The prices are things i found from ebay, here in the classifieds, and other random parts stores. Its just a sourcing guide to determine an estimated cost. I dont believe the air fuel gauge was a wideband... the one at the shop however is, so tuning would be ok.

I had wondered about the lag, especially in a car that already has shakey bottom end power. Seeing as ive never driven a turbo car, im not sure i would notice the lag as much as say someone who has had quite a few of them. I originally was thinking about a 2inch charge pip from the turbo, but wasnt sure. I thought a 2.5 inch charge pipe would be a lil big, but once again, never done a turbo anything before....


These are things that i feel would be beneficial for people to know. It would be a long trial and error period if people who had knowledge didnt share it. Again i realize that a remote mount isnt ideal in any instance, but again i must stress that its cheap, for fun, and a learning experience for future projects.

 

NI_Racing:

There is quite a bit of information on RMT over on the RX8 club. It has been done 'successfully' by several members. Your budget may not be accurate, but if you take your time and jump on buying opportunities that pop up you will do ok.

Aaron-: I am not disagreeing with *anything* you said regarding the RMT principle. HOWEVER remember the unmitigated hell you caught when you began the original N/A Turbo project? Everyone said you were wrong, it couldn't be done, the compression was too high, you would pop a seal, your fab skills suck, just buy a TII swap. Then you did it. Then they said you the drive train couldn't possibly hold up? Then you made what? +/- 400+ Hp and drove it for several years with no trouble?

Someone is going to RMT an FC 'successfully'-whatever that success turns out to be. They will be better off with more information/help than without it. Until that happens, we are really just bench-racing the principle. I am looking forward to someone making us all eat our words. It keeps the community energized.

 

somehow I don't think this guy will be the one to make aaron cake eat his words. He clearly doesn't have any base knowledge to go off of and i would bet a lot that it would be difficult for even an experienced builder like aaron to pioneer the RMT on an FC "successfully". If this were tried and true and there was a write up then maybe this kid could do it.

not to mention he seems to be seriously lacking in the funds department, and we all know that any FC project takes 150% at least of a conservative budget. I know this oh so well from personal experience.

I'd rather see his car run and not be quite as original than have him waste his time and money trying to ghetto rig together a RMT setup.

 

I would suggest running a wideband. A narrowband will tell you if you are grossly rich or lean but isn't that great by itself for fine tuning. You can tune by reading a narrowband and the plugs if you have the experience. This is what I did when I made my first turbo NA setup.

I still think your budget is way off. As an example, just the gaskets for the stock turbo will run you about $150.

A properly running rotary doesn't really have a shaky bottom end. It is almost as good as most piston engines of similar and slightly larger displacement.

I don't have any direct experience with remote mounted turbos on an rotary but I would think 2" would be a little small and you would experience pressure loss. Then again, 2.5" may be a bit big and take a while to inflate. Either way I would expect it to be far laggier then a turbo mounted in the engine bay...Which brings us to:

Why not mount the turbo in the engine bay? Get a set of TII intakes and then port match the lower to the block. Bolt on the turbo using the stock manifold and the TII intakes. Done. Now all stock stuff fits on the engine. FMIC, downpipe, etc. You just have to figure out the oil feed and drain. That is probably the easiest and potentially the cheapest way to do a turbo-NA setup.

I think the lag with a remote mounted setup and stock sized turbo would be horrendous.

If you are dead set on it, then size the turbo appropriately for the application. The stock turbo is quite large and sized to be driven directly from the exhaust ports.

Again, not saying remote mounted won't work, but it's unnecessary and far from ideal in this case. I gather the RX-8 people do it partly out of necessity due to the exhaust manifold design. Our FCs have caverns of space in the engine bay. I think in this case going remote mounted may simply be far more difficult then the alternatives.

Yes, I remember the fun time I had with the turbo NA project back 10 years ago. But remember, I didn't pop in asking all kinds of questions. I asked once about the identity of the oil feed and drain lines on the turbo and then again about intercooler placement on the FD. Then there was months of silence before I posted a thread with about 20 pictures, that last few showing an TII turbo successfully mounted onto an NA engine using NA intake manifolds. Starting these threads with base knowledge and realistic goals has a sobering effect on the replies.

It's not quite bench racing though. I believe I have already made some pretty good points that show remote mounting isn't really the way to go. Now I am expecting someone else to come in here and then talk about how there won't be lag. But we all know that turbochargers run just as much on the thermal differences as they do on airflow. Case in point, I remember when Horsepower TV did an STS turbo kit on a Corvette. In that case, there is nearly no engine bay space so it's the way to go. However they talked for a full minute about the lack of lag, but then they had to hold the brake on the dyno in order to build boost in 2nd gear.

I think funds are the key here, not making people eat their words. The budget seems unrealistically low. Even just having fun and experimenting, stuff simply costs what it costs.

 

These are all valid points and if doing a remote mount setup will end up costing the same as a traditional turbo setup, then there would be no point in doing it, other than for the sake of being different.

I figured that if the car was tunned using a wideband, then the narrow band would just be there to tell me hey... this is why im acting funny and you should turn me off now. Instead of riding around going, i wonder why it feels different today...

There is a guy floating around on another forum that did a remote mount on his cavalier, and had it into the low 13's high 12's with 10psi. His setup cost him ruffly about a grand, with all the trial and error, and lasted for a few years till he did a swap for bigger displacement. I figured if i could alieviate alot of teh trial and error parts, i could cut costs down from the grand that he spent.

On top of that, i dont know anyone else who has done it. Ideal or not, im suprised that i'd be the first... Thats actually a lil scary...

In the end, my 87 will have a rebuilt engine, fuel management, and probably a legit turbo setup.