I am considering having a turbo fitted to my 2002, 1.6, 60K. It’s sweet as a nut but I think an extra 40bhp. would be good, just for fun driving. I’ve read some info on here and gather 40bhp would not require strengthening of engine, drive train, brakes etc… I am concerned about engines blowing, ECU management problems, correct fueling, set up by an experienced turbo specialist I gather is a must.
Please, you guys with experience with turbos, give me advice and guidance re. what, how, where and who ?
Does it have to be a turbo? The supercharger route is a well proven one for a 1.6 engine. an extra 40bhp won’t do any damage to the engine. Some simple fuelling solutions work ok, but I opted for a plug and play ecu swop. Standard brakes suspension will cope fine with a bit of extra power. To give you an idea of power gains, a number of guys out here have put a standard 1.6 '5 on the dyno, and consistently get about 87-90 bhp at the rear wheels [forget the flywheel figs that most people quote, they are a guess to be honest] My M45 Kackson Racing SC gives 148 at the rears, so a useful increase. Makes the car very easy to drive and a nice supercharger whine to go with it.
Thanks for the reply. To be honest the thought of a blower, well, The Bently Boys comes to mind, stuff of legends. I would prefer a supercharger but for no good reason assumed that route would be disproportionately expensive. If I can be shown this to be feasable I would be delighted.
It used to be that the supercharger route ‘could’ end up costing more in terms of ££££’s per bhp, but as with everything it really depends on how you go about it. Second hand turbo parts for making up systems seem to go for a bit less than their supercharger equivalents, but now with the mini supercharger (search for it on mx5nutz) route that’s not necessarily true any more.
Obviously you can get the job done cheaply if your willing to buy second hand parts over a period of time (after researching what you need) and are willing to fit the stuff yourself. One guy I know of put a basic turbo’ed system together for under £500 (but he did fab the exhaust manifold himself).
If your looking for a turnkey system then it will cost a lot more obviously. Be careful who you employ to put it together for you. The physical fitting of the charger is the easy bit, the harder part is wiring up the ecu (if you go down that route) and then tuning it properly. Even the best garages can’t fully tune because while they have the car they won’t experience all different types of weather and temps which affects the tune (take for instance the recent cold weather, if you car was tuned during summer…). However if the garage is a really good one then they may make some agreement with you about returning for tune tweaks when required as part of the cost or at reduced rates. Worth asking.
So to a degree you may have to be happy to learn about tuning too, so you can make necessary adjustments to your cars setup when required. Or take it back to the garage for the tune to be tweaked occassionally (this obviously could end up very expensive). One guy I know has a full map for summer and one for winter (he swaps them when required) though that is taking things very seriously.
For an extra 40bhp you might need nothing more besides the charger setup than powercard or afpr/bipes or the like which are easier to setup arguably but give less control of the engine which means fuel economy can suffer.
