Many got wrecked because the boost hit too hard all at once. If I were you and had a clean slate I would do a LS with a Magnussen type blower.

[shortrack]

I just got my twin setup working. I am using ebay turbos and they seem to be fine. Still finishing up tweeking the tune on it. I have to wrap my exhaust because frank you are right. Mna those things produce tons of heat. I have a front mount intercooler as you do and I am running a black magic fan setup and my car barely gets over 180. I let it set there and idle for as long as I want and it never gets above 195. So hopefully all works out I am still new at this so I am testing mine to see if it will hold up to abuse and being street driven where ever. I have a few friends that live and breath turbos and thats the only thing they swear by. They seem to like them really well so I guess we will see how my works out.

thanks for chiming in what is your set up it doesn't say in your sig line...do you have pics?

[shortrack]

,
Sorry for being so long winded!! Lol!

what mods to the carb did you do?....I hear roots supercharged boat guys talking about "boost referencing" a carb but dont really know what that is...do you start it up the the carb stock and just start doing plug chops and jet from there?

Dont worry one single bit about being long winded Jimmy
I appreciate all the time you've taken to explain things, youve been VERY helpful. You've shown that you can reliably put some serious miles on a twin turbo set up. Something that is basically home built, not babied and it doesnt sound like you have a zillion $$ in to it......you're the perfect guy to respond.

the road racer in me (Superbikes) expects to carefully build something right the first time, then be able to take it out and flog the livin' hel out of it for hours on end with basically regular maintenance and worry way more about chassis set up and lap times than if the engine is going to melt down or blow up...the contractor in me carefully chooses his products based on long term real world accounts not hype in print adds or magazine features....Im never the first guy on the block to have something.