Turbo Build Article Part 1
IT BEGINS!
My ongoing quest for power is taking another giant leap forward. Hopefully for the last time. It started way back in the day with simple bolt-ons. My first mods were whee’s and tires, spark plug wires, an intake and tint on my windows and exterior lights. I actually did my first car show, Hot Import Nights at Irvine Meadows, with these measly few mods. Don’t ask me what year that was. Anyway, the mods list grew and soon I started doing track events. Up to this point it was mainly a show vehicle which was why I had a few hundred pounds of stereo equipment in the trunk. Not a good thing when whipping around an autocross course. I found this out the hard way back in 2000 when I raced in the first ever Ultimate Street Car Challenge along side Craig Lieberman when he had his Supra. So I decided to rip everything out and concentrate a bit more on performance.
After doing a lot of drag racing and a few road and autocross courses I decided that the bolt-ons weren’t enough to keep me competitive. The car handled great but I simply needed more power. Being that I had a Saturn, my options were very limited. The turbo option was virtually an untapped field for Saturns due to the fact that not a single company had done any decent R&D on turboing a Saturn. Of the few individuals who built turbo Saturns, several ended up with blown engines due to boosting too much on stock internals and also poor fuel management. Sure there were some success stories but nothing solid. Therefore, in 2002, I decided to build the engine and go naturally aspired high compression.
Because this was a daily driver, I didn’t want to cut any corners and end up with a blown engine, so I intended to build the engine as strong as possible. It took me several months to find a shop willing to work on a Saturn. Unfortunately after a couple more months, they were only able to re-sleeve the block and order the pistons. They were unable to get the rods or any of the other performance parts needed to complete the engine.
I then spoke to some friends at Saturn Motorsports in San Diego and they agreed to complete the build. So I picked up the block and pistons and towed my car down to San Diego. They were totally surprised and impressed by my Darton Sleeved Saturn block. So surprised that within 6 months they released their own re-sleeved blocks. Anyway, I left the car with them for a couple of months and was very happy when I picked it up. 11:1 compression, fully build daily driven Saturn. Fun and very original.
I raced, tuned and showed the car and continued to modify it over the next few years. I’ve had a lot of fun but my thirst for more power has been increasing over the years and has finally gotten the best of me. It’s time to take that next step. A full custom turbo kit.
FSR MOTORSPORTS www.fsrmotorsports.com
I’ve entrusted this project to my friend Ian and his crew at FSR. Ian is a legend in the Saturn tuning world with his crazy powerful turbo Saturn SL2. His fabrication work is amazing and beautiful. FSR will take on just about any challenge where many other shops would shy away from in fear. Their motto, “Give us your car and line… and we’ll cross it”, is one of that they truly live by and they leave no stone unturned. They cut no corners. They build it right the first time.
Just a day or so after they picked up my car, (Yes they came to me to get my car), the engine was pulled and fully disassembled and the front of the car was a shell of it’s former self. Very impressive to say the least. Notes were taken and parts were ordered to get the ball rolling and here is what Ian had to say about the build so far.
“The engine looked really good, but the high compression and racing made it seem as if it had about twice the miles that it actually had on it. The bearings looked pretty worn… about like 250k+ miles worn. However, the bearing damaged seemed to be on the top meaning that most of the bearing damage was done by improper timing maps that put undue pressure on the crank when it wasn’t in the correct angle in order to convert that potential energy into rotational inertia: or what makes power.”
“The pistons looked great, and the cylinder walls looked fantastic as well. There was none of the gouging that we are used to in high boost, high RPM Saturns. This primarily is because the car never saw 8k rpm plus, where the long stroke means that the rod angle is steep and puts a lot of load on the side of the motor. RPM makes power… but it definitely tears more on the motor than say boost or high compression does, when tuned correctly.”
“For tuning we are going to be using the Electromotive Tec3r stand alone engine management. We’ll custom fabricate every single wire that runs the entire car, and create a simple clean wiring harness that eliminates a lot of the factory sensors that are unnecessary.”
At this point they are waiting for the pistons as well as other items to arrive while test fitting and custom fabricating various parts for the build. This is only the first part of the build so check in soon for the continued story. As usual, more pics will be uploaded to the gallery at http://www.SpeedSyndicate.net
This article was written by Q. President of Speed Syndicate Racing.
This article was used with the friendly permission of Q.
Article released by Dimi on 02.08.2008 17:38:21
