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Hey, what’s up? Welcome to Death Trap Garage, where we build death traps to scare the ever living snot outta their drivers. I’m Nathan, the top mechanic here, what can I help you with today?
Oh, you’re the new guy? Well, nice to meet you. It’s lunch break right now, so it’s just me here, everyone else is off-site. Have you had lunch yet? Well, I got some leftover pizza from last night that I just microwaved, and there’s enough for two.
How’s the pizza? Pretty good? Yeah, it’s gotten better since the time some dingus ordered anchovy pizza… Hey buddy, you know why we’re called Death Trap Garage? Yeah, pretty obvious, eh? I got plenty of death trap stories I could share with you… hell, maybe I could even make a podcast or book on this! There’s a story I always tell every new hire. It’s about my first build at this garage, and how I almost royally screwed everyone over. Oh, don’t worry, let’s just call it “how not to turbo a V8”.
So, you know about the Crown Vic? Yeah, the 1990s cop cars. Pretty neat cars, I daresay, four doors and rear-drive and big V8. Very durable too. So legend has it, this guy came in with a 2004 Crown Vic, former police car. Actually, the 2004 update for the police Crown Vic was the last time it got a power upgrade to 250 horses at 4900 rpm. You know how they did it? They literally swapped in the intake from the Mercury Marauder. Yeah, 11 horsepower gain from that. Anyways, some guy rolled in and told us to turbo this thing on the cheap. You can probably see where this is headed.
The car itself was actually quite properly maintained for starters, literally in perfect condition. Hell, even the bodywork wasn’t damaged in the slightest, and the guy had taken the time to remove the police paint job before painting it maroon. So, we pull the old Modular V8 out of the Vic, and it’s bone stock, so we waltz our merry asses over the way to the Pick n Pull nearby to go dumpster diving.
Yeah, it’s one of those junkyards where there’s a ton of old cars lying about and you pull the parts you want and pay for them. So we head inside and look around for a cheap, small-ish turbo that can fit, and we find a 2017 Nissan GTR that got hit quite badly. The engine was toast, but the turbos were still in working condition, so we yanked them out… Yes, both of them, but we just used one, the other turbo we ended up using on another project. I’ll tell you that story some time later.
So, we head back to the shop, get some aluminum piping and start fabricating the boost pipes. Now, we also did buy an aftermarket transmission that’s basically a beefed-up version of the stock 4-speed that came in the Vic… yeah, well, I wouldn’t trust a 90s American 4-speed slushbox to handle upwards of 350 ponies and even more torque. Anyways, we start fabbing boost pipes, and I realize that we forgot about the damn intercooler. The solution was relatively simple: we just swapped in an EcoBoost Mustang intercooler from Ford Performance. But where was I? Oh yeah, the boost pipes.
So, a stock GTR turbo is a 53/56mm turbo, as in 53mm turbine diameter and 56mm compressor diameter. That’s not a small turbo by any means. Remember, the bigger the turbo, the wider the boost pipes. Problem was, the boost pipes we originally fabricated didn’t fit under the hood, and the Vic’s owner wanted it to look stock, so I just shrugged and used smaller boost pipes. That came back to bite me in the ass later.
Anyways, the rest of the build was basically throwing in a cheap-ass camshaft and a new exhaust for the turbo. We also welded the diff because why not. So come dyno day, we’re expecting 350 horsepower to the wheels at most, then we do a baseline pull to get the AFR and timing right and we get 325, which isn’t bad for a high-mileage Modular V8 at all. Then we get to the actual high power dyno pull. We’re just watching the dyno chart hit 350, but then it just kept going up and up until about 400, when we heard something just shatter completely. It sounded horrendous.
My first thought was something in the engine bay, but when we popped the hood everything was fine, not even a scratch. So we were like, “let’s get it on a lift and check under it”. Lo and behold, when we open up the differential casing, we get metal shards tumbling out. Apparently, the boost pipes were too narrow, so we got boost creep, which ended up being too much for the stock diff to handle. Mind you, it was also welded.
Fast forward to a quick Facebook Marketplace jaunt later, we have a new limited-slip diff and another problem in the form of boost creep. Basically, the turbo was too big for the diameter of the boost pipes that we’d fitted, and remember, those boost pipes were the thickest ones we could fit in there, so the only option left was to use a smaller turbo. As luck would have it, there was a Civic Type R in for a turbo upgrade… Yes, the FK8 Type R. Now, the stock Type R turbo is a 42/46mm turbo, which is still nothing to scoff at but a good deal smaller than the GTR’s turbo. So we threw in the Type R turbo, installed the new LSD, threw it on the dyno and voila, no more boost creep and a very healthy 350 horsepower to the wheels on 91 octane.
What’s that? Ah, well, normally we’d run 93 octane or maybe even E85, but the guy wanted a street car, and most gas stations in Canada only provide up to 91 octane, so we have to compromise a lot of times.
Oh, the Type R? We just threw in one of the GTR turbos and cranked the boost all the way up, and because the FK8’s engine is direct injection, the sleeves are almost double the thickness compared to the older Type R engines, so we can get away with just boosting it to the nines. Forced 27 pounds of boost into that sucker, and it was pushing 450 horses on a stock engine with full bolt ons and a GTR turbo.
Welp, looks like the boss and crew are back, so I’ll let them do the rest of the orientation thingy. Yo, new guy’s here! He’s all yours!
Have fun, my man, we’ll chat later.