Lownly_

Balor_Gr

If you really need the best bang for your buck you can still buy parts from ebay but dont buy these:
Turbo (unless its a used TD0x, HOLSET , GARRETT, BORG WARNER)
Wastegate (insert the "no god no" clip here)
Injectors ( again unless used EVO injectors in good condition)

Cast iron manifolds/intercooler/ic piping/ some wyntonm Blow off generally will be OK from ebay.

1)Cheapest possible:
Best bet on turbo will be a used TD05 out off evo/subaru/whatever with a not too great adapter on a cheap ebay cast manifold.
Im saying this because they already come with wastegate( save 300$) but youll need to find a softer actuator since most oem actuators are at least 0.8 bar.
It will perform and its best for the cheapest route.

2) Low cost value for money: Anything on turbo kit from goautoworks or speak with the shodan here.
himni-racing sells the good old 50 trim dirty cheap also.


On the engine side i wouldnt do over 300 to the crank on anything these days. Engines are getting older.
​​​​

Txdragon

You'll find lots of good advice from many seasoned folks here. They will ALL frown upon "budget build" unless your budget is upward of 5k or better. Balor has pieced together a wonderful build and can point you in a good direction for a Frankenstein setup. TheShodan is a turbo guru that will give recommendations and answer just about any possible question you can ask, and you'll have various folks (like myself) that will chip in info as well.

I run a D-series, but I went budget as well. I purchased a kit under 800 bucks, matter of fact, it was 725 shipped; from CXRacing. My BIGGEST problem was fitment issues. Outside of that, I have put near 4000 miles on this kit and it's still going strong as ever. I had to tweak a few things here and there, but nothing I was not prepared to do. With the kit I am using, I was able to get near 350whp on a conservative E-tune. Total spent on JUST my turbo setup and tune was less than 2k (that includes the internals to handle it). You're building a B-series, you can get away with a bit more on stock internals than I could, so you may or may not have to get internals just yet. I have more invested in the build, but just the turbo and necessary components were on a tight budget, Do your research and then decide how you want to build. If you go cheap, be prepared to make necessary modifications for fitment. This is my most important caution lol.

Autoworks

I doubt anyone really "frowns upon" "budget build"... "budget" is subjective. There's "low cost/value" vs "cheap/knock off/get you by till". It's all in the subjective "quality" you want.

Just my random nickel minus 3 pennies

Lownly_

extremeracer

At the OP, to be honest you going to be hard pressed to find a better value "budget" kit than the Go Autoworks Street kit (GO-AUTOWORKS Turbo Kits Honda Civic Acura Integra D16 B16 B18). Even with the Garrett GT28 jounal bearing upgrade you still at $2324 and its a complete kit that takes care of all the turbo related items. This kit uses high-quality top tier items like Tial BOV and Wastegate, and a good quality intercooler core.

Then you can shop around for some Evo 8/9 injectors as suggested and add a Walboro 255 fuel pump, get a reputable tune and hope the stock clutch can cope with the new found torque.
You may need to look at a stage 2 or stage 3 clutch for longevity at the same time.

Altenatively the CX Racing kit is pretty much all in at $600 but the components are Chinese made "copy" items. There is more risk in some of the components failing but it will get you boosting :-)
You could at a later stage upgrade the key parts like the turbo and wastegate to brand name items as your build progresses.

TheShodan

iTrader: (14)

There's no value in upgrading a CX RACING system with any components. The first way is better

Cupajoe

hmm let's talk about budget.

I am running ebay intercooler setup, ebay 50 trim .63ar turbo, legit blow off valve, ebay external wastegate, ebay 3" down pipe (needed lots of work), ebay oil cooler /an lines (made myself) ebay sandwich plate, knock off ebay mocal filter for sandwich plate. ebay xtd clutch.

legit rebuilt dsm 450cc injectors, npr pistons (ebay), npr rings (ebay), used eagle rods, acl std crank bearings, arp head studs. I did all the work myself in my driveway.

Professional tuned on chrome, aem wideband.

Car is stout as **** except I keep having head gasket issues - ha ha ha. I believe the head I have is **** (been resurfaced) or my block needs to be decked.

other than that car made 270whp before ebay xtd clutch slipped (ha ha).

so it can be done and when stuff breaks don't be upset, the turbo is very happy on my car no leaks and spools great. It was only 120 dollars.

LightningTeg

For your first kit dont cheap out and PLAN on replacing things down the road. Just save your money and get all the good stuff the first time around.

AZ_CIVIC

iTrader: (1)

Let's be honest, most guys doing a super low budget build won't take advice and don't really care if the car runs good or not. Most of the time the car barely runs before they doing anything and barely runs afterwards. Most of the time these cars get passed off like a prostitute with an STD. These really cheap kits can work ok mainly because the people using them are only making 200 horsepower which is pretty low horsepower anyway.

However, when people have other goals like 500whp you quickly start to see how fast those cheap parts fail when pushing them. **** clutches start to fail after 1 or two passes, turbo inducer wheels shred, crappy couplers start to collapse and tear, shitty ebay radiators overheat and ebay rings start to smoke.

This is why I rarely try and convince people of what they should buy, mainly because those looking for really cheap and low budget usually either never finish their little projects or if they do already understand that most likely they will have issues with the car down the road and don't really care.

So is the cheap projects worth it? Hell yeah man Boost it, have fun with it, blow it and trade it on down the road LOL.

LightningTeg

This is Honda culture now

2x0

It's true, but lets be honest about the purpose of these cars too. 99% of them will never see the track, and will be lucky if they ever get a proper "tune" after they throw the ebay turbo kit on there.

They want a turbo just to show it off along with their other "race-inspired" modifications to their friends. Or because their bruh's civic makes 300hp and they wanna smoke em in a roll race yo. But it doesn't matter if they never perform bc on the street, there is more talk and excuses than actual racing. "You got the jump", or "I missed a shift", etc. etc.

These are all the cars that end up on CL ads claiming they are capable of 500whp but just "needs a tune".

Aradin

If you know what you're doing you can put together a setup out of cheap/used components and make something work. If you take your time and pay good attention to small details you will have success. I've been doing this for quite a few years at this point and worked on many a turbo car. One of the biggest issue with the "budget" guys is they have no idea what they're doing as it typically is their first step into forced induction and they usually end up making mistakes that get blamed on the parts. No turbo oil restrictor, improperly routed vacuum lines, something improperly adjusted(i.e. wastegate spring, incorrectly torqued pressure plate bolts, etc) can all cause parts failures, whether it's a name brand part or an inexpensive knock off. Sometimes they'll post on forums and get flamed by the "everything you buy must be top tier and $1000+ or you're automatically inferior" crew, after which they'll get tired of being flamed for their literal ignorance and give up on it and move on to different things. IMO that's not a great way to build a community and I think it's one of the reasons people build these cars like junk and pass them off to the next guy. They give up before they ever actually learn anything.

But I digress, I've had hands on experience with basically every cheap chinese turbo part you can find on eBay or wherever over the years. I know before posting that this will be a very unpopular opinion but if you know how and where you can cut corners, you can. If everything is installed correctly and it passes an initial inspection for play/whatever it's usually good to go. The exception being anything made out of their cheap stainless. The stainless manifolds are indeed a steaming pile and should not be used. If you have to get an inexpensive manifold just stick with a cast iron log. The turbos like to coke up the seals after a few years(more operator error than turbo issue honestly) but I've personally seen and used all manner and variety of them from 10-25psi without any problems. Wastegates, blow off valves, etc are shockingly basic but functional if adjusted and installed correctly. It's always best to do a quick check on them for any diaphragm issues first. Never seen an issue with piping or intercoolers. Intercoolers are claimed to be "inefficient" when usually it's operator error and a 250hp core is being used on a 350hp setup. Get good 3/4 ply couplers and t-bolt clamps. The cheap oil line kits are subpar and harden from repeated heat exposure over time. They'll be fine til you attempt to remove them and they crack into pieces. Recommend spending a few extra bucks on a good line kit. I've always recommended a good set of rebuilt DSM injectors if you're on a budget. Those and the usual Walbro 255 will get you far. The biggest thing I've always seen is just lack of common sense when it comes to getting a tune. Too much boost, improperly adjusted timing/AFR, etc will all render a setup totally useless regardless of how much you spent per component. It's shocking to see so many people believe they can just slap on a bunch of parts and run it without any adjustment to engine mapping. Just my $.02

boosted94gsr

Cupajoe

this guy knows what's up!

AZ_CIVIC

iTrader: (1)

There are a couple of points that you are making here. I think when someone comes on HT and are truly looking for advice, for example, when someone is saying their car is overheating and they are explaining the parts they are using most people come on and give pretty good advice, experiences and things they think can help.

Then there are the guys who come on HT saying they want to build an 800whp drag car but want to do it on the cheap or are asking for help on how to actually put one together. At this point when people who actually make that power and way more give advice for the most part there is push back. They hear boosted bois built something like that will all eBay parts and junk yard motors and think they are going to build the same and that is just flat BS. Trust me when I say you aren't building an 800 to 1000whp car and have it last with a Chinese Turbo, junk eBay intercoolers, stock sleeved motors with eBay clutches.

Now: you have the guys who probably do not know a lot and come on HT with a new account with the old I want 250 to 350whp can I do it with a CX or some other really cheap Chinese made junk and under 2000 on a clapped out Civic that they got in a trade that barely runs and is hacked up. This is when multiple people come in with the different opinions and advice and try and guide these guys in the right direction by first letting them know that just buying an eBay turbo kit doesn't all of a sudden make your car 350whp.

There are many components that are needed, clutch, injectors, fuel pump, good tune, fuel pressure regulator, I would suggest some sort of ecu setup like Hondata and the list starts to build up. Again this is also assuming that the motor is very healthy and not already have issues like most do.

Now where I agree is that you can have a budget and it doesn't have to be the best parts money can buy but it has to be a somewhat decent parts list. Back in 05 when I had gone through my Nitrous, All Motor and lastly Supercharger faze I bought a used kit for $900 bucks it included an AFI Ramhorn, a Garrett journal bearing 57trim turbo, Tial wastegate/blow off valve, some sort of no name brand intercooler and piping a tapped out stock oil pan and oil feed and return line. Again all was used but pretty decent setup for $900 bucks, I ditched the intercooler first thing because I had already bought a Treadstone intercooler.

Also the big difference is that I already had a very healthy Darton Sleeved block with 10:1 compression pistons a nice ported head with Type R cams, axles, fuel pump, injectors clutch etc. already in the car from when I had my supercharger. I took the car down and got it tuned and made 475whp on 20psi maxing that little 57 out. From there went to the track and first pass was in the mid 11's.

So yes I agree you can do things on a budget and you don't have to have all the best most expensive parts but you at least have to try and get good parts on that budget. I myself never buy kits because it is cheaper for me to get custom kits made then buying a kit but I see for sale threads all the time that you could buy parts to put together something pretty good that will last longer than some eBay junk.

k20z1ej1

Yep

Txdragon

Well said. Even the best parts money can buy are not immune to improper installation.
Hat's off to you! Not many out there with the ***** to back up the cheapskates!

I am current proof as well. I cut a few corners but I took my time, did my research, stressed over many things I probably didn't need to, paid for a good tune, and walked away proud. I will be honest and say that going "cheap" can be a gamble but if you do things right, you can also be rightly rewarded. I am upgrading stuff very gradually along the way, but only if it's an actual upgrade; ball bearing turbo (ouch), wastegate with more readily available springs, BOV (I'm waiting to snipe another open box deal on amazon for a Greddy FV).. Some of the most pressing difficulties I have run into are almost zero information about the turbo specs, unable to change the spring in the WG, and LOTS of fitment modifying. Through all of that though, I also built my bottom end to handle the power. When I rebuild the head and add a cam then re-tune, I will most likely be at the max for stock sleeves, Guess I will find out when that day comes lol!

Txdragon

I can agree 1000% here. I am happy with my results, but what I physically see is barely pushing mediocre. Since boosting, my car has gained a ton of attention in my area. Everyone is in total awe. lol If I happen to put in any windshield washer fluid at the gas station, every single time, I end up with a couple folks stopping over to look and ask a bazillion questions; or somebody will approach me at the grocery store cause they see it on the street and again, ask a bazillion questions whilst they look it over. None of them are familiar with branding or that when I say it's just a "cheap turbo kit", I am told "turbo kits aren't cheap". This tells me the vast majority have zero clue about what they are really looking at. So I can understand when those random posts like the OP put up comes along that when people REALLY get to digging into researching parts, they get discouraged really fast at recommendations based solely on cost, not the work that goes into it because the work that SHOULD go into it is the same no matter what the brand OR cost. That would discourage the younger crowd moreso than the older ones. I would be willing to bet a year's salary the largest majority of the horror stories posted about knockoff builds are kids, 20 and younger, with no business near a toolbox.

linkdeezie

why not just swap in a GS-R engine with the GS-R tranny?? why bother using the LS engine?

k20z1ej1

whats wrong with an LS? they make sweet midrange torque, which, in my opinion, makes for a fun street car. im making 321/278 on a stock block LS and i saved about $600 relative to a GSR longblock. Also if my **** breaks, another LS is cheap to replace.

LightningTeg

Good luck finding either of those not totally molested or outrageously priced. I got beatup GSR trans that will need a rebuild from a junk car and I AM HOLDING ON TO THAT **** LOL

k20z1ej1

bro sell it to me