Hello, everyone and welcome! As you can see I am here with Charles from HubbleMechanic (Hello) .com (.com)
And we're going to be talking about 5 ways to prepare your car for turbocharging, because Charles
what are you doing to your car?
So I have a '98 GTI with VR6 2.8 Liter
and we are going to be bolting up a turbocharger to it. Super pumped, should see about a hundred horsepower to the wheel increase
With the turbocharger yeah, so I have a question for you charles
We're going to we're about five different things in order to you know get your car properly turbocharged, right?
What's probably the first thing you need if you want to turbo charge your car, so after you [have] your car, okay?
You got a car the next thing you need of course is....a turbocharger
[you] would need a turbocharger or it is really hard to boost your car with a
Turbocharger if you don't have a turbocharger, and so you've got this as a kit. Yeah, right this came all [as] a kit
This is a Garrett t3 T4 turbocharger which means it's a hybrid so the compressor inside is different than the exhaust side
okay, cool, [and] this would be quite a bit bigger than
Most most oem gas small engine turbocharged cars
And how much pressure are you looking to put in your 2.8 will probably be running?
About 10 PSI of boost so it's going to be low boost levels. I want this to be
Incredibly reliable
I'm not trying to push it to the max of this or the max of the engine
That's what [Volkswagen] is known for pushing it to the max.
I was going to say reliability
and honesty and integrity
glad we got all those out. pew pew pew pew
It's the gangster wheel what about [when] I'm not that gangster you can work out. Maybe this one
The Charles what's next on the list so next up on the list is going [to] be upgrading fuel components in most cases?
The stock fuel components meaning fuel pump and tank
[high] pressure pump if it has one and fuel injectors are probably not enough to deliver the extra
Quantity of fuel that your engine's going to need we're pushing more air into the cylinder
And we need to back that up with fuel. Right, more power you need more fuel.
the oem are probably going to have something capable for you know maximum power obviously and then a
Rich Air fuel mixture if needed, but not much more than that
so you need to be able to have more flow and that's what these will do for you as well as the
[inline] fuel pump now the other thing worth mentioning about fuel is if you're going to be turbo charging your car clearly you know you're
Putting some money into it you might as well
use the best fuel out there you can buy the highest octane you can buy and reason being is because
That reduces your chance of having knock
It's just one less thing to worry about
So get good fuel in it get a higher octane fuel so you don't have to worry so much about pre-ignition or knock occurring
in using those low Octane Fuels
Which are more more
Common to have in these kind of situations--- right and some of this may be a little bit overkill for me and the amount of boost that I'm running
But I'd rather as this build goes on
Do a little bit more than I absolutely need you know you might be able to run on stock injector stock fuel pump
But the last point you want to run out of fuel
Delivery is at the highest boost level right and then your lean and then all of a sudden you're getting pre-ignition
And then you have bigger problems
way big way bigger problems. They are problems like holes in pistons
Because of pew pew. Because of actually not bew bew more like beeeeww...bewwwww
The third thing we're going to need when we're adding a turbocharger [on] to our car is proper engine management
So the Ecm [and] monitoring, and we need a way [to] monitor will talk about the monitoring in a second
We're going to need to
have a computer that can compensate for this increase in air and this fuel demand simply putting new injectors in it is not going to
Get it done in fact it'll probably in some ways make your car run worse on an old car [like] mine
It is actually a chip that gets installed. So you've heard people talk about chipping their car
That one literally is a chip if the car's more modern usually it just comes in the form of an Ecm tuned
Some ecms do need to be opened up to
do this like adding a ground wire is a really common [thing] or simply plugging into the [obd] and
Changing the mapping and letting the computer know that you are now going [to] be
Increasing [airflow] of course then [that] needs to increase fuel change timing perhaps it really depends on how much boost you're going to be
asking [for] from the turbocharger and in certain situations
You're potentially electrically controlling boost as well
So we need to have a computer that can compensate for all that stuff. Okay and so on the monitoring end
you're going to be looking at exhaust gas temperatures and
Wideband O2 sensor for your Air fuel ratio right right depending on how you're doing it
You know a lot of these things a lot of these
Turbocharger setups come as kit so it's going to come [with] a tune or may come with a whole new engine computer
That does make it quite a bit easier, but even though the Ecm is going to be tuned for it
we still want to keep an eye and make sure that we're not running too lean or our timings not way off or
When we haven't developed some kind of problem like a boost leak like a failing injector
So that we don't run the risk of doing damage to the engine the great thing about cars that come
Turbocharged [is] all those safety measures [are] [built-in] yup and good kits will have those safety measures, too
But monitoring exhaust gas temperature and really more importantly monitoring air fuel with a wideband o2 that's the key is a wideband
Is vital to make sure that you don't do catastrophic engine damage now charles [a] tool
I have found helpful over the years in explaining on how stuff works. [I] didn't know this was coming
Is this white board and so what I wanted to mention?
We're going to get the reflections out there we go
We go to the things basically you want to keep it safe and in order to keep it safe
You want to start with a really rich mixture because that reduces the chance of knock so you start rich and then you start leaning
Out that mixture while you're tuning it and eventually you know your power is going to keep increasing and then eventually that power is going
To start to drop and once it starts to drop you go back to where it wasn't dropping
You can get peak power or you can stay a little bit safe and go left of that
Same thing with timing so you're going to start with heavily retarded timing. That's safer
You're not going to run into knock issues or pre-ignition issues
And then you slightly advance that time you keep advancing it you'll start to get to a point. Where you reach peak power
You don't want to get into a point where you start to get knock
But basically you would you advance it as much as you can based on the fuel that you have
The other parameters of your engine that allow [for] that and then you can reach a peak power
[two] ways of tuning it
But basically if you want to be as safe as possible
You keep it really rich you keep the timing retarded and then you play with that in order [to] you know have a car
That's more fun
But still reliable and I think it's really important to mention that this kind of tuning is
Usually best done on a Dyno to eliminate all of [the] other variables that would happen and not only it's a thousand times safer
But to eliminate all that stuff that could [potentially] happen if you did it in the back Street
Moving on to number four we're going to talk about cooling. So we've got three [different] things
We're going to talk [about] here our air. Yeah, oil. Yes, and water-ish right
We'll call it coolant. We'll call it water ethylene glycol. We'll call it coolant. Coolant G 13++ in this case
Yeah, so we are going to be putting more air
We want to you know one really common thing on most factory turbocharged cars. Is they have a charge cooler whether
That's air to air like this one or air to water like some other ones
Adding you know adding an intercooler or charge Cooler is not
Mandatory you don't have to do it, but it's more efficient
It's way more
Efficient and boy if you're going to go to all the trouble to bolt one of these babies on you might as well put in
a little extra work and
Cool that air coming into the engine. I would agree with you. Just don't paint it black. So when you compress air heap up
you don't want that heat going in your engine you want cool air lots of oxygen and
So you get one of these and you cool that you bring that intake air temperature down you make more power
and you do it more efficiently so great thing to do one thing on this you want to make sure you're using an
Appropriately sized one you don't necessarily need one
That's you know three feet tall right, and you also want to make sure you're not blocking too much of the radiator
By installing one of these because that coolant cooling down the coolant is also vital in this situation right absolutely
And you [know] as you mentioned if you get super big with this
You lose the effectiveness of it, so it's not necessary in the first place
and then also you're going to increase turbo lag because you're needing to fill this [entire] thing up with air before it gets into the
Engine right so not the smartest thing you want it appropriately-sized
moving on to the turbocharger itself you could have a liquid coolant in this this one is just oil cooled and
Also, you know allows for what does oil do right, so this is friction
So when it comes to cooling and lubricating [the] turbocharger this one is actually
just oil cooled and lubricated there are other setups that would have coolant lines coming to and leaving the
Turbocharger as well, so we need to make sure we're pumping cooled oil
Into this turbocharger, and then having a way for it to drain back into the oil pan so typically you'll get an oil pan
With a bung welded onto it so [you] can have a return
You know the feed source for the oil it really depends on the setup on my setup
It's going to be coming right out of the oil filter housing and then as far as coolant
It would be just the [same] you would need cool coolant to it and then a way for it to drain out
You know back to the radiator or whatever the setup?
Really best suits for for the vehicle, but you do on every single turbocharger
I've ever seen have a spot for oil feed and oil return. And so then finally of course
You're making more power more power means more energy
And more [energy] means more heat ultimately because internal combustion engines are not perfectly efficient
They're like not that efficient at all
That's like [30%] or so we can tell
So anyways you've got a lot of heat that heat needs to go somewhere you may need to upgrade your radiator as a result
So you can compensate with that that could also mean getting higher flow fans
And then you know
Some of these radiators if you get into higher temperatures if you're tracking your car things like that you may want to go with like
All aluminum Tanks rather than just plastic end tanks
And really it really sorry to cut you off it really depends on the setup for that. You know it [from] my set up radiators fine
I will be switching to two electric fans. The car from the Factory had one electric fan and then one
Auxilary Fan driven by a belt off the main fan which is [a] little bit
inefficient as far as
The overall efficiency of the cooling system goes so I am going to upgrade to two electric fans which will flow more air
But as far as do you need a radiator. Do you need to upgrade fans it really depends on the setup
Yeah, often you know it depends [on] where you live - so radiators are always designed for the worst-Case [scenario]
So they're assuming you're in Phoenix, Arizona, and it's extraordinarily hot and your flooring it, and you're not really doing that all the time
But if you are and if you want to - then you know you need to think about that and size your radiator
Appropriately that is a pretty cool story
Bro, so number five the last thing we're going to talk about and it's a bunch of different things
But basically what you'll learn if you turbocharged your car and do nothing else
Is that there are probably a bunch of weak points that you weren't thinking about that?
You should [have] considered when turbo charging it
So you know some of the more obvious ones if you add power?
You need to have brakes that can handle that power
You need to have tires that can handle that power you might want to size your exhaust
Appropriately because you have additional
Flow you know these are some [of] the more [obvious] ones clutch is another one that [you] probably really want to yeah clutch as well
So it's not slipping but [Charles] here has some different spark plugs. [yeah], [we] why do you have different spark plugs
I'm actually going to be dropping a one level of heat range down on spark plugs so that in that higher boost
Situation we're pushing the heat away from the spark plug a little bit more efficiently
[that'll] lead to less heat at the spark plug in a more even combustion
So the way that you're changing that heat rating is by changing how much of that?
Insulator is exposed and so if you expose more of it and has a higher heat rating it
Retains more heat if you expose less of it
It's putting more of its heat back into the cylinder rather than in the combustion [chamber]
Or the cylinder head, I should say cylinder head
You know remember [that] if you are adding this stuff to your car
Things like the spark plugs were not necessarily designed for that application
So you want to make sure that you're really paying attention to things like spark plugs like our cooling so like all the stuff
We talked about today to make sure that you're getting it right
And then one other thing we're going to talk about is compression ratios. So what do we have here Charles right, so
Dropping the compression ratio is another way to play it a little bit on the safe side
With this setup. [I] could have easily bolted all of this up and
Been on my way and had a really fun time with it
but adding something like a head gasket spacer or
Lower compression pistons will drop the compression
And it'll really in this situation the reason I did it is for if I ever want to upgrade the turbo
I'm not having to pull the head off
Yeah, you know put new pistons and then or put a spacer
And then I can simply add [more] power with a bigger
Turbocharger you might also find that you have other weak points in the engine a really common one on the this generation
Vr. Is connecting Rod bolts, so I'm going to be upgrading bolts
I'm also going to be putting head studs instead of bolts, and then if I saw if I do have a problem
I can just pull that off they also have a better strength higher strength, so they'll be less prone to failure
But basically what we're doing here is you're choosing. You know how much risk
do you want to have you can choose to do less of these things and as a result have more risk of
Something going wrong, or you can choose to play it very safe
Like Charles is doing and you know putting in these extra measures to make sure that the car is more reliable, right?
So that's kind of you know
That's the balance you need to make and it would be my personal suggestion that you do all of them
And [you] [don't] [turbocharge] your car, and you leave it stuck
And you just change it at the dealership you let them do it then you take all responsibility out of your own hands [I] I?
Definitely agree with you. It's all about risk mitigation
You know I'm going way more deep than I really needed to
but I wanted A
Reliable car that built good power that I didn't have to worry every single time I put [the] key in to start it for every
Time I mash the throttle that something [was] going to go kaboom
Honestly if you blew kablooey if you can't if you don't have the funds to do it the right way
it's probably best that you wait until you do you could easily by [Ebay] turbo kit for
$700 [bolt] that baby on and if you're looking to blow your engine up that night be an awesome lady
It could be fun great
[I] feel like we've talked about a lot of different [ways] that you want to improve your car
And it turns out that there's going to be kind of expensive Charles there's a few things you're changing yeah, yeah
it's not you know a
Hundred and fifty dollar air intake or a $700 tune. This is big bucks in fact. I will have spent considerably more
turbocharging this car than I did for the entire car I
Think I'm going to be doing this thing [with] my five thousand if I ever start doing it
But [finally] the good news Charles actually works on cars rather than just pretending like he will in the future
So if you're interested in watching his vr6 turbo build you should subscribe to his channel
I'll put a circle over your face
Not to cover it up. That's a little bit rude, but I don't want to click his face click my face
And that's all we have in this video. Thanks for watching guys questions, or comments leave below hello everyone and welcome
It gets me every time it was so good - it was glad I've said it 800 times at this point if not more