Boosted Falcon

So I have another project, seeing as its a commo I thought id put it in here.

The car is just a base model, auto, 250K kms and in rather average condition but hey it was cheap and a perfect car to use for an R&D mule. Not planning on going overboard spending big coin on brand name parts this will all be all about keeping it cost effective. Plans are simple really, develop turbo kit to the point of a 12.99 or better as a start.



Motor and trans will stay stock for a start. Rear main seal leaks so that will need doing first. Plans will be to push standard parts to find the limits. Ill look into some kind of shift kit for the auto aswell.

Turbo hardware will be carried over from our falcon kits so it shouldn't be raising a sweat in the VT shooting for 12s with ecu probably being the limiting factor. Turbo is positioned roughly like this.



Trying a simple fabricated passenger manifold as the stock LH manifold sits in a crappy position with no room for an up-pipe and dump pipe so has to be a fabricated jobby.



A/C actually works in this car so its staying although ditching it would make life so much easier with added room. Not sure on exhaust probably make up a cheap 3" single muffler system. Ill be sticking with the stock ecu and playing around with other means of getting desired result such as fuel pressures, extra injectors, water injection and maybe e85 at a later date. Ive read its possible to use the l67 tune/injectors (supercharged v6) which may be a good option as no doubt it would run less timing on boost and we all know its too much timing that kills ring lands and melts holes in pistons. Been there haha. Anyway keen to get cracking and race the tyres off this thing. Still have a crap load to do but ill keep updated on how this all goes, should be fun, im super excited to have a new car to mess around with and learn new things on. That said im still working on the ef its just at a point were its ready to race but no racing for few months.

Made up a dump pipe today in 3inch and got the w/gate mounted were it will work for screamer and plumb back. I also started messing around with cold side cooler piping ended with this. Im going to try going over the coil pack with a 90degree silicone bend off throttle body and see how that turns out, might look neater and be shorter.

Also forgot to post timed increments for this car when it was 100% standard. 0-100 8.39sec, 1/4 15.79@89mph, 90-140kph 7.78sec and 140-150 took 2.89 just for a laugh. Definitely needs more power!





Cheers Guys

nice one man, this is another of my projects for the future, but wanna do it in a VS cause they're lighter.
a 100% standard VS with 12psi through a GT35 sized turbo is enough for 12s
so you will have no drama!
the ECU can be mapped using kalmaker (spelling?) which is far far farrr better than falcon tuning so you will be sweet as pie mate.

Haha mint project.

Pretty sure you can spin those manifold can't ya?

yeah pretty sure you're right, been a while since i've whored commdore forums lol

Yea they are heavy cars the VTs around 1600-1700kg apparently. Manifolds can be reversed but the drivers side ends up hitting power steering and passenger side points too high and forward as well as spark plug clearance issues. The plenums can be cut and shut to be reversed but I will leave it standard for now I reckon. Certainly a lot more **** to set up than the falcons haha.

Plenum is easy to cut n shut then u just flip the lid

looks the goods, interested to see how you go. Got a friend with V6 in a Hilux wanting to do this

Nice project, look forward to seeing this do some runs!

See http://pcmhacking.net/forums/ for some info on cheap tuning for Commos.

Swapping the plenum inlet to the drivers side would help with cooler piping a lot eh!

Cheers,
Jason

be interesting to see how you go with this. Commo's don't really interest me, but it will be interesting to see what can be achieved and how it is done. Good luck with the 12 second 1/4, I don't think you should have too many issues getting there with a turbo on it

Yea your right guys reversing the plenum would be a great idea with shorter piping away from heat and easy enough. Its just a lot of owners probably dont want to have to change to a reversed plenum just to run the kit, just setting it up like this as a start.

Cheers Jason ive checked out all that gear a while back still cant find a bin and def that match for a vt v6 auto all tables just comes up as zeros. For now ill be keeping it simple and running stock ecu/tune with a few psi just to keep rollin happy If its lean then fmu or extra injector will be added. If its knocking water injection, l67 chip/injectors or e85. For a start ill probably just run a yellow 4psi tial spring. NFI what timing they run.

Surely there would be incredible amounts of info available on streetcommodores.net or ls1.com.au?

I would have thought what you are doing would have been done many times before?

Once you get the kit sorted piss the 3.8 off and put a 4 litre in for the next race season

not many people turbo the ecotec man.
its been done dont get me wrong, but no where near the amount that a falcon is done.
everyone goes LS1 or 5l back in the day. its fkn stuuuuupid!
when street commodores did an article on fitting a turbo to an L67 motor and it made 330rwkw or something i was instantly in love haha. everyone was too scared to do it to a standard ecotec though.
then there was an article where a guy fitted a T04e or something to a standard VS with only 12psi and it ran 12s with such basic mods.

ever since reading that shit ive always wanted to slap a turbo on one.
a fair few people have turboed buicks, but they have bricks for heads so need a shitload of boost to be decent.

either way, the aftermarket support for the commodore and especially its ECU is just insane. if you own a commodore and don't mod it, you have an actual age of 92.

My mate turboed his vs. It went to chiptorque to get tuned, so I'm guessing it had chiptorque chip or something like that put in it. Didn't get huge results.

Yeah a mate of mine put a gt35 on his vs with some custom manifolds he bought.
You couldn't fit an air filter on it though.
It made 190rwkw at 7psi but killed 2 engines.
Could have been the tune as I don't remember where it was tuned.
He used some delco ecu I think it was, looked stock but was fully adjustable.

I'm keen for will to change my views on these busted pieces of shit I hate working on them, they're ugly motors and from everything I've heard (I confess I stopped associating with anyone who liked them many years ago haha) they make bugger all power per psi.

Go Will go!

I remember the young mechanic at chiptorque had a VS Wagon Turbo. Had valve springs, GT35r and supporting mods and made 221rwkw on 12psi iirc. He had a chuckle because my stock AU motor made similar power with a smaller turbo and on 10psi through an auto lol. He said he should have gotten a falcon.

A friend has a twin turbo v6 commonwhore in an off road buggy,he has had thoughts of putting in a road going wagon.
Don't know what sort of power it makes,its a commonwhore and not really fussed on them.

i would look on the street commodores forum for a better gauge of how much power they actually make rather than a few stories from some falcon owners

either way the gearboxes have a much better ratio and are just generally better than a BTR (dunno bout stronger?) and will feel quicker than a falcon.

Aren't the Buick Regal GNX supposed to be hella quick? I thought they had a factory turbo 3.8 or am I way off?

True that, not many people boost these compared to falcons and not many have really leant on the standard motors that hard. From what I gather most soft **** recommend no more than 10psi or the pistons are suppost to self combust yet all the pics I have seen of busted ecotecs are ringlands smashed and holed pistons from knock. Havn't heard of one bending a rod yet. The ecotec piston also has the top ring quiet high up so no doubt it wouldn't take much pinging to break them.

The best example ive seen of pushing the standard na l36 motor is the black vs proflow built a while back 19psi 295rwkw 11.7@120mph on 98 iirc with yella terra rockers. Seems they do need a bit of boost up them to make the power, the heads arnt that great.

The commo 4l60e's seem to get much hate, about the same as btrs used to lol so im hopeful they will be good enough with more line pressure and cooling.

Not sure on the yank stuff classicAU i think it was the older series buicks that were boosted.

Fkn lol @295rwkw on 19psi.

11.7 is still heaps faster than any car I've ever owned though

yeah they also had a 3.8 with an M90 in a front wheel drive config, that doesnt make it good lol.

everyone is scared to lean on them cause they thing you need an L67 motor to do so cause the rods are better and the compression is lower.
also when proflow ran 12s with their alloytec ute with just a bolt on GT35 on like 15psi i think, everyone stopped caring bout earlier models lol.
that was years ago though.

mostly when people want to turbo a commodore, they would rather go through the trouble of putting in a 2jz or RB26 than doing the standard motor.
there is a few examples getting around of wicked **** like the boosted VP wagon that runs 11s (i think) on a 100% standard motor lol. he just thumps the fuckin thing. he does kill a motor every now and then but had one running for like a year.

theres a few turbo 202 kicking about also, but thats different territory.

i really can't see how a VS or newer with 10psi plus crammed into it can be bad. they're quite good cars and look nice with simple mods.
you would think that there would be a wave of turbo installs after people on the forums seeing one guy do it, but its not the case!

alot of guys still stick with the NA shit and also the stroker sensation is still going, so they can make a whopping 170rwkw after spending $6k to stroke their motor to 4.2l lol

Downloaded the new version of tunerpro which sorted my matching bin/def problem. Looking at the standard vt v6 series 1 tune the timing is prity damn low 16 degrees max under full load. Up to another 8 can be pulled with high intake temps. If it knocks and changes to the low octane timing settings max timing is 12 degrees. Maybe these motors don't need timing it just seems super low to me.

RPM TIMING
2000 10.55
2200 12.66
2400 13.71
2800 12.66
3200 12.66
3600 11.60
4000 10.55
4400 10.55
4800 12.66
5200 13.71
5600 15.82
6000 15.82

Got the manifold and dump pipe welded today that is all, too hot haha.

Iron heads and block with a crappy head design probably make the engine very susceptible to pinging?

surely they can take more than that lol thats borederline gay to the point that if thats all the timing they can take the compression is already too high.

Iron heads would not be dissipating heat as well as alloy head resulting in hot spots, which combined with crap flow would make them ping easily. I wonder what how much timing the factory supercharged tune has?

Dont take this the wrong way and I'm keen To see how you go, but I would think not to many ppl turbo them because
A) ls1's sound way better and can be made to go hard pretty cheaply and are pretty cheap now.
B) if you want a boosted 6 buy a factory supercharged version and change the pulley.

Dunno how much timing they can take have to be more than that id think even with iron heads. The vp v6 tune has 26degrees and the ecotec heads are meant to be better. All good hokko I know what you mean mate, have to see how this all pans out and how much interest there will be. Even if I just learn a few new things with this ill be happy.

if i eva had a vt that wasnt a factory sc v6 or a ls1 i would put a vl k frame in and run a rb30/26 the 3.8 just sounds so shit and so ghay...a factory blown one with a turbo would be intersting tho.

Good work on getting the commo bin/defs going. I was keen to try their gear on my mates VS stroker but he's selling it now. Following with much interest!

lol krazyea has a VP with an RB30 turbo in it hes turning it into a drift car. actually done alright considering his first falcon efforts haha

Got the cooler mounted using the smaller 450x300 core for this project, ill probably paint it black should blend in nicely. It fits without any cutting of the rad support or crash bar etc. Had to unbolt receiver dryer and move it over, tweak ac lines and remove trans cooler and move it up all prity basic stuff. Tacked together the cold side piping from scrap left overs in 3", it has plenty of clearance for engine rocking/limiter bashing. Going to do hot side in 2.5" soon.

Made an exhaust yesterday from what I had laying around. Single 3" from dump pipe to under drive shaft, then splits into twin 2.5" through a straight through x force muffler off a BA xr6t chopped up to fit and mounted were rear muffler used to go. Fits alright and should still be fairly quiet being turbo. Most of it was aluminiumised pipe which welds shithouse bit like galv, got a few burns from splatters laying under the car welding haha.

Finished the turbo manifold and made up a crossover pipe today. Got it running too, first time in a while which was good and burnt all the shit out of the new exhaust. Haha forgot to put the dipstick back in so didn't rev it much as oil would splash out but seems to sound ok and still prity quiet at idle. Still need to make hot side piping, heat shielding and screamer pipe then its prity much ready for a lung full of boost.

That's a neat looking manifold dude , well done.

Yeah really good job mate looks fantastic.

I hope you're going to heavily shield that AC pipe!!

Cheers guys, tried to make a simple design that would still flow ok. Yea rollin that ac line, coilpack and the bottom rad hose will all need proper heat shielding. The Ac line is in a bitch of a spot on these.

Got this almost finished just needs fuel system/heat shielding stuff. Had it running makes a few psi on the brake prity easy.

Tapped the sump for the drain.



Tee piece for oil feed



Hot side piping done in 2.5" still needs painting







Also picked this up cheap the other day, vx ls1 berlina. Has few issues, abs module dead, radiator leaks, oil leaks etc. Will be boosting this as soon as ive fixed all the problems with it.

You should be able to get an exchange abs module fairly cheaply. You can undo the electric bit off it with 6 (?) Torx bits and slide it carefully off.

Means you can still drive the car and you don't need to bleed the brakes.