If I was to single turbo my FD from scratch ( Lets say I have all the parts already ), Just using online forums and diagrams for hoses etc, Would someone be able to complete a single turbo conversion at home? Of course it will take a long time, and will need lots of research.

If you have done one yourself, Let us know about any issues you came across when doing the conversion.

 

Technically yes, though I'd say a lot would depend on your mechanical capability.

No matter what you'll want/need a retune, that's less likely to happen based solely off threads.

 

Totally depends on the person. Possible? Absolutely. By everyone? Nope.

 

^ pretty much. If going single is your first foray into working on a car then just don't. Save yourself time, money, hassle, and an unfinished project and just take it to a professional.

I hate to sound like an elitist jerk, but it's one if those things where if you aren't sure and need to ask, than it's probably not gunna work out well.

 

Yep. Also the stock twins are VERY well documented online and in the shop manual with how they go together. Most single turbo setups are at least partially unique so each one is slightly different with how it goes on, how the lines hook up, etc.

Unless you buy a NICE kit, a lot of the kits out there are incomplete or require a good deal of fab work. That's definitely not an easy job.

As stated, once you get over the hurdles of getting the kit on properly, everything hooked up, and it's not leaking or smoking, then you have to figure out how you are going to tune the ECU. A single turbo big time changes how the car makes power, you can't expect a stock ECU or an untuned PowerFC to cope. That's a recipe for a blown engine REALLY fast.

Dale

 

It's a lot easier for people who have an experienced person helping them or for those who have done big projects on other cars. If you've bolted on a turbo kit on another car before, or removed and torn an engine down to the block, you have the existing knowledge.

A lot of it too is having the experience and tool set to get into tight spaces, deal with broken bolts, and all the stuff that comes with a 30 year old Japanese car. I'm excluding tuning from that. From what I've seen, it's usually those who have tackled the mechanical side extensively and then want to move to tuning who succeed in this platform. On others, say Subarus, you might get people who bolt on a simple kit and then get into tuning later.

If you want it to be mostly DIY, budget the time and money for you to have to re do things and replace stuff that breaks in the disassembly process. Be prepared to pull the intake manifold and turbo multiple times to hunt down leaks, that sort of thing. It's basically a multi month part time job. If you can't commit that kind of time, scale your ambitions way down, or you'll be another one of those "i'll get to it someday" guys with a torn down FD and a pile of parts in his garage.

When I was learning how to tune, I ran catless and only had race gas in my car for the initial tune--not because I was trying to be a badass or something, but because I knew it afforded me safety margin if I screwed up and ran lean. I tried to tune it to pump gas AFR and timing using safe 100 AKI unleaded race fuel. Obviously race fuel is very expensive (2 or more times pump fuel) but it's a lot cheaper than a new motor. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that to others for practical reasons.