Want!
Twin turbo kit for my Tactical Car. And someone to put it in. Because I can’t.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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April 6th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Ugh, parts grenade.
Wait until the warranty has expired.
April 6th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
well, yeah.
April 6th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Just forget the Infiniti and turbo, NASA will be having Space Shuttles for pennies on the dollar.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Turbo kits and paying other people to install them are attempts to get around the need for understanding how it all works.
When your car breaks down, remember that you won’t be able to take it to an ordinary mechanic anymore. You’ll either have to go to a shop familiar with your kit or you’ll have to do it yourself.
I took the DIY route. I got a decently powerful car that is decently reliable when I’m not tinkering with it. I’ve known people who went the “wallet mechanic” route and their setups cost several times more and were much slower and much less reliable.
Keep in mind that adding a turbo also means:
-need for more fuel capacity
-need to control ignition and fuel in a region of manifold pressure the car isn’t designed for from the factory (ie, under boost)
-more stress on clutch, rear end and transmission
-more thermal stress on engine. If the factory cooling system is weak in any way, problems will manifest themselves under sustained boost. This can lead to lubricant breakdown, oil coking, hot cylinders (leading to detonation, pinging, leading to cracked or melted pistons), and similar problems.
-more stress on thrust bearings from stronger clutch
-more stress on rods and bearings
-more demand on the fueling system, relevant if the factory fuel pump, fuel rail or injectors are marginal at stock hp level
Keep in mind that a lot of these turbo kits are “completely reliable” with the huge caveat that you aren’t supposed to operate under full boost for more than 30 seconds at a time. When I built up my car, it took several years worth of tinkering to fix the cooling system to the point where I could drive the car hard, keep the AC on and still not overheat the oil. Nothing kills non-factory turbo cars like a track day.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
I missed your “tactical car” acquisition post, but complement your choice. I’m on my fourth and fifth Infiniti now. I’ve got the last-of-the-breed ’05 Q45 and my wife has an ’07 G35S.
Your Infiniti experience was typical of the breed and I’ve bought my five from three different dealers in two states (I moved.)
The turbo kit is coals to Newcastle by a very long shot. Unless you’ve got some sort of car destruction gene deep in your soul it is a sure route to disaster.
Enjoy, enjoy!
April 6th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
I have worked most of my professional life in the turbo market, always for the most trusted names in the business. And most recently in the import car market (including designing turbo/supercharger kits for many import cars). And I can tell you; this kit does not look like a quality kit. I very much question their tuning (I have seen some crazy bad things in tuning), and there are some legitimate good options out there for those cars. Also, I find it a very bad sign I have never heard of GTM given they would have been a competitor of mine. When you know all the big names and most of the small names in the business, usually when someone new rolls around, it isn’t because they are innovative or good.
April 6th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Eh, I’d stay away from that kit. TT systems are generally far more complex (and a bigger PITA to work on) than a single turbo setup.
Stillen does make a supercharger setup for the G37, and they’re well known in the Infinity/Nissan world
April 6th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
i’m going to echo Dave and mike w – not a quality kit in the least. go with Stillen.
April 6th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Not just “not quality” but that kit looks like the generic turbo kits you see offered for all manner of cars, then you buy it, half of it doesnt’ fit etc. etc.
I’ve been out of the car scene for a while now, but I remember guys buying kits like that, then spending a few grand more on major fabrication just to get stuff fitted (sometimes this was impossible, the “kit” amounted to a pile of junk) Then, on the off chance they got it running they’d have constant tuning issues and/or other major gremlins that never went away.
Jim Said,
“Nothing kills non-factory turbo cars like a track day.”
Absolutely. You see it all the time, even with factory turbo cars. What seems to run well even when going hard on the street exposes all kinds of deficiencies on the track.
One of the most glaring things I’ve seen are folks running large front mount intercoolers in place of factory top or side mounts. They go with them to provide greater & more efficient cooling for the turbos. Problem is they can block airflow to the radiator and engine bay. That means major overheating issues that present themselves when you abuse a car on the track.
April 6th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
As I said above, you have to keep in mind that adding 50-100 percent more hp than stock adds lots of thermal and mechanical stress on the system that the car may not have been designed to handle.
A lot of cars are designed with large margins so that they can be operated reliably under extreme conditions like driving a car up a mountain with a trunk full of weight lifting equipment. But every car manufacturer designs different margins into different parts of their equipment.
The only way to figure out which parts can take more stress and which parts have to be replaced is to build up the car and drive it hard until stuff breaks. Then you fix those problems and turn up the power more. And repeat. A “turbo kit” only purports to address the issue of injecting more air and fuel into the engine without it exploding or holing a piston on the first dyno pull. To actually have a car that a non-mechanic can drive on the street every day without worrying about breaking it, you need to put effort into a lot of other areas as well.
April 6th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Thanks for the tips, all.
April 6th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
I have a Turbonetics ST kit for an ’05 350Z that was never installed (the baby came before I could put it in and, well, you know… 😉 )
Not sure if it’d fit the G37 but if it does you can have it super cheap (full guages, harnesses, engine management system included).
April 6th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
I see the Obammao depression has really hit you hard. If you have money for more toys, check this out. http://www.steyrarms.com/products/sporting-rifles/steyr-hs-50/
They are on sale for only $3995
April 6th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
Yea the higher the performance, the more stress on all the parts. The turbo just rams more air into the engine and unless it’s factory, the rest of it really isn’t designed for long term stresses of 500hp vs the 330 you have now. And they lag.
April 7th, 2010 at 1:10 am
Lag is very much misunderstood and not nearly as deadly a scourge as many seem to think. Turbo design has come very far in the past 20 years.
There are two factors that control the onset of boost when you press the throttle- turbine size and compressor size.
Every centrifugal compressor has a range of pressure and flow within which it is most efficient. At lower levels of flow, compressors stall and can only make limited amounts of boost. On a car with an overly large compressor, boost will come on quickly, but only above certain RPMs.
Turbine size refers to the size of the turbine wheel and to the size of the exit aperature of the turbine. The bigger the wheel and hole, the slower it spins up, but the more flow it can support overall- you can trade response time for higher levels of flow at the top end of the curve. Unless you’re using a very old turbine design or picked a completely wrong-sized turbo, this won’t be a problem.
April 7th, 2010 at 5:35 am
Love turbo’s got one on my motorcycle.
Don’t do it. Boost is like a crack addiction and it will ruin you for anything else.
April 7th, 2010 at 9:39 am
I disagree that turbos put more stress on internal shortblock components like the bearings, rods, and pistons (well, with a proper tune, of course). If you look at the BMEP of a turbo engine vs. NA, the peak pressure is not much higher, if at all. It’s just a longer push, not sharper like nitrous.
Tell you what, Uncle, I just got a Moldex crank for my Oldsmobile turbo build; I’ll race you to 1250HP! I figure it’ll be another 8-10 years for me to complete my build and have it running.
April 7th, 2010 at 9:40 am
Sounds to me as if you really need an Amherst-Villiers. Have it both ways. The real question one must ask oneself is, “Of what does high performance motoring consist?”
I’m a satisfied daily user of the Paxton SN60. In my day, 350 HP on a 3100# chassis was considered erm quite adequate. It was assumed that every town would have a pro-streeter at the drive-in, but handling and braking would out on River Road. On the wall above the workbench where I served my apprenticeship was a neatly lettered placard reading “Horsepower is expensive. How fast did you want to go?” A Mr. Drouin contributed to my comprehension of that axiom.