[Boost Samurai]

Some of you may remember a couple of months Chuck and I attempted a (stock) turbo swap on his sick Supra.

Unfortunately, until now, I haven't been able to get the photos we took that night off my phone.

Without further delay, here's the story as it unfolded.

We got to work on the car around 10am on Saturday morning. After assesing the situation we decided the "easiest" route would be to try and remove as little as possible. That is to say, remove only the bare minimum and anything that was in the way of us getting to the turbos and nothing more.

We were also throwing up the idea of whether to change just the one turbo or both, again, to try and save time. Realistically though, we didn't really know which turbo was the cause of the problem and in the end we decided to change both.

The reasoning behind this was that with one of the turbos being stuffed we thought that the other "good" turbo would have taken more stress boosting on its own, and thus it was better to change them as a pair in case the "good" turbo "let go" for some reason after the swap.

Basically, we began by removing all of the induction piping from the left side of the engine bay. With everything that was done, we tried to keep as many of the components together as possible, without completely dissasebling them. As you can see below, the intake pipe that goes between the two turbos is still all in one piece.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7272/DSC00351.jpg

Here you can see the Caleb and the naked turbos, after removing the intake system, still attached to the block. Again, we left the vac' lines intact and still attached to the rear of the engine.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/632/DSC00360.th.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/9894/DSC00352.th.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/636/DSC00353.th.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/2415/DSC00354.th.jpg

Everything started out fine and we made plenty of headway removing heaps of stuff from around the turbos, but this was short lived, as we soon ran into BIG problems. In particular one stuborn stud on the second turbo. Not only was it virtually impossible to get to but the sucker would not budge.

We tried to get to this one stud from underneath by removing half of the exhaust system. In doing so we also realised that there was more to remove from under the turbos in order to get them out, namely, a number of supports which ere bolted to the block.

While the exhaust was off we (I) decided to do a couple little modifications of my own ;) Can anyone guess what these mods were? :bleh:
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/1271/DSC00361.jpg

To cut a long story short, we spent the next 3 or 4 hours stuck on this one stud. We tried everything we could think of to get this stud off, including heating it up, but NOTHING WORKED! :(

The way the turbos are bolted to each other meant that you we could not pull one off without pulling off the other at the same time. At this stage (10pm-ish), there was no turning back and after consulting a couple of websites regarding this problem as well as calling up Gav we bit the bullett and decided the only way we were getting these turbos off was to take off the entire exhaust manifold. Our biggest concern, could the gaskets be reused? Up until this point, every gasket (except the turbo oil/water lines, as we would find out later)we encountered was metal and could be reused.

Spirits still high, we rolled up our sleaves and got to work.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/6397/DSC00363.jpg

I worked on the six studs at the top of the manifold while Caleb worked from underneath to remove the other six studs from the underside of the manifold. Surprisingly this process went without a problem and the entire manifold and turbos were off within an hour or two.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5007/DSC00364.th.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4811/DSC00365.th.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/2115/DSC00366.th.jpg

In the picture below you can see the stud on the turbo which caused all this trouble.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8448/DSC00367.jpg

Once the whole shebang was removed it was easy enough to apply "excesive force" and get that damn stud off, split the turbos and start the swap/reassembly.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5907/DSC00370.th.jpg

BTW, I forgot to mention, when we dropped the exhaust, this is what was sitting on the actuator that goes between the number one and two turbos. For those who don't recognise what it is, it's the exhaust wheel from the number two turbo!
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4357/DSC00358.th.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8015/DSC00357.th.jpg

And, here is where the exhaust wheel SHOULD have been ;)
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5261/DSC00368.jpg
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7093/DSC00369.jpg

Ok, so now we're on the road to recovery which, again, was not quite as easy as we had hoped for. Essentially, it took for ever to get everything (the oil ines in particular) hooked back up again :(
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/3606/DSC00371.th.jpg

The sun is coming up and we're almost there... the heat shields are back on at least ;)
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/849/DSC00372.th.jpg

Final touches, as the prez hooks back up the actuator lines and electrics (using his own Supra for reference)
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/2474/DSC00373.th.jpg

Once everything was back together and double checked, we topped up on coolant and oil, which we lost when taking the turbos off, and proceeded to start her up. Holy shite, first turn of the key and she came to life straight away! Phew!

We let her idle for a while while keeping watch on the temp and oil pressure as well as checking for leaks under the car. So far so good, and after the car got up to temperature we decided to take her round the block.

We backed out of the driveway and started to drive around the block VERY carefuly, the whole time watching the temp gauge for signs of trouble. Other than a bit of light smoke from under the bonnet from the spilled oil & WD40 overspray all was good. Then, all of a suddent the temp gauge starts to climb, so we back off and it drops again. Essentialy, with any kind of throttle input the temp gauge would start to rise. So we simply limped around the block and back up the driveway.

Once back under the carport, we let her cool a little, slowly releaved the pressure from the radiator and proceeded to fill her up with more coolant until there were no more air bubbles.

Once again, backed herup and started to go round the block. This time, as the last, only light smoke from under the bonnet but the temp did not budge so we took her out toward the highway, continuously monitoring the temp. We gave her some stick a couple of times just to see how she would react and the car felt like it pulled a lot harder than it had previously. Out on the highway, we did a couple more, longer, pulls and it definitely felt better with these new turbos (thanks Andy).

So, after some 23 hours of consistant labour we had done the swap. Should the need to do it again arise, with everything we'd learnt during this exercise, we think it could be done in about 8 to 10 hours.

So there you have it folks, what you think? :D

P.S. I'll fix up the spelling mistakes at a later date when I've got some more time :bleh:

[Wookie]

Holy Moly!
Now that's dedication and sheer guts for you.
Great story, pics and write up mate...these sort of experiences certainly help everyone on the forum.
Have all the nigglies been ironed out?

[Boost Samurai]

Thanks wooks.

Guts maybe, simply because we were attempting this without really any idea of how to go about it other than just common sense.

Not so much dedication though, it was more so despiration. Caleb's other car had been crashed that week by his younger sister (she was Ok) So if we didn't put the Supra back together that night he would of been stuck for a ride home/work etc.

We were also tempted to have a break and sleep and come back to it later the next day. If you've ever worked on something like this before, you'll know that once you stop, the motivation tends to deminish and all the aches and pains from the hard yakka start to appear. So we made a conscious decision to work through instead. Needless to say we were both a bit bruised, cut (Caleb even took hair and skin off his arm at one stage while battling with the stuck stud under the car) and very sore for the next week or so.

Also, the "niggles" are no where near resolved :( He still has issues with the second turbo kicking in, although now at least it works.

At the dyno day I think Caleb pulled a whole 115rwkw compared to the previous 97rwkw (at half throttle) & 47 or 57rwkw (at full throttle) he was making before the swap. Just put it this way, before the swap he had Ford Lasers giving him a spanking :bleh:

Since the swap he's also had to swap the actuator between number one and two turbos because it wasn't playing nice. Again, that didn't solve all the problems but has made a slight difference and as time goes on it seems to be slowly fixing itself with extended periods of use/throttle :D

I for one am just grateful for the experiance and the knowledge gained during the swap. It may just come in very handy in the not too distant future *wink* *wink*

[Yiros]

Top write up Poleman.

Sometimes it is better to have a rest and start with a fresh set of eyes This should help us when we remove the turbos from George's car

[Boost Samurai]

Time was not on our side, neither were the circumstances otherwise I would of loved to have taken more time to do the swap.

Removing the turbos was easy enough, we had to worry about fitting them back on again, that was the difficult part.

By the sounds of it, chucking a single on George's car will be a much easier task (room/access wise) than trying to put the stockies back on.

If you need a hand, just yell out... ;)

[spiller]

nice work. ive done this on my 1JZ and its certainly not a fun adventure. i also had the issue with the stud locking the two turbos together meaning you had to pull both turbos off as one - this was a nightmare and made the exercise a lot more difficult.

This post has been edited by spiller: 24 December 2006 - 01:04 PM

[Boost Samurai]

That bloody stud mate! Arghhh! When we searched the net for an answer to that particular issue the number of other people with the exact same problem, when removing the turbos, was asstounding :D Toyota must have done it on purpose I reckon ;)

[spiller]

yep its amazing. every time i work on my car i find its as if they purposely put nuts, bolts and studs etc in places where other things in the way. its almost like they are rubbing it in!

[chuck_E]

Cheers for the efforts both on the night and with this right-up SP. :notworthy:
Your assistance was integral in getting the job done.



*A quick tip for anyone working on their pride and joy and time gets away from you.*
"BE WARY OF LAYING ON CONCRETE FOR TO LONG"
My back has been giving me grief since

This post has been edited by chuck_E: 25 December 2006 - 12:55 AM