Friend told me to start a thread documenting my twin turbo setup I will be moving to over the winter, I know how original. Anyways, the car will be moving from an F1A setup making mid 900s to a twin turbo setup shooting for 1100-1200whp. I spent tons of time making that setup work for me and ultimately decided that I no longer wanted to deal with drive issues or the loss from spinning the blower. I still have all the bracketry and piping if anyone is interested btw.

My motor is a pretty simple setup but I am hoping it will take that power for some time:
TSP LQ9 block
Forged crank
Wiseco pistons
TSP I-beam rods
WCCH LS3 heads
1/2" head studs
408ci

Fueling is subject to change but it is currently a drop in pump with an A&A dual pump external setup and some FIC1700s. It showed no signs of letting up on the blower setup.

Planned turbo setup:
2x vbanded billet vsr 7875s
Upgraded Procharger intercooler
2x vsr gates
Tial 50mm bov
and some other small things
The turbos are most definitely overkill but I got them off a friend for a good price and can switch them once the kit is in a working state if necessary. I'm not insanely worried about spool time or anything either as the car does mostly rolls.

I will be attempting to fab most of the kit myself at home with a cheap TIG machine, I am a complete novice so this will most likely turn into me tacking stuff together and bringing it somewhere else to be welded properly.

I will try my best to have the car up and running within a few months as I'd like to have it at Tx2k for some unrelated stuff, but I am 18 years old so this will be on a very tight budget. Some may disagree with that but it's just how it is. This is my first true "one off" build and not just a put together kit that is bolt on, so any tips or recommendations are welcomed. I have just barely started, I have almost all the hotside piping and manifolds as well as turbos here, but still deciding on what I want to keep and what I don't want. I removed some of the AC, power steering and ABS so far today and have been messing around with the manifolds to see how they're going to fit.

 

Evaluating options for cooling, i’m not sure how streetable a remote mount electric pump would be or how I’d want to route everything. If anyone has some experience with a proven setup some tips would be very appreciated.

On another note, got the rest of the AC lines and things pulled out. Modified the typical up and forwards LS turbo headers to fit and put them on for mockup. Not a ton I was able to do with holidays using most of my time.

 

Love it. Can't wait to see how it comes out. Thanks for sharing. Lots of good info on the forums about that type of build. MTBSkully(?) had a build he documented on YouTube. Pretty good.
Here it is:

 

I see you changed the outlets on the A&A IC. Did that help you?

 

Yes, on a different A&A unit I had issues with piping blowing off on both sides, extending it and giving it more surface area for the tubing to "bite" fixed that issue. The plan was to eventually vband the blower setup, but obviously that has changed now.

 

I've built 2 turbo setups, one single turbo and one twin setup. I didn't have the skills/confidence to completely weld everything myself but I did fabricate both kits and tack them together. Both worked well. I am currently building a 3rd kit, this time completely welding everything myself.

Using the up/forward manifolds really helps and will put the turbos in a good location.

There are plenty build threads in this section that can help with ideas and such. Good luck

 

Been stuck waiting on parts and consumables for the welder. Finally got some of the welder stuff in and tacked up the general idea for the hot side. Got me really excited to work on it now haha.

 

sweet work

 

Haven't updated this thread in a while, in that time I was able to get the oil feed/drain lines ran, cold side mocked up, and work on the coil pack relocation stuff. The last few weeks I have been waiting on different local welders that had said they would be able to finish up my tacked pieces but after weeks of waiting and 2ft of snow adding to that delay I finally bit the bullet and watched a short YouTube video on the TIG process as I've never welded anything in my life besides placing a few tacks. Decided my little Chinese machine was up for the task and went to the garage. Glad I did it as I feel I have the basics down, definitely not winning any awards but I think it will hold fine for the time being. After Tx2k I may look into redoing it again with more practice time and a foot pedal as I'm stuck with the janky hand controls, but as the final weeks are here I'm kind of in a rush to get the car running and ready for a tune.

Will post more pics of the cold side and stuff once it's more permanently placed, hoping to have a startup by next week sometime.

 

Looks good to me, for only have a little time under the hood

 

Another unfortunate update. Had discovered a snapped intake stud for the Hiram when I last removed it (probably gonna switch to a billet manifold of some sort as this is pretty much my last straw dealing with Holley lol), extraction failed so had to pull the head and will figure out how to get it out from the back side tomorrow. Hoping this doesn't delay me too much with weather slowing down shipping times on the new LS9 gasket as well.

 

Switch to bolts. Those studs suck to deal with

 

Head needs to be sent to machine shop, the hardened studs are not fun to mess with lol. This may have been partly my fault on the failed extraction attempts but it is lodged in there pretty good. Made the downpipes for the turbos, think I got my rhythm pretty good on the TIG, just need to focus on keeping things clean and the heat right but this time around looks much better than the last. Also spent some time and made some coil pack mounts out of scrap pieces and ran the custom spark plug wires. Hoping once I get the head back I can just slap it on and start the car up to ensure everything is working well. I still haven't done much in relation to the cooling system or the alternator relocation, if anyone has any suggestions for the alternator relocation please let me know! I would like to keep the main drive open, so looking for something that runs the alternator off the AC belt and AC mounting location.

 

I think his build could be helpful (FYI - this is the 2nd video of the build). Love your build and ambition! Good luck getting everything together.

 

School has been taking most of my time away from working on the car but over the last weekend I was finally able to get in the garage and knock some stuff off my list. Got my heads back on and torqued down, Hi-ram reinstalled, made some DIY coil pack relocations and extended the harnesses, relocated the fuel regulator and made new return lines, welded in some o2 bungs pre-turbo and then made some ghetto downpipes (changing this ASAP lol), some general wiring cleanup and a few other things. Finally was able to start the car for a few seconds just to hear it run and confirm I have done everything okay thus far. Next comes the radiator and alternator, and I need to try my luck with making some stub pipes for the wastegates, as I had mentioned previously this is my real first attempt at "fab" work so we'll see how that goes with my limited tool and skill set.

Don't mind where the turbos are mounted, this is temporary until the radiator and alternator are in, it's just much easier to work with them up here rather than having to take them off every other time I need to change or look at something.

 

Finally got back to working on the car, only have two weeks to finish it so I kinda need to hurry it up. Got it running and driving but realize this radiator/fan combo isn't going to cut it, I am using a 1965 style Mustang radiator from my restoration project but think the fan isn't able to keep up with it. Any suggestions on what to do with the limited space I have?

 

Final update for now, I modified my old fan to fit on the $100 ebay radiator, lo and behold it keeps the car right at 190* even during the hottest day we were in Texas (90+ stop and go traffic for 30 minutes). My tuner was traveling with us so that made it much easier to get the car working correctly. It had very few issues, we had it turned wayyyy down on the gates, like 4psi down. This was failing to trip the Hobbs switch for the external pumps and causing the car to want to lean out above 5000, once we figured that out (idiots) we just turned it up and it started working great for us. I leave this post with one short video showing some lower boost pulls (10psi and 15psi). The turbos are most definitely oversized and don't want to spool well. I am waiting to get a Haltech standalone for some fun features and possibly switching the turbos out shortly for something smaller if someone has recommendations for the 1000-1200hp range that will spool quickly.

 

How much was the alternator bracket from k fab? I need to order one soon.

I'd suggest the 71/71s or even the billet 69/73s. I'm doing the 69/73s on a 428ci. It should spool pretty fast.

 

I believe it was $325 iirc. A little expensive in comparison to others but it really seems to be the only AC aligned option. I already am running into the belt issues you mentioned but part of it may be my shot alternator shaft, need to warranty it out, has a wobble from the tight *** supercharger drive lol.

I’ll look into those options for turbos, I told myself I wouldn’t care but it’s honestly a dog. It was a mess at 2k as most cars I “tested” with would pull way out on me on the hit.

 

Awesome, looks like the price hasn't gone up much since I bought mine a few years ago. Thanks!

I just noticed you did 3" elbows off the manifolds. Even tho they are short, I would try to go down to 2.5" from the manifold to turbos and try to wrap the manifolds and elbows to keep some heat inside the pipes. Maybe try that before switching turbos. Could help.