- So you want to turbo your car, classic.
You want to make some power, make a bunch of cool noises.
(car engine revving) You want to be a boost creep
and you want to make lots of dudes think you're cool.
Trust me, I get it.
But turboing your car can seem overwhelming,
there are so many parts, there's so much to it.
How did you know what to buy?
What Turbo's right for you?
How do you even tune it?
What is cooling?
And maybe most importantly,
how do you get all those exhaust gases from your engine
into the turbo?
Well, that's what we're going to be looking at today.
I'm Zach, and this is "Money Pit: How to Turbo Your Car"
six-part spectacular.
Part two, exhaust manifolds and downpipes.
(upbeat music playing)
- Big thanks to Ridge Wallet for sponsoring today's video.
Now as you guys know, I make a million dollars an episode
and they pay me in cash so I always have too much.
This money is going straight to Nolan's college fund.
(leaf blower whirring)
I'm ruined.
As you guys know, I make a million dollars an episode,
Joe!
Cool jacket.
- Thanks man I know, but listen,
any second now a leaf blower is going to come by
and blow all that cash out of your hand,
and if it does, Nolan's never going to go to college
and then he's never going to meet Marta
and his destiny to save the world will never be fulfilled.
You've got to use one of these.
Every Ridge Wallet gives you the option to have a cash strap
or a money clip so you can keep your cash safe and secure
styled to your liking.
- Nolan really saves the world, huh?
How can I help?
- You can start by telling people to go to RIDGE.COM/DONUT,
and if they use code DONUT, they'll save 10% off
but you got to hurry 'cause time is of the essence.
Ah, looks like I got to go,
I think Nolan broke his back and isn't going to make it home
in time for Christmas.
- Not on my watch.
- Kind of my watch, but okay.
(Zach whistling)
(lighthearted music)
- Cool.
All right so here's the deal, here's what we got.
This is the CXRACING kit.
Now, originally I wanted to get the Flyin' Miata kit
for the "Money Pit" Miata,
but with the pandemic and the world the way it is,
it's kind of hard to get your hands
on the things that you want.
And you guys wouldn't leave me alone
without turboing the thing.
So ultimately, I had to buy what I could get,
and that's this CXRACING kit.
Now this is one of the cheapest kits on the market.
Still it only costs $1,850 before taxes for all this stuff,
and it comes with pretty much everything you need
to turbo your Miata.
You've got a turbo manifold, a downpipe, a turbo,
an intercooler, intercooler piping, a blow off valve,
and super sweet red air filter.
I am hoping to make 225 horsepower,
which is almost double what it's making right now.
The big question with the cheaper kits is quality
and fitment.
So as we install this whole kit,
we'll evaluate quality and fitment of each piece
as we go along.
And we'll also just talk about each piece,
what it is, how it works, what its job is
so you can understand what might work for you.
Now this week, we're going to be focusing on the hot side.
We're going to be focusing on turbo manifold and downpipe.
How do you get all those exhaust gases
from your engine into the turbo?
What should you buy?
What's going to work for you?
We're going to talk about that and more all day long baby.
First thing we gotta do, as always, is get that old stuff
off of there.
But for the first time I'm not taking off stock stuff.
We're going to be removing the header that we installed
some time ago for an episode.
(lighthearted music playing)
All right.
So the job of the exhaust manifold is to get exhaust gases
out of the head of the engine as quickly
and efficiently as possible,
and a really well designed exhaust manifold
will promote what's called scavenging.
And we've talked about all this before
in the episode where we installed this exhaust manifold.
But briefly, scavenging is basically a little pocket
of vacuum behind each exhaust pulse
that helps pull the next exhaust pulse out of the engine.
But how has a turbo manifold any different
from a regular exhaust manifold?
Well, for one thing, it's going to have a turbo bolted
to the end of it, hopefully,
and that turbo kind of acts as a big old blender
and it kind of negates a lot of the effects of scavenging.
So you can still get some scavenging with a turbo manifold
but it's not quite as big of a thing.
So with the turbo manifold,
we're mostly focusing on flow and reducing turbulence,
getting the exhaust gases to the turbo
as smoothly as possible
so that all their energy is used spinning the turbo.
Now that we know that, what should you look for
if you're shopping for a turbo manifold?
The first question you should ask yourself,
it's the big one, how much money are you willing to spend?
If you are willing to spend a lot of money
you can get some really nice stuff.
But if you're not willing to spend a lot of money
you can get by with the cheaper stuff too,
it's just not going to be as nice.
What are my power goals?
If you're not trying to push the limits of your platform
maybe you don't need the nicest, bestest,
most expensivest craziest thing.
Maybe you can get by with something a little cheaper.
Now one of the next questions you should ask is
what kind of turbo are you going to be running?
And more specifically, what turbo flange?
So where your turbo mates to the exhaust manifold.
Well there are different flanges.
For example, what we're going to be running
is called a T3 flange.
Our exhaust manifold and our turbo both have a T3 flange
so they can mate up to each other.
And then one of the other questions
that you really don't have much of a say in answering is
what is on the market for your platform.
You might be a little bit limited
just based on what's available.
Next, in terms of a turbo manifold,
where do you want your turbo to be mounted?
In the case of the Miata
or anything else you're thinking about turboing,
if there wasn't already turbo,
well, it's kind of just up to you where you put that turbo.
The options that you have can be boiled down in some ways
to a top mount or a bottom mount turbo.
Now a top mount turbo like this is called that
because the turbo is mounted on top of the turbo manifold.
So that places the turbo nice and high,
which obviously looks pretty cool.
It's pretty easy to swap this turbo out,
pretty easy to get to my oil and coolant lines,
and pretty easy to work on in general.
But it also looks pretty illegal
if you're worried about that.
And another downside is that this increases
under hood temperatures pretty significantly.
This makes a lot of heat,
and with it sitting up here that heat just kind of
takes over the engine bay.
Now back to the Miata.
So the other option is a bottom mount turbo
where the turbo just sits down on the bottom
of the manifold,
and that's great for some reasons too.
It's A, a lot stealthier.
So if you get pulled over and they pop your hood,
who knows, maybe they won't even see it.
Also, it really reduces the engine bay temperatures
because the turbo's way down here
rather than sitting up here
just cooking the whole engine bay,
and usually you get a more straight exhaust you see,
because with the turbo down there
the exhaust pretty much just has to go down a little bit
and then straight back.
So you get a really nice straight exhaust.
With a top mount turbo,
you're pretty much always going to have to have
an S-shaped downpipe of some sort.
But then you kind of think back to your power goals
and for 225 horsepower, I think that'll be fine.
Now what is not an option is removing this header
from the car so we can install our turbo manifold.
So without further ado
I'm gonna yank this thing out of here.
You're out, bud.
(upbeat music playing) Ooh!
Okay.
I think that's ready to pop off of there,
now we just got to finish up top
and then this thing's out.
There she is.
A little worse for wear, but not too bad.
So now that this non-turbo manifold's out of the way,
we can start doing some turbo stuff.
All right,
this is the turbo manifold that came with our CXRACING kit.
All in all, it seems to have decent flanges,
the welds seem to be decent enough
so this should work.
It's maybe not the prettiest example,
but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and well,
I'm cheap.
Let's talk overall about tubular manifolds
versus cast manifolds.
It's going to be tubular.
Tubular (eerie laughter).
First off, a well-designed tubular manifold
is generally going to offer the highest peak horsepower
for a given setup.
They're just better designed for flow
and because they aren't cast, they can be pretty intricate
and all these long tubes can be made
which can help you make more peak power.
So in general, your tubular manifolds are going to be
more expensive because there's a lot of labor required
to make one of these.
All these welds and all this tube fitting up is usually done
by human hand.
So as opposed to the tubular manifold
where this is made by welding a bunch of pipes together,
the cast manifold is made by casting molten metal
into a shape.
So for that reason, they're pretty cheap to make
and they can be really durable if they're made well.
And for that reason, a lot of OEMs use cast manifolds
for turbo setups.
All right, so now that we have a general understanding
of tubular manifold or a cast manifold,
let's go ahead and install our tubular manifold
on the Miata.
Finally, this is the first turbo part going on.
I found a new shirt and we're ready to put this thing
on the car, hopefully, should go pretty easily.
(lighthearted music playing) Let's find out.
Okay, so it's kind of in there
but we've run into our first interference problem.
You can see that our new header is making contact
with our dipstick tube.
So I'm going to rip the header back off
and probably just bend the dipstick tube.
Should be fine.
Let's see if that's enough bending.
Gorgeous.
All right, so we got the turbo manifold in place
and it didn't come without its headache.
I mean, that's just kinda how it goes
with the cheap turbo stuff.
Now all I gotta do is throw the nuts on this thing,
tighten them down, and then our turbo manifold is on.
But the next thing we need to talk about is the other part
of the exhaust system, the part that gets the exhaust
from the turbo to the rest of your exhaust, the downpipe.
(upbeat music playing)
Downpipes!
They're pretty simple, but they're pretty important
because what happens right after the turbo
actually has a pretty big impact
on the way the turbo spools up and makes boost.
So gases in general, especially exhaust gases like these
like to flow from areas of high pressure
to areas of low pressure.
Your downpipe, that's going to be your low pressure side,
and the lower you can make the pressure in your downpipe,
the easier gas is going to flow from the high pressure side
in front of the turbo to the low pressure side,
your downpipe.
The biggest downpipe you can run in terms of diameter
is going to be the best option for a turbo car.
It's going to help the turbo spool up because it helps flow.
So if you're shopping for a downpipe for your turbo build,
it is nice to buy a manifold and downpipe together
because then you know that the downpipe is supposed to work
with the placement of the turbo,
which is dictated by your manifold.
But if you're separated
and you've already got an exhaust manifold
and you're looking for a downpipe,
some platforms might have a lot of options out there
that you can pick up that will go from turbo placement
to your stock exhaust, and you'll be gravy.
But it's not always going to be that simple.
You're not always going to find an off-the-shelf downpipe
for your custom setup.
But luckily these are pretty easy to make
and they're not that expensive.
You can go to most exhaust shops
and talk to them about what you want
and get a downpipe made for relatively cheap.
So with all that said, let's go slam this puppy on the car.
Oh, wait a minute.
I'm missing a pretty critical part.
There's no turbo.
Although it does look like that's going to work.
Spectacular.
Okay, so yeah
obviously we're missing a little spinny boy right there
for the downpipe to mount to.
We are going to do that next week.
But I guess for now,
where I come from it's customary to fire up any car
that you've got the exhaust off of
and this one, well, it turned the exhaust up.
So if there's going to be any flames, we should see 'em.
It's going to be loud.
(car engine starts)
(car engine revving)
Well, no fire got shot out,
but hey that's a nice way to break in a new intake manifold.
I hope you guys enjoyed.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
We're finally cracking into the turbo stuff,
I hope you guys are excited.
So next week we're talking about turbos,
it's going to be so much fun, I can't wait.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @ZACHJOBE
and follow Donut @DONUTMEDIA
and I will see you guys next week for a turbo.
And maybe we'll make some fire at some point
in the life of this car.