After looking up on NLOC, I called Silver State Motorsports. It is true a turbocharger was placed on a Gen II and blower scraped. He said the results were phenominal and claimed to produce a whopping 450 horse at the rear wheels with no other mods even stock boost.

Here is what was explained to me on what the "kit" contained. It utilizes a single turbo setup, a T-4 Turbonetics with a 60 series compressor wheel. The stock intercooler is still used and a new intake takes the place of the supercharger. As with most turbos, usually a manifold is designed to plumb the turbine inlet. The lightning setup still retains the stock manifolds and the turbo actually sits underneath the truck with both exhaust pipes Y-ing in. I was wondering about how they drained the oil back with oit sitting so low....scavenge pump maybe?

Overall from what was explained, it sounds really promising and he never expected to get so many calls from Gen II owners on it. This was actually a one off job never really expecting it to be a "kit" but from the response that will change The kit for the truck on which it was installed on is being driven for about a month already with great results.

BTW, he told me the L would benefit even more with a larger turbo than the one initially used and I'm sure more boost would be upped as well.

Anthony

 

like i said on NLOC WHOS FIRST !!!!!!!

 

Alyight, Ayight......Anthony gives you props

 

That sounds like an awful lot of plumbing to get the air back to the turbo and then to the engine. This would mean turbo lag from hell covering those distances.

 

Lag, Lag, Lag...... You are running an 8 cylinder, not a four, in addition a turbo equipped with ceramic bearings virtually elminates it.


LTNBOLT don't under estimate the power of the turbocharger. I would be willing to bet that a turbocharged L would easily overpower our supercharged models. Our roots uses alot of ponies to make boost.

 

I owned an 87 Buick WE4 turbo for 6 years. I know quite a bit about how turbo's function. I know their strengths and drawbacks. The closer the turbo is to the exhaust port and the shorter the distance the charge coming from the turbo has to travel to the intake then less lag is felt. Go pull your belt off of the supercharger and drive it around the block. This is what you would feel until the boost came in. A couple of people have pulled the belt off and they said it felt pretty weak without it.

Lag can be a big deal in a poorly engineered turbo system.

 

I hear ya, On that buick the tubing came from compressor outlet, to intercooler inlet, from intercooler outlet, then back to the intake. I'm sure the tubing would be shorter if not almost the same length coming up from under the truck. A twin turbo Dakota with a V6 managed to pull 11s in Florida with the same setup under the truck.

I agree to some extent but their are ways to minimize the lag and IMO the benefits would outweigh the negatives.

It would be nice to see some pics of that setup....

 

I thought turbo lag was directly related to engine rpm and thus exhaust flow. Until the rpms get cranked and the exhaust spins the turbo up, there is lag, no?

 

Uhhh, what?

 

Coming from 2 years of an Eclipse turbo, lag is proportional to the size of the turbo itself. The larger the turbo, the more lag due to the increased amount of time needed to spool up the turbo to boost. And yes, it is also related to RPMs.

The twin turbo setup on many late model imports used a small and large turbo - smaller turbos lost efficiency at higher RPMs due to the small turbine, but helped reduce lag, and the larger turbo was installed to "take over" where the little guy lost steam

It's AMAZING the amount of ponies you can squeeze out of a turbo setup!... and the biggest help to a turbo is good exhaust and intake flow - the less "restriction" and turbulence, the better. The 90-99 Eclipses/Talons could EASILY go from 15sec 1/4 mile times, to mid 13s with just under $1000 worth of work...

 

 

I completely understand all that, and have used ceramic bearing turbos on multiple occasion in my old Talon, but I believe your article reading has made you think that the ceramics will eliminate lag.

Seriously, think about it, lag will still be there no matter what, and if the system is poorly designed or the turbo is too far away from the exhaust ports you're going to get horrible lag. If the turbo is too big you'll get a ton (too small you'll make no power).

Ceramic ball bearings is mainly for longevity. I would think it *might* give you .001 seconds quicker spoolup.

BfB

 

When i hear turbo usually makes me think of an import with a fart pipe on back. Except for the buick GNX but that car was way ahead of its time my friend had one sick for a 6 cylinder turbo. I like the blowers better no lag and when you want that power its right there dont have to wait for the turbine to spin. I personally dont wanna see the lightnings with turbo charges that just would associated them with the ricers with the fart pipes. I mean anyone that saw fast and furious thats all they had in those cars turbos and NOS. And when i think of the lightning i wanna think of american muscle and the whine of that blower not fart pipes and stickers. Besides i think that you guys that would do a turbo to the truck would miss the blower whine.
Vin

 

Hey guys,
I don't even have a Lightning, and don't see myself ever affording one in the near future, and I still think it's an awesome idea. I have the now infamous Powerdyne-supercharged F150 4.6 (which still doesn't do $2000 worth of good), and don't get me wrong, I would have almost bought it just for that blower whine. But I also owned an '88 T-bird Turbo Coupe for a short time, and there's something to be said for that turbo whistle as well. I was actually shocked when I first got the car (and it even had 125,000 miles on it) and realized how fast it would move. I could pull 12 or 13 psi just about anytime, and you better have a lot of open road in front of you when you showered down on it. This is a 2.3L four-banger, remember. And probably one of my favorite motor sounds is the ones that the Grand Nationals/GNX's make when they're staged at the christmas tree.

One question I might raise, though, is the compression of the 5.4. The little 2.3 had maybe 7 or 7.5 to 1 compression, and without the turbo, hardly had the power to roll away from a stop. What is the comp. ratio on the blown 5.4? Wouldn't you have to do some head work to keep from blowing the motor to pieces? I'm assuming that the turbos we're talking about are generating considerably more boost than the Eaton blower. Just some thoughts. Hey, I'm always up for a cool new idea when it comes to F150 HP! Somebody out there give this a try and let us know all about it!! Later.

 

Having recently driven a turbo-powered car with an auto tranny, I'd have to say that I'll stick with the SC. See, the problem with a turbo+auto is that your launches SUCK HUGE. If you have a manual transmission, you can get the revs up into the turbo's powerband then drop the clutch, but with an auto of course you can't do that. So it'll go something like this:

Achingly slow, achingly slow, kinda slow, getting faster, HOLY COW WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

Just my .02.

-Ollie