Can I turbocharge my LT1
 

I was recently given a turbo charger for a 350 from a friend of mine who has had it in his garage for 10 years. I looked into putting it into my 92 vette but I was told not to do it because the LT1 motor has 10.5:1 compression. I was told that I could only run around 3-4 pounds of boost safely which doesnt buy you much. Otherwise I would need to change out the pistons which starts to get really expensive. Is this true. Can I supercharge the motor instead or am I going to run into the same problem. I am in Denver where the air is a little thinner. I hate to waste a free turbo charger. Any suggestions fellas?

Milehighvetter. :chevy :steering:

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

Congratulations on your procurement of a turbocharger.

Unfortunetly there is no cost effective way of putting that into your vette that I can see. (not as knowledgeable as others on this, but I have listened to a lot of discussions about turbo lt1s). There are a few problems with putting a turbo on your vette...all of them can be taken care of, if you are will to put the time and money into it.

First that I see is that putting in a single turbo on your vette is that you have 2 banks of exhaust manifolds and you would have to run one side under you car and hook up it to the turbo (now I may be wrong on some of these that is why I suggest you talk with a shop that has some experience with single turbo 350s).

Second of all, You would have to reduce the compression ratio of your engine or fabricate a intercooler setup for you car in order to get more than 3-6 lbs of boost safely (even that is questionable). With an intercooler at our elevation (I'm in colorado springs), I have heard of people with 10.5:1 compression ratios (ie our LT1 vettes) running up to 10 lbs of intercooled boost on LT1 vettes via a supercharger (of course that is dependant on the loss through the intercooler).

Third of all you have to look at cost of tuning and testing of your setup. All of this could add up to lots of money.

But if you get it working I would love to take a ride in it and hear how you did it.

Let me know if you have any more questions or concerns that I could maybe help with. Here is my email slisula@msn.com .

Good luck!

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

its complex... the plumbing... the electronics... ick.

there are supercharger kits available that are more powerful and cost effective.

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (Scott94C4)
 

Scott got it right 10LBS boost intercooled you could see a 50% increase in power. THen down the road you could change it and lower your compression and buy forged internals which ( For me would be like almost $2,000) Then you could run more boost and more power.

I dont know about LT1's but I know for sure if your going to use one Turbo put it on the passangers side b/c their is no oil filter there. Oh yeah welcome to the board :yesnod: :yesnod: :flag

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (Light84vette)
 

Not to mention a turbo that's been laying around for 10 years most likely needs to be rebuilt.

It would need to be a fairly large turbo to feed a 350, but generally it's easuier to plum and manage a single turbo then it is if you were to run 2.

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (Springer's LT4)
 

Yeah I think its a little bit earier to run 1 turbo instead of two b/c the other one on the drivers side has no space to mount it. If you do it Callaway style ;)

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

Yes, it can be done. But it will cost you $2k to do it give or take some. First of all you need to make sure you have a big enough single turbo. You should be running a T-66 or bigger heavily leaning toward the bigger part.

I would advise mounting the turbo on the where your power steering resivoir is currently. Moving this is not all that difficult but finding enough room in the callaway position for this size of a turbo is going to be difficult.

Boost from a supercharger and boost from a turbo are the same. If the supercharger can run 10 psi then so can the turbo. Especially in denver where the air is thinner.

The biggest cost will be creating the custom exhaust manifold and supports for the turbo. What I did was to find a welder and drop off the car and have him build it. Expect to pay a good $1k for this. Next thing is to get a Vortech FMU $269 from Vortech. While you are at it you should order the oil feed and return lines(you might beable to use the Vortech kit as well). You'll also want to put a wastegate in there so add another $250. If you want an intercooler add 500-1000(check out ATI if you are under 500HP otherwise you will need a custom one). Intake piping will run $100-300, and lets not forget the boost gauge $50. So about $2-3k.

Now compare 10psi of a supercharger to the 10 psi of a turbo. The turbo will be 50-100HP more give or take some. This is due to the large drag a supercharger puts on an engine.

If you feel adventurous then a turbo will be the way to go, but if you are going for just a bolt on solution then stick with the supercharger. IMHO

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

Thanks for all of the input fellas. By the way, I sold my 95 GT mustang to buy the vette. I have definitley be converted to the bowtie brotherhood. I will let you fellas know what I do with the turbo.

:steering:

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (mn_vette)
 

MN_vette.
Do you have any pictures of the progress?

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

How big is it? I have a 60-1 compressor and I cannot get the hood to close on it where I want to put it.

Next I am going ot try a T04B

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (bill mcdonald)
 

I'm looking to put out a post in the C4 Forced induction/Nitrous section when I get my bigger turbo bolted on which is in mail limbo currently. :cry Keep an eye out for it.

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

Technically speaking you can turbocharge any car....even a stock LT1 (IMHO) with mild boost (6psi w/intercooler) should be ok but like others have said we do not know what kind of turbo it is, etc.

With enough money, anything is possible, and anything is possible w/o enough money!

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (Speedracer176)
 

1) I would not use the turbocharger that sit in the garage over 10 yrs.
2) It is not as simple task to install turbo on LT1 vette
3) That is why currently NO turbo kit available for LT1 vette
4)A complete custom turbo kit can be made with a cost of over $10,000


Turbo is much more efficient in boost . I wish I have gone turbo, I spent $4500 for my blower kit with out fuel system, which is already half of the cost of turbo. Maybe down the road I might go all custom turbo setup and ditch D1-SC

ps. If its single turbo setup, I would go T76 or T88 for the big V8 mtor. If it a twin setup I would go T66.

93LT1 Conv w/ZF6
Blown D1-SC/N2O
ARE built 383ci/Stage II heads
https://www.burtronics.com/myvette/bv1.jpg
https://www.burtronics.com/myvette/bv2.jpg
https://www.burtronics.com/myvette/bv4.jpg





[Modified by Bruce, 11:23 PM 1/3/2003]

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

Well fellas I decided not to install the turbocharger. I can't believe the response I got from all of you fellas. Thanks for all of the advise. I think supercharging is the better way to go with an intercooler at around 7 psi. If anyone has any suggestions on which supercharger to buy please let me know. It is hard to boost a motor with so much compression. Being at 5280 feet does help a little but the turbo would be to expensive to make happen. also it is 10 years old and would need some work before I would feel comfortable installing it.

Thanks again for all the advice.

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

http://www.geocities.com/brstanley/Corvette.html

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

http://www.geocities.com/brstanley/1019-1.jpg

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

From the induction side of things, a turbo and supercharger do the same thing. You really can't safely do forced induction on any motor without building it with proper compression and internal components.

Even if you were going to build the longblock to deal with forced induction, the plumbing for turbos is difficult in Y-bodies due to room issues, and it's nearly impossible to do a single turbo setup, because a conventional signle turbo setup on a V-configured engine would have all 8 exhaust primaries coming together at the turbo collector flange, which is nearly impossible in these cars. If you want forced induction in your '92, my recommendation would be a built bottom end for the added cylinder pressure and an intercooled supercharger setup. This would require the least amount of fabrication work.

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (milehighvette)
 

double up on the head gaskets to lower the compression and do one of these jobs :jester http://www.boomspeed.com/petroszz4/1.jpg

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (CorvetteZ51Racer)
 

But what if you just use the primaries from one side of the engine and use a smaller turbo? I think that SAAB is using this technique on their 6 cylinder turbo engines. They use 3 primaries to the turbo and they leave 3 out. I am not sure though, this might have been on one of their project cars. And perhaps you will have problems if you just do it on one cylinder row on a v8? Comments? :rolleyes:

Re: Can I turbocharge my LT1 (Petros89)
 

THAT is a big azz turbo! WOW :smash: