Forced Engine Bay Pics

can al you forced people post up a pic of your engine bay so that we can havea direct camparison in one thread. interested to see the different designs.

that was ayats engine bay BTW

another...

different view, this is mr joj BTW

another...

different view nismo v-spec's car BTW

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discuss, compare and critique. lol

i just figured that all those planning on going turbo can get some ideas from this thread and those with turbo setups already can see how others have overcome certain problems.

Dave

Nothing to do with turbos but the bottom two have "socks" over the suspension turrents, do these come with the whiteline gear or something? I dont have them on mine? :o

Some of these designs are not very well thought out. Have a look at the intercooler piping diameter compared to the exhaust piping diameter in picture 4.

Also WTF is going on with the piping in pic 2 and 3?

Picture 1 has to have the neatest setup there but still... Piping everywhere. Laaagggg monster

I'd post up a pic of mine but I cbf'd

Sean

kneival, the socks are on the newer models nowt to do with whiteline,

and mighty, go on post a pic up, or do what you can be arsed at least. and explain what you mean about the designs,

i was always of the assumption that the shortest amount of piping is the best therefore the last design is the best. i do feel it is a very neat setup

Yes you're right there Dave. The shorter the piping the better. But there are still some basic mistakes made in the design too.

For instance the diameter of the dump pipe is much smaller than the intercooler piping. Not only would this slow the velocity of the air exiting the turbine, it would also create a lot more turbulence. This results in exhaust gases taking longer to exit the turbine resulting in more lag. Also its a general rule of thumb to have your induction pipe the same size if not smaller than that of the exhuast piping to help reduce restriction on both the turbine and compressor.

Another thing I would like to point out with the last design is the number of bends. Although they are mandrel bends (which is much better than press bent) there are still ALOT of them which creates a hell of a lot of turbulence in the air stream entering the engine... Picture a single file line going through a door... Now picture people just trying to cram through the door. That is the effect of having too many bends in the intake and exhaust system of a turbocharged/supercharged vehicle. The air filter is also located right behind the radiator, so the air that it is being exposed to has been pre-heated and will rob some power too...

Also note that the intercooler has an extremely long core, which equates to a larger pressure drop as well. Looking at the picture as well it seems that the BOV is placed at least a foot away from the throttle body which will reduce the response between gears as well.

I'd be very interested to see when that particular car started making and hit full boost. I'd also like to see when peak torque was made too.

Don't get me wrong, its still a great system, but with a bit more thought and preparation it could have been alot better too.

Unfortunately I'm not taking any pictures of my setup before it is 100% completed. Its on the road but a few more glitches to fix up. That being said, I've done a radical design that I've not seen on a car yet (top facing sidemount intercooler) and have made use of a high powered water injection system. It is also VERY compact and starts boosting very early.

Some open critique on a technical/design basis:

I think they are all basic, but the last one with the blue piping is the best of the pack in my opinion.

Engine bay#1: Its just a pipework nightmare. Looks cluttered and messy, terrible for lag (although in practice the difference probably isn't all that huge from something with super short piping, its mostly theory that gives you a bit of a benefit in practive, but won't transform the whole response of the car just from reducing the pipe length). There is just no need for pipework to be that complex and messy on any turbocharged micra. 2" inlet pipe diameter is perfect, no need for anything more than this on a turbocharged micra. But there is definately still not a need for 3 (three!) of those hugely long alloy pipes to be up high in the engine bay like that.
Has front mount cooler by the looks of it - that's a great feature.

Engine bay#2: Terrible because it covers the cam cover. Pain for changing plugs and leads and absolutely not necessary. But that's not a major big deal, its easily removed. Don't like the evil looking bend down from that nice "TURBO" labelled pipe.
I can't quite work out the 3 or whatever air/oil separators that this setup has. What's the go with that?? A bit complex/cluttered to me. But mostly that harsh hacked bend looks terrible for flow - would create a lot of turbulence.
The intercooler looks pretty decent. Again would need to weight up how much boost its running, could be a bit laggy if only running low boost, if running high boost then looks good, but still be good to measure the pressure drop etc. Again front mount cooler - great feature.

Engine bay#3: This one looks the best of the bunch to me. Nice smooth inlet bends, the 3" diameter would help overcome the large number of 90degree bends, however I would much prefer to rotate the front of the turbo so its pointing downwards and then adapt piping and/or intercooler to suit the way the turbo is exiting - this would save about 3 of those bends. This is a very similar situation to what my car currently suffers from. I have a similar little group of 3 90deg bends coming out after my turbo exit, and that's what I'm going to fix up soon. Just mostly so I'm happier with the theoretical design, not sure how much I will notice any improvement in real life, but I'm positive some difference will be noticable. There's nothing wrong with having intake pipe larger than your exhaust, I would say the problem with this one is more that the exhaust is just too skinny full stop. The engine dictates the ultimate restriction in flow out of the exhaust regardless of the diameter of the intake pipe. You could have 5" inlet piping and the engine wouldn't put any more pressure on the skinny exhaust, the engine and ports in the head can only flow so much. 2" inlet diameter is ample on a typical T25 micra setup, but no harm having 3". The exits on a T25 are only 2" to begin with, so not much point expanding into 3" if the turbo is only 2" haha. My car uses 2" inlet piping everywhere and made 137kw@wheels.
This car has a front mount aswell, again that's a good feature.
Nice air filter positioning - easy to access and maintain, in a reasonably good path of oncoming air without sucking up too much dirt etc.
Has this car got an air/oil separator? If not, then it should have. That would be another improvement.
This car looks like its suffocating the wastegate exit very badly. That's no good, most cheap dump pipes just do that though. Good area for improvement. It looks like a pretty restrictive dump pipe when you combine the blocked wastegate dump with its narrow diameter.
The problem with turbo dumps being too skinny is that you're just restricting outright top end flow. Skinnier diameter exhaust piping increases gas velocity, its just that it won't have much of a top end outright flow ability because you use the full capacity of the small pipe pretty soon. On a turbo setup though, there are no downsides in having a larger exhaust dump diameter - there's no reason not to, the turbo acts as a restriction to give some back pressure, so behind that the pipe should be as fat as possible.
Again, depends on the aims of the car. If its meant to spool up quick and only run low boost, then it probably works great. But obviously for a big boost setup, it could definately be improved.

I think what most turbo micra's suffer from is the 90deg bend into the plenum and then the micra's less than perfect intake manifold. A side entry plenum is a good bonus to add into the equation.

Things that I'm not happy with on my own car would be:
- stupid three 90degree bends just after the turbo exit, going to get that fixed ASAP.
- I'm going to try a slightly narrower but higher cooler design and remove those 90deg bends all in one go and see how response is affected.
- New intercooler to also have smooth end tanks - the current one is just garbage, but it was built a long time ago before the market was flooded with great value coolers.
- Position of my air filter isn't good. I'm going to look at what I can do to either relocate it or build a heat shield surround for it.

Things I would go for in the perfect design:
- Front mount intercooler.
- Intercooler size only big enough to cool effectively without being too big to give excess lag.
- Intercooler to have very smooth end tanks.
- side entry plenum chamber
- 2" mandrel inlet piping is sufficient and gives you more room in the engine bay.
- decent fat diameter exhaust dump pipe, preferably double dump to merge wastegate gasses as smoothly as possible which minimises turbulence post compressor.
- smooth flowing manifold
- Minimal length of pipe possible while still allowing front mount intercooler (this what I'm revising on mine soon so my pipework is shorter).
- Tidy and simple air/oil separator solution without messy pipes going everywhere. And definately to have an air/oil separator, its a bad idea to have a turbo setup without one.

Hmm that's about all I can think of for now. Its great to see so many turbo'd micras appearing all over the place. There must be quite a few around in the world now.

Euro micra's have funny ways of turboing engines.

Thats all i'll say. Theres a HUGE difference between the aussie-made ones and the euro-ones.

Its like.."Hrmm what looks neater and more efficent.."

Also do they not have mandrel bends in metal in the UK?

Granted im the piping to the throttlebody on my setup isnt exactly ideal but hey. What ya gonna do.

the piping in the first few picturs looks more like it was done for show than anything else if you ask me.

I've never seen so much blue silicone piping before in my life. lol

I think the top one is the turbo kit from "SFS" and is a "turbos specialities" kit?

http://www.sfxperformance.com/search/auto_subcategory.asp?manufacturer=Nissan&search=March&MenuSubCategory=Turbochargers&MainCategory=Turbochargers&type_id=2

The one with "TURBO" on the intake pipe was a home built turbo converion.

Yeah fair enough.

With a turbo kit they need to be compatible on all of the various models and to consider things like ABS, AIR CON, POWER STEER etc. So a kit is never as perfect as a custom job because everyone's car is slightly different. I wonder what other reasons they have for making the pipework like that. It would be interested to capture their thinking, I'm sure they were thinking about something when designing it.

And I could understand the home made one getting stuck and just making the pipework like that to get the car going. Again photo's don't necessarily show the cars in their finished state. I'm sure the guy hates that bend/join and probably wants to fit it up.

Not sure about that when you see the bodykit on it, lol (the yellow one!)

No idea about the reason behind the piping on ayats, perhaps universal pipes they mass produce so try to hack in to ever conversion? At least he has some decent bits on there he can chop and change later I guess.

Interesting thread this, personally I would never have thought about lag due to long pipes and pressure drop due to long IC, guess thats why you need someone decent to design it all for you!. Keep the comments coming :-D

im pretty sure ayats is like that as his cooler has both inlet and outlet on the same side, so the air goes through the cooler and back to the same side it went in so the pipes have to be down the same side. not 100% but thats what i seem to remember from looking at it.

this would explain that design.

come on post some more pics mighty, cisco, whiteknight, family hack, gareth and all the rest you must have pics close to had. lets make this thread the be all and end all of turbo/forced induction design

dave

i have to admit my pipework aint the best design but like cisco says its a kit and not custom, inlet and outlet on the ic ar not on the same side, the one pipe runs underneath to the otherside, again extra length for no reason, however still it was running 150bhp @flywheel at 7psi,not bad, at the mo the induction kit is pointing forward towards the front of the engine bay, as the battery has been removed and put in the boot, looks alot tidier now, car is ruuning low boost for now until i can get full engine management, or find someone to tune the engine with whats on it, looking back now if i didnt rush into it, i would have ditched some of the parts that came with the kit and spent more money on custom feul rail and full engine mangemnet but hey you learn from ur mistakes, the car still handles like no other micra.

Yeah its whatever suits your own individual needs - for sure. So many things I've done that I would get done different next time, but you make do and yep learn from the mistakes. Its all about the fun of it!

This is a recent-ish image of my engine bay. A couple of things have changed since, but essentially its still teh same. Battery isn't there no more and I've painted a couple of things and tidied up some messy wiring and it looks a bit cleaner. But I suffer from the same disorder as mighty -I hate taking photos of my engine bay or car when its not finished! I know its selfish haha, just annoys me for some reason, just itching to always finish it and then post some oh so beautiful final pics. Oh well, cars are never finished right :) ?

And this is the fuel setup and side-entry plenum.

This pic shows the bad end tanks on my current intercooler.
They aren't the best for smooth flow as you can see.

It also shows how long and skinny the cooler is. So not that many channels for the air to go down, and one big long queue basically for the air to line up at until the air ahead had moved along. I reckon its causing a bit of a pressure drop, but I'm just being an idiot saying that until I bother to hook up a boost gauge at either side of the cooler to accurately measure it to back up my claims.

So I want a cooler thats not as wide, but taller and has awesome smooth end tanks. And also overall a bit smaller and lighter if possible. My car is pretty front heavy at present.

This one shows my manifold from the other side. I think it looks quite good from this angle. But when you look at it from the other side (as it is mounted in the car - above pic), it looks worse on that side I think. I've never been 100% happy with the design, but its reasonable, and its tricky to get something perfect when its custom work and they're working in tight spaces. The good thing is that its very phat, so it has a lot of top end flow ability, high capacity to flow a lot of gas, so good for running larger boost and making more power etc.

This is the dump pipe setup I'm running.

This would be one of the things I'm the most happy with.
It turned out perfect. The main dump is 2.25", and the wastegate dump is 1.75", its a fair bit combined, and they merge smoothly into a chunky 3" section. This larger section gives the exhaust plenty of room to expand and get out of the turbo quickly without causing a restriction. Big exhaust flow is important on turbos.

I'm sorting through all my millions of old micra related pictures and I found this from overseas:

This car is really nice because its just so extremely simple.

No interecooler, and just a tiny turbo, but its such a damn simple tidy system. Might not make the biggest power output, but just slam on this tidy little setup and make reasonable power and the engine bay looks great.

some nice pics the cisco, some good info too.

i will take note of what you say when sourcing a suitable IC.

thought some of you might like to take a look at the Hks turbo manifold, its cast so it aint perfection but its not bad for the money and convenience factor. ps its the same manifold that james has used on the above micra(blue one)

pic...

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another uk turbo micra for you, not the best pic you cant see the whole engine bay but still another design to discuss...

That Green turbo micra is for sale in norway right now. it's going for 130 000 NOK (20372 US Dollars). somebody told me that is has 160 Horespower, but don't know if thats true..
if only had the money to buy it, or the money for a turbo in my micra :/

1. i dont believe what power a car has until i see a dyno chart or something. UK and AUS seem to have different ways of interpreting this..AUS are always power at the wheels..while for some wierd reason most UK ones are corrected for FLYWHEEL figures(Maybe its some penis extention correction factor or something..)

2. why would you want to high mount a turbo for..unless you just wanted to make it stupidly obvious that its there..

3. cisco hows that oil/air seperator setup? is it just from that hose at the front of the rocker to the can and thats it? leads back to sump? its cool...i have to set it up like that i think.

Here's some pics of my engine bay. Still not finished but will post it up for criticism's sake

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Modified_Nissans/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=2112768
http://s13.invisionfree.com/Modified_Nissans/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=2112786

Here's my filter sitting right in the path of cool oncoming air through the bumper ducts, while still remaining hidden

http://s13.invisionfree.com/Modified_Nissans/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=2112778

Sean

Wow, I really like your setup Sean. Very radical and orginal. So compact, neat and tidy !. Looks almost like a factory install. Will you be putting some vents in the bonnet above the intercooler to help let heat escape ?. Once you have everything sorted out I would be very interested to know 1-100km & power figures....

different standards aaron.

americans use a different scale or something afaik....

i think to use the term 'penis extension' is going a little too far.

mighty thats an awesome setup, very original and very compact, was that the thinking of the garage or your own invention i haven't seen a turbo setup like that before?

and i think to say abut the penis extension thing WTF man, why say that if you have something against the europeans then keep it to yourself man we are talking turbos here.

and a high mount turbo makes perfect sense to me as the air is hot it want to escape the quickest way possible and as we all know hot air rises so it actually aids the airflow. the only problem with top mount imo is the space factor, too big a turbo and your bonnet won't close.

and i have no idea why they dont do true whp readings in the uk i wish they would but they very rarely do, seems to always be the power @flywheel which i agree is a little pointless. however its nothing to do with the driver same way we dont have beer in macdonaldso, id love it but we just dont have it!

hahaha get over it. take it with a grain of salt and stop getting cut up over nothing. i dont see the point in using flywheel figures besides the fact that it looks like 'larger figure'..you agree with me on that anyway so whats the problem.

High mount turbo because hot air rises? i don't think that has anything to do with it in a turbo manifold case, but am open to see what others thing of that..

Its just two totally different scenes both with totally different environments, needs and factors influencing each scene to make it how it is.

The UK has heaps more expensive insurance than us, which is one factor which I think lots of people prefer to have big stereos and neon lights in the UK compared to here. But I'm not an expert and have never been to the UK, I'm just going off what I see coming out of the UK on the internet. So that's just an example of a cause and effect which might make the scenes different, there would be a million others - they are different countries after all.

Its only a penis extension when you get the loser guys who can't see that their dyno was measured at the flywheel with some estimate calculation and they come on boasting trying to compare it to genuine at the wheel figures - yes for those guys it is totally a penis extension - I agree with evade. For those like you guys in this thread who understand the difference, then yeah we're just talking turbos, its good that we understand what everyone is talking about and are on the same plane - no penis extensions here! To be honest this thread full of UK people are the first ones I've seen on this site to really openly talk open mindedly about turbos and not get personal and take any of it as criticism. I remember commenting on my thoughts on the red turbo car a year or two ago and that turning into a total shit fight, but nothing is meant to be personal. People have to not take things personal and just see their car as a technical object - nothing is perfect, my car is full of issues that I can happily take criticism for, and throw me your opinions any time welcome! So I'm happy that this thread is going well and everyone is on an equal plane just learning from everyone's comments and not being biased.

Compared to what I've seen from other countries, I reckon the aussie turbo scene and technology design etc is right up there leading the way. So many cars here make huge power and its becoming standard for anyone to be running around in high powered high quality turbo conversions for not all that much cost any more. So many people do custom turbocharging work now, and its getting pretty affordable. Especially with all the cool used parts like cheap intercoolers and turbos etc on ebay and available everywhere now.

was going to say the same cisco, its great to see everyone commenting and critiqing on the cars and their designs in harmony. And mighty, that's one well thought out design! i have been trying my hardest to muster up different ways to route piping ect... and i didn't think of that. One idea i do have is taking the battery out and putting in an odessy under passenger seat, then the position the pod filter sitting where the battery would go in the engine bay. but i don't think their will be room for the dump in my case too keep the aircon without having a highly compromised set of runners,

Alex

here's some pics i dug up from canberra,

Reverb's setup at Canberra:

http://micra.studior7.com/meetsandmedia/canberra_2005/sunday_12th/main_meet/images/IMG04864.jpg

http://micra.studior7.com/meetsandmedia/canberra_2005/sunday_12th/main_meet/images/IMG04840.jpg

http://micra.studior7.com/meetsandmedia/canberra_2005/sunday_12th/main_meet/images/IMG04839.jpg

http://micra.studior7.com/meetsandmedia/canberra_2005/sunday_12th/main_meet/images/IMG04841.jpg

Family Hack:

http://micra.studior7.com/meetsandmedia/canberra_2005/sunday_12th/main_meet/images/IMG04822.jpg

Gareth's setup (picture by redlinegti.com)

Gareth's setup (picture by redlinegti.com)

Gareth's setup (picture by redlinegti.com)

family hack is a pretty tidy no fuss setup too isnt it i hadn't realised that before.

one thing i want to know is what are the main advantages of an air oil seperator?

quite a few pics now and definitely lots of consitancy with the aus designs, very impressed. strange that the initial air inlet on the uk models "tends" to be on the right whereas on the aus models "tends" to be on the left (from facing the bay) was wondering why is this you must mount your turbos the other way around, any reason/advantages for this?

Monkey see monkey do is a major part of it too.

However don't forget that out cars are right hand drive.

That means we've got a fair bit of shit on the right hand side of the car (left hand side, or the side closest to the timing chain in the pictures we are seeing here) and there's usually more room for things like pod filters to be placed on the left hand (gearbox) side of the car.

I think you UK guys have RHD drive cars as well? Yeh well i'm not sure on the deal there. I'd say you're just doing a bit of old monkey see monkey do from those in deeper europe where i think most cars are left hand drive and most kits are set up for LHD use.

Thanks guys

Originally I wasn't going to run an intercooler at all (my water injection kit can handle up to 25psi without an intercooler) with piping direct from the compressor outlet to the throttle body.

After talking to my mechanic we discovered that a stock S14 200SX sidemount intercooler could be placed above the right-hand side engine mount. We opted for this design because it doesn't involve ripping the piping apart to change the plugs and still only needs a very small amount of piping to join it all up.

All we did was think outside the square...

All I need to do now is install my scoop, get the i/c sectioned off and get some nicer looking, permanent silicone piping (black of course)

Hey guys, lets keep it on track. We're talking about setups here, not power at the wheels etc...

Sean

the turbo setup im most impressed with on here is family hack, simple no nonsense, factory lookin and from what ive heard quite reliable. if iw as gonna go forced induction then this is the kinda thing i would take inspiration from

Thats a lovely setup mighty, very original and should work well! The amount of air flow around that area is massive when moving.

At the end of the day with the flywheel bhp thing, its just a wheel figure then they add like 22% or something for transmission loss, so surely they had the wheel figure first anyways? Just adding a percentage is no way to do it really!

At the end of the day what does BHP matter anyways? Surely 1/4 mile is a better comparison? Just because your car is 400bhp blah blah blah doesnt mean it will be any better than a 200bhp car on a 1/4 mile strip if you take the example to the extremes! :-D

if any body mind could they post up prices on how much it cost them for that particular setup thats in and not how much you have spent on the car.

exactly re 1/4mile times as well..

Yeah and I'm the worst culpurate of that thesedays.
I've never done an official quarter mile run.
Again, I'm a bit selfish and can't be stuffed doing any of that until I'm perfectly happy with my car, but that will be forever! Track days in particular, because the handling is way too front heavy now, so this moving the battery and getting a lighter cooler etc will be good in the fight against all that.

Yeah your setup is looking good mighty. Very simple and direct. Absolutely minimal lag with that.

I've found a cooler for sale exactly the same as Gareth's by the look of it. They look like a great cooler, just good enough size and dimensions for my car and needs. Plenty of cooling rows, decent enough surface area without being too huge, going to get one and give it a go. Will be a completely new mounting position and should tidy up my pipework a whole lot. Nice end tanks and decent dimensions.

Also has 3" inlet and outlet pipes, so I'll just probably reduce those down to 2" with a nice smooth bell type fitting on each side.

looks like the smallest hybrid style on offering, a good design although I would prefer tube and fin over bar and plate for a smaller capacity (hp) motor.

ultimately, a cooler with short row length is going to be nice and efficient. Race cars have tubes/bars that are vertical, with large long end tanks, meaning lots of tubes/bars.

having a long intercooler with horizontal bars/tubes and small end tanks is not going to be efficient, more of a restriction than anything!

this is a cool thread!

spewing that all these pics are gone!!

Talk about digging up an old thread! Not a huge surprise that the pics have disappeared since it was almost 2 years ago that they were posted.

---dens

Reckon!
Where's the pics....
Would be good for a look, especially for the Newbies like me...

The database has shat itself a few times since then which is why the pics have buggered off.

damn :( only other thing i miss about thi forum is no email notifications... that and the old piccys and i'd be a pig in poo thats happy