How not to turbo your k20
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Joined: Oct 2015
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How not to turbo your k20
Okay so i didnt want to post, because i know we did this out of pure stupidity, no experience and wanted to learn. But this went from; good idea to blown motor. All hate accepted.
Okay so my friend bought a turbo kit from ebay for his k20a2. He bought the motor online and swapped it into his ep3, he ran just the motor for about 15,000 miles to make sure it was a good healthy engine. The only upgrades that were done to the car was a kpro, 1000cc injector dynamic injectors, and thats about it. So the engine ran pretty good after some tuning we did to it. Felt strong and ran great so we decided to go through and turbo it. This is what happened...
since we didnt connect the waste gate to a vacuum, because the compressor housing didnt have the fitting for it, we decided to run it without it because he said the spring was a 15 psi spring and it should let off pressure. I dont think it did because it would continuously build boost. I found a tune on the hondata programmer on the computer and uploaded that. I thought that would be a better idea since it was already set up for a turbo and the timing and fuel map were already set for a turbo and all we would need to do is adjust it to get it to the right AFRs. So it ran, then it blew. We still have to open the engine and see what blew because after the last pull, the engine sounded like only one cylinder was getting compression and it would not turn on. After a bit of research i saw that it could be a blown head gasket. We still have no idea how much boost it got up to because we didnt hook up the boost gauge.
To those of you who know what went wrong i hope you had a good laugh, now i would like to ask for some help and guidance so we dont go through this again on the next attept. Ill keep posting as we go with pictures to show the disaster we made. Hopefully people will look at this and remember to do it right or not do it at all.
Okay so my friend bought a turbo kit from ebay for his k20a2. He bought the motor online and swapped it into his ep3, he ran just the motor for about 15,000 miles to make sure it was a good healthy engine. The only upgrades that were done to the car was a kpro, 1000cc injector dynamic injectors, and thats about it. So the engine ran pretty good after some tuning we did to it. Felt strong and ran great so we decided to go through and turbo it. This is what happened...
since we didnt connect the waste gate to a vacuum, because the compressor housing didnt have the fitting for it, we decided to run it without it because he said the spring was a 15 psi spring and it should let off pressure. I dont think it did because it would continuously build boost. I found a tune on the hondata programmer on the computer and uploaded that. I thought that would be a better idea since it was already set up for a turbo and the timing and fuel map were already set for a turbo and all we would need to do is adjust it to get it to the right AFRs. So it ran, then it blew. We still have to open the engine and see what blew because after the last pull, the engine sounded like only one cylinder was getting compression and it would not turn on. After a bit of research i saw that it could be a blown head gasket. We still have no idea how much boost it got up to because we didnt hook up the boost gauge.
To those of you who know what went wrong i hope you had a good laugh, now i would like to ask for some help and guidance so we dont go through this again on the next attept. Ill keep posting as we go with pictures to show the disaster we made. Hopefully people will look at this and remember to do it right or not do it at all.
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Joined: Jan 2013
Posts: 3,816
Likes: 451
From: Texas
Re: How not to turbo your k20
Hard lesson learned. Most of us have been there before, in at least some form or fashion to different extents.
Legitimate turbo builds are neither cheap nor easy if they're intended to last. There are a lot of small "gotcha's" that people miss on their first build that turn into major issues down the road. With the added power, heat, and vibration from turbos a small glitch can quickly spiral out into collateral damage too.
Live and learn, better luck next time. Get a proper tune and hook that WG correctly.
Legitimate turbo builds are neither cheap nor easy if they're intended to last. There are a lot of small "gotcha's" that people miss on their first build that turn into major issues down the road. With the added power, heat, and vibration from turbos a small glitch can quickly spiral out into collateral damage too.
Live and learn, better luck next time. Get a proper tune and hook that WG correctly.
Thread Starter
Honda-Tech Member
Joined: Oct 2015
Posts: 92
Likes: 0
Re: How not to turbo your k20
Hard lesson learned. Most of us have been there before, in at least some form or fashion to different extents.
Legitimate turbo builds are neither cheap nor easy if they're intended to last. There are a lot of small "gotcha's" that people miss on their first build that turn into major issues down the road. With the added power, heat, and vibration from turbos a small glitch can quickly spiral out into collateral damage too.
Live and learn, better luck next time. Get a proper tune and hook that WG correctly.
Legitimate turbo builds are neither cheap nor easy if they're intended to last. There are a lot of small "gotcha's" that people miss on their first build that turn into major issues down the road. With the added power, heat, and vibration from turbos a small glitch can quickly spiral out into collateral damage too.
Live and learn, better luck next time. Get a proper tune and hook that WG correctly.
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