Hey I know some of you guys have defintely seen the picture on page 22 of the book "Maximum Boost" by Corky Bell. It shows a turbo kit for a thidgen Camaro which mounts the turbo somewhere at the front RH bottom of the car. It looks like to me that it is a reasonable idea. But I am new to this turbo stuff. Did a search and found nothing. I probably garauntee that they do not make it anymore but it looks like it could be duplicated.

What do you guys think about it?????

 

Actually, I think Turbo Engineering still makes that kit, Bell's book is only about 5 years old now I think. It does look like a promising kit, giving your old 5.7 an extra 200 hp. If you can't find it, you could make it out of a TO4, front mount intercooler and air filter, headers, and what looks like 2 1/2 - 3" pipe.

 

When mounting the turbo down low, you have to run some type of oil scavenging pump from the oil drain line back into the engine, as all turbos i've seen use gravity to drain the oil back, with the turbo mounted up high, it's not a problem. Turbonetics is developing a similar kit for 90s corvettes that uses a low mounted turbo. They mounted an electric pump on the valve cover to scavenge the oil.

 

Hey heres a scan of the pic for you guys that dont have the book.


I have not tried to contact turbo engineering yet but I have my doubts. Do you figure those headers are custom made???

 

Sorry scan size was too big, I dont know how to post it???

 

resize it

 

send it to my email and I'll see what I can do...

 

That appears to be the old predator setup (I've got more pictures of it in my archives, that I'll post if I can), here's a resized, cleaned up version of the scan:

 

I'm hoping for a little indulgence from the moderators, but here are some small scans of a 13y/o artical on the thing

 

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Great info thanks!!!

I am going to call Turbo Engineering next week, I'll post back to let everyone know what I find out.

 

Yeah, i would love to give them the money to build that kit, even if they don't regularly produce it anymore, as it's almost exactly what i want.

 

I'm glad that it was helpful.

FWIW, that setup should be very easy to build, though somewhat expensive...

 

i've been thinkin about doing a similar setup, but using reversed TPI manifolds, then going to headers later, but at least this gives me a general idea of how to lay it out i guess. Unless the TPI manifolds won't work, though, that's why i'd pay for this type of kit, or even one that puts the turbo up by the charcoal canister (as i don't have one). The banks kit will let me keep my accesories, but that's just a little too much $$$...

 

If you reverse the driver's side manifold you'll hit the motor mount, the passenger side reversed will hit the accessory bracket.

I'd be very surprised if the banks setup lets you keep your accessories. I would imaging that it would get in the way of the AC, possibly the alternator, the smog stuff and probably all the heater plumbing on the passenger side as well as the AC/Heater box.

I also doubt that this setup would be any cheaper then the banks setup

 

The original banks kit re-located the AC compressor to directly above the water pump.

 

Thats a pretty sweet setup. Thanks for the info! I also thought the A/C would have to be removed with the banks kit. Lemme know because if I can keep the A/C I'll be really happy (under the impression it had to be removed).

 

Well, the new banks kit uses a vintage air front mount accessory drive, with a/c on the pass. side, drivers side alt, and remote resivoir p/s pump. Of course this is optional (read like this: $$$), but it'll allow you to keep your accessories.
I never really looked at the TPI manifold, good to know they won't work before i go buy a set, even if they were cheap.
This kit (although i doubt it's still available) had a kit price of under $3000 back in the 90s, so i don't think inflation would be that bad as to drive it up to match the banks kit with the optional accessory drive setup (alone around $1800). And it's only one turbo, granted it's a whole lot more plumbing.

 

Keeping the A/C is a big advatage to this type of set up IMO. I am going for more drivability than the all out performance of the Banks system.

I dont think those are thidgen headers just flipped around, they dont really look like the edelbrocks that I have. But they might be some sort of readily available small block headers, but how to find out which ones I dont know??? Or they might be custom headers built by Turbo Engineering??? Getting the right headers I think, would be the hard part of duplicating the kit.

 

Ok, I talked to Turbo Engineering today, and the guy I was talking to was new at the company, and had never heard of the system, so no they do not still currently produce the kit. However he did ask one of his fellow employees about it and said "that he was familliar with the article but belived that they only supplied the turbo and not the kit" but thats not the gist that I got from reading the article. So what did I do, you say???? Well I e-mailed him the article (thanks to 83 Crossfire TA) so he could read it for himself. I am awaiting his reply. One good thing was that he said if they still had the templates that it could be produced again, at what cost I do not know.

Clint

 

This kit looks like a nice set-up. I seen this pic before I twin turbocharged my 89 IROC using jy turbos. I considered running something similar, but could not figure out what to do with the exhaust out of the turbo. It looks in the picture like it would have to go underneath the engine crossmember, but with my car lowered 2", it would have scraped quite often. This obstacle may not be a problem on some cars with normal ride hieght. The picture of the convertible in the article appears to be lowered a lot though.

Another benefit I see with this system is that it would minimize heat under the hood. After I finished my project, I ended up adding several heatshields to surrounding components. I used two turbos mounted high on the top of the engine and heat became an issue. Had to protect some things or they would melt.

Also, I'm curious about the 'new Banks kit' several people mentioned in this post. I called Gale Banks Engineering before I started my project and they said that was a project that was abandoned years ago. Did i talk to the wrong guy? I would really like to see pics of the new banks set-up. I honestly dont understand how the A/C could be retained- even if the A/C compressor was above the water pump, that leaves only 6.5" to the bottom of the throttle body. Also, how would the downpipes fit around the manifold and snake down around the evaporator box? Not saying it isn't possible, I just know when I designed my twin turbo system these were problems I wasn't sure how to overcome, so I ended up removing the A/C. Now I wish I would have given more thought to solving these issues- A/C is very nice to have!

About the oil system- anyone have any ideas about what pumps could be used? If I could figure out a effective and reliable way to scanvange oil from low mounted turbos it would open a whole new level of flexabilty in custom turbocharging. Thanks for any info.

 

The new banks kit isn't f-body specific, but uses the same manifolds as the f-body specific one. If you search around there have been posts on the old kit showing pics, with the ac still mounted, however, it used a TBI injection setup, as do the new kits, so TB clearance wasn't really an issue with the AC comp. there. Also, turbonetics is CURRENTLY developing a low-mount turbo kit for corvettes, that's where i first saw the electric scavenge pumps, you could call and ask them, that's probably what i will/would do.

 

I'm curious (I've asked questions like this before, but not for a while), what would you guys expect to pay for this kind of setup, what materials would you expect and what would you expect to be included.

 

my $0.02 would be that; If it only uses a little T3 or smallish T4 then considering how much cheaper the industry supplied turbo units are in comparison to a ATI in house built head unit the price would be comparible to the similar ATI kit. if it were a "race" kit that could use a huge more "race" oriented turbo, then I would expect it to be over $1000 more than a similarly intercooled "entry level" ATI blower kit (P1sc/D1sc). Does that help any? I use the ATI because I figured it they are intercooled and such.

 

I'd hope for a T04 with the headers, intercooler, wastegate, and plumbing, and nothing really else. I'm not even too worried about the intercooler, as i wouldn't expect to get much flow over it in the TA, i'd probably just run alky injection, like a SMC kit. Maybe since they quoted "just under $3000" in the article for the kit back in the day, maybe 3500-4000?

 

there is a new thread here of a guy selling a fairly nice looking kit on ebay. he is the producer of the kit and sounds like he intends to sell more. take a look if you havent yet.

 

Bad news from Turbo Engineering today, as it turns out there was two companys in the 90's by the name Turbo Engineering, the one I talked to is not the company that made the above mentioned turbo kit. And they told me that the other Turbo Enginnering company went out of business some time in the 90's.

So I have given up on thinking someone would still make the kit. However at the begining of the article Ramon Burrell is mentioned as the owner of the company, and the guy at Turbo Engineering told me that he thought Ramon Burrell was the owner of Turbo Technology, who makes turbo kits for fourth gen camaros, so now I am going to try and call them and see if this is true. If I could talk to him about the kit he might be able to give me some very usefull info on how to reproduce it........But Im not getting my hopes up.

Clint

 

bump back from the dead

how did it go???

 

It isnt the same company. I remember some people calling and they couldnt get anywhere with it.

 

by the way I just recieved a price sheet from Banks on some of their products. I can post prices this evening when I get home I left the price sheet their. Prices have most definately gone up. The only Price I can definately remember is the Complete twin-turbo engine rated 625hp-1100hp (depending on octane,intercooling, methanol inject) was US Dollars 37,950.00

 

sorry to bring this post back from the dead again but how are things going? i would love to see this setup for our thirdgens!