Hey, my buddy just picked up an 89 turbo caravan. The car is pretty nice, has 110,000 and the previous owners just had the head gasket replaced. When he was at the local stereo shop, some guy that had another chrysler turbo car told him that his turbo wasn't spooling. Well, they were in neutral anyway...so it couldn't build boost. The car was also running really hot, which we found to be the fan not kicking on...perma fan and a switch, now it runs about 195. Now for the turbo. We went to summit racing and picked up a boost gauge, hooked it up off the manifold on the line going to what I presume to be the factory boost solinoid. I tried hooking it up on a tee that was inplace right before the wastegate but it didn't read any vac from there, so I moved it. So we fired up the van and it read about 19 lbs or so of vac but we only got it to about 4 psi on the road. What could the problem be? The turbo doesn't make any funny noises, in fact, it's pretty hard to hear it do anything (granted 4psi isn't much). Could the solinod be bad? Lastly, the stock temp gauge doesn't work. Could that also be part of the problem? Perhaps they don't allow full boost till the car is warmed up and it thinks it's 0 degs or something? Any input by you or any one for that matter would be great. Thanks fellas.

 

Oh yeah, it's a non-intercooled van. I read somewhere that these turbo cars were suppose to have 9 psi and a max of 11 or 12...this would seem quite high without the IC. I would post this somewhere else, but I don't think there'd be much of a forum for a turbo van :P

 

You either have a bad solinoid, but I think you have a vaccum leak.

Pull the intake pipe from the turbo and see if the turbo shaft has play in it.


Change the exhuast system to 3", you may find your cats are clogged. all of these cause low boost.

Pull the wastegate vaccum line you should see max boost, but be very carefull as you can blow your engine doing this, it is only a way to test the turbo.

 

And this belongs in the 2nd Gen section because???????

 

Because the GLHS guy is on the 2nd gen forum and I had a question for him...notice the subject it to him. Lay the F off.

 

can't we all just be friends?

Turbo basics apply to all cars, and being I own one of each. Maybe I throw some ideas out there.

 

In the moment of rage, I noticed that I forgot a few words like the word "is" in my second post. It's amazing how dumb you sound when you don't use proper grammar or spelling. I don't care when people say stuff like that, but the facts are; There is no dodge caravan turbo forum...kinda hard to find troubleshooting for it. It, being a turbo vehicle and more of a turbo related question, I asked it here. Sorry if I offended anyone by asking a Dodge question.

 

Dude, take a valium. It was a simple non-offensive question. The forum is full of enough repeat questions and BS that posting stuff in the wrong section just clutters it up more than it already is.

 

Change the topic of the thread to "How to tell if a turbo isn't working" and everybody will be able to sleep tonight.

 

Ok...so my 7 passenger RX-7 that I just got seems to only boost to 4 psi. What gives. The fan doesn't work either...huh. It also seems that the vtec soleinoid isn't switching over. I called autozone to see if they had an upgrade cam. They're still looking and they're gonna call me back.

 

some people just need a reason to whine This is supposed to be a community. I think it is interesting reading about a turbo caravan

 

Check the exhaust, like those guys said previously.

 

This is the coolest minivan I've ever seen. It's all black with tinted windows. The nice caravan alum wheels. Aftermarket ground effects too. We're hoping to get it into the low 15's/high 14's on the cheap. Guess these things are really easy to modify.

 

And to answer to the guy above. If there wasn't any filler and no repeat questions (which I dislike also), there wouldn't be much of a forum. These cars are pretty old, it's not like a bunch of new, exciting ideas are going to pop up. I tried talking about a new intercooler/radiator setup..yet nobody seemed to care. So ****, why not a turbo van....waaaaay more interesting than an electric supercharger

 

Hey! I got an idea! AIRPUMP SUPERCHARGER!!!!!

Yeah.. I saw a van like that on the web a while ago, it beat some '80s vette at the track. I was talking to Jimmyv13 (I think) and he said some retarded guy bracket races his minivan.. he just floors it and his times are always sooo close :P

 

I'm not whinning(sp?). I was just bored at work so I thought I would be an ***. How did I do?

Goto www.grassrootsmotorsports.com and look at the Grassroots Motorsports Challenge. A couple of years ago someone run a turbo minivan like you guys are talking about. It actually had a feature article in the mag if I'm not mistake.

See, I can be nice also.

 

If you're fan isn't working, I would replace the relay, on the drivers side shock tower.

You can take them apart and clean them, they are just like old points systems.

here is a forum, that may help you.

http://66.51.98.8/php/phpBB2/index.php

 

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