It’s the perfect excuse to do some work on the car. My old nicely spec’d turbo decided to frag in pretty spectacular fashion, so I took the opportunity to fix a bunch of nagging stuff and make a couple upgrades; nothing particularly extreme, but stuff I’d been wanting to do.
First think I did was score a newly rebuilt T3 with a Cosworth/Lotus turbine housing. My previous turbo was essentially the same except with a turbine wheel upgrade, so the new turbo dropped right into place. However, instead of just pulling the old and dropping in the new, I decided I would properly hog-out the E6 turbo manifold and match the turbine inlet to increase flow and decrease spool time.
Next I decided it was time to sort out the semi-rigged coolant hose setup (that required filling the cooling system through the upper radiator hose to eliminate air pockets in the system) from when we installed the “shorty” Saab 900 radiator. A couple trips to the Home Depot speed shop got me a few connectors and I was able to get the system to function as the factory intended, though the hose routing still isn’t what I’d call ideal.
Then I relocated and rerouted my air filter and air intake to the VAM, which feeds the turbo. The K&N cone filter is now housed just behind the bumper, being fed all the ambient temp air it could ever want. I made a cheesy splash shield out of a $2 plastic planter, though I think I’ll spend a bit of coin and get one of the “water socks” that K&N has available. Better safe than sorry.
Finally, I added a simple generic oil catch can to help eliminate the extra oil from the breather system, which is fed back into the compressor side of the turbo. Seems to have worked too. I also secured a couple underhood relays in a nice water tight relay box (out of a Saab), re-secured the washer fluid bottle properly, cleaned up some wiring, added new plug wires, and redid the intercooler piping. All in all, it was a rewarding and worthwhile bit of work. Car runs great, makes boost right quick, and doesn’t puke coolant at random (like it once did). It’s not much to look at, but here are a pic just for kicks:
