So yesterday i just had some random thought about turbo manifold designs and i don't know the reason why this setup wouldn't work.

Hypothetically, say you want to place the turbo where the battery is on the I4 ( yes yes i know its pointless). So you relocate the battery and you place the turbo there BUT you only have a turbo manifold with a T3 flange.

So you get a 3 inch exhaust pipe and weld a t3 flange at the beginning of the pipe and the end so that it can mate to the manifold and turbo.

Basically:
Turbo Manifold t3 flange >> Exhaust Pipe t3 flange >>> Bends and stuff >> Exhaust pipe t3 flange >> Bolts on to turbo.
So there are no separate runners after the Turbo manifold just one exhaust pipe.

**** I just wanted to know and Im NOT planning to do anything like this. Just curious because Ive never seen this kind of setup on any car before.****

What would be the disadvantageous of doing it this way?


Thanks!

 

Look at the domestic kits that put the turbo in the back of the car/truck. same thing.

 

The only disadvantage I see is that the turbo flanges aren't *as good* as say v-band or really even ball and socket connectors but there isn't any reason why it wouldn't "work".

 

You are going to lose some efficiency, as you're allowing heat to escape the system with all that piping.

 

as stated earlier, there are alot of kits that involve simply coming off of headers with a single tube going to a single or twins in the rear of the car on mostly domestic applications. not sure i've seen this setup in the drag racing world, as i'd imagine a great deal of lag, so probably good for top end horsepower...You're talking about going a significantly shorter distance, so it might not be so bad, but i'd like to think that it wouldn't be as efficient as a typical 4-1, 5-1, 6-1 collector configuration

lets get technical for a second, on a 4 cylinder turbo engine, you've got 4 separate runners going to one outlet, all moving at "X" speed. when it finally gets to that one outlet (t3 flange) at the exact point where all 4 runner merge, it is immediately taken into the cycle of the turbo and shot out of the exhaust at roughly the same rate, thus also pushing forced air into the engine at the same rate...now if you take that same setup, and put a gap between the T3 flange and the turbo flange (lets just say one foot) you now have all of those runners knocking into each other in this opening and slowing each other down before it can get to the turbo...at one foot, the difference may not be too terrible, at two feet or more, you may start to notice a difference...may have to crunch some numbers and look at some data to really figure out the best design for this setup, and what you need to put on it to acheive your goal (what turbo and wastegate)

 

I made something like this a while ago. I wanted a setup to keep a full length radiator and a/c. I don't have any datalogs from the car though, as I sold it a couple years ago.

If I remember right, it made about 340/290 on about 18psi from a t3/t4 "57 trim" turbo (b18b1).

I would only recommend doing something like this for space constraints.

 

How the hell do you even bolt those things on? There is no room.

 

Check turbo setups on V6 motors, you'll often find 6-2-1 turbo manifolds. Or as others have noted, lots of rear mounted turbos out there in domestic V8 land where there just isn't easy access right off the heads. Google STS rear mount for a billion photos of such applications.

Lag is much less a factor than you might think on these setups.