Mr Simmond's G60 B3 80 quattro light weight experiment...

[K Simmonds]

Cheers John, that's useful to know.

Somewhere in my parts stash I have a now a little dated EFI express ignition control module that uses a wideband Llambda and MAP sensor, even has a nice digital display of boost and AFR, I'll dig that out and read the instructions as that could be an option. It was bloody expensive when I got it and I seem to recall it can be used on 4,5,6 & 8 cylinder engines.

[K Simmonds]

I knda wish I hadn't sold my last good K24, though I'm looking at oil cooled only turbo's for simplicity..

[K Simmonds]

I have got a cuffing great K27, brand new in stock though I think its probably too large. And one can purchase turbo exhaust manifolds for the 8V engine cheaply enough from eBay.

[Tractor Dave]

I have a four cylinder EM and k03 turbo here from a b5 1.8t. I wonder if they would fit?

[K Simmonds]

i've got a couple of those, wrong stud pattern unfirtunatally.

[K Simmonds]

Just a breif update on this experiment/project...

Been doing a good deal of research on turbocharging K-Jet engines as if I'm going to spend money on shiny new parts I want to be sure it's worth it.

As it happen K-Jet engines are pretty easy to turbocharge and the engine should be fine with upto 1bar boost, though 'IF' I go down this route I'll be starting with 0.5 bar and building up while using my Zetronix system to keep an eye on AFR & EGT etc.

Cast iron turbo manifolds are avaialble for this type of engine from Germany for around £100...

As for turbos's there's now a huge choice of Garret knock off's from China avaiable, as tempting as it is to buy a large turbo I think something along the lines of an internally gated GT2871 copy would be the correct size for a 2.0 engine. I'm looking at an internal gate as it's save's space and access on the drivers side of the enigie bay is great so making adjustments to the rod would be easy.

As I wouldn't be running crazy boost I think oil cooling will be fine and the turbos I'm looking at use journal barings.

I'd take the feed from a adaptor on the oil filter/cooler housing and remove the steel sump to weld on a return. Be good to remove it for a proper clean anyway and inspect the odd bearing for piece of mind.

The only bit I'm a little bothered about is ignition advance in the mid range, the OE dissy doesn't have vacuum advance which is good but it does leave me a little stuck with what it does per a given RPM.

Corrado parts have been selling well and keeping me busy for the moment and at the end of the day if I decide not to turbocharge the engine I have a great G60 motor ready to fit. I do have a pully and ECU from Stealth Racing which I have dyno print out's that give over 220BHP and huge amounts of torque, the kit is apparently safe to use as long as I'm happy rebuilding the charger every 20-30K miles, which given how few a miles I cover would actually be acceptable.

I had it fitted to my Golf G60 and it was crazy fast, would easily spin the wheels in third if you floored it from 2500rpm, though it destroyed gearboxes in short order. The Golf had a considerably weeker gearbox as standard than my Corrado or the the quattro box in my 80 so it was replaced just before I got if with a custom arrangment containing a Quaif diff and a hybrid of oil burner and 16V internals built for 16V turbo race car.

[K Simmonds]

Oh yeah, I forgot to say the EFI express box of tricks I've got is designed for electronic fuel injected cars that are already turbocharged so that's no use to me regarding ignition timing, though it is an interesting bit of kit an worth a few quid.

I'll dig the complete kit out over the weekend and list it in the for sale section as I have no use for it, I got it for my old 3B and my RS2 is staying as it is so it can go...

I know some of you would rather be watching an in depth RS2 restoration and that will happen but the VW's must go before I start on that car, this B3 project is simply a bit of fun on the side to see either what can be acheived by turbocharge a NA engine or fitting the G60 lump.

It also get's rid of one VW and gives me parts I need for the Golf to make to it run again (fuel pumps) as well as the odd thing to make the engine bay perfect, stuff like the correct PAS bottle needs fitting and the engine bay in general requires a good tidy up and the looms rewrapping.

I do have a logical plan in my head.

I want to keep the RS2 and C4 garaged and just have the B3 outside for short trips, the C4 will be used for longer excursions, also I know the ratty looking B3 will irritate my fuss pot neighbours I have to share some parking with which will secretly amuse me. They're the new car every three year types.

Those that have visted or know my area know I'm very lucky to have some great roads as well as green lanes on my door step

[Trist28]

The stock GTI engine needs a fair bit to take a turbo setup. Engine internals were done by Turbo Technics - Sodium exhaust valves, compression lowered, modified injectors, metering head and warm up regulator. Amazingly it still works and runs! Only runs 10PSI boost on a T3. The only engine protection is an overboost sensor in the inlet which will cut ignition if too much boost.

I do have the original spec sheet somewhere, if I find it ill post up here.

Tristan has a K-Jet Turbo Technics MK2 Scirroco which as far as I know as has no internal engine mod's, it simply runs a large old T3 with the boost controlled with the wastegate. No N75 or the like, very nice and simple so I can always have a look at that to see what they did, I have seen under the bonnet and it didn't look complicated. Though I would like to have another look to refesh my memory, I want to see how they managed to advance the ignition when on boost.

.

[psiconauta911]

I know some of you would rather be watching an in depth RS2 restoration and that will happen but the VW's must go before I start on that car, this B3 project is simply a bit of fun on the side to see either what can be acheived by turbocharge a NA engine or fitting the G60 lump.

RS2 restoration will be great but this project ticks a box of a mixed frankenstein / ugly duck mega fun allrounder inside of me and the light weight just adds to the fun , keep it going!

[K Simmonds]

The stock GTI engine needs a fair bit to take a turbo setup. Engine internals were done by Turbo Technics - Sodium exhaust valves, compression lowered, modified injectors, metering head and warm up regulator. Amazingly it still works and runs! Only runs 10PSI boost on a T3. The only engine protection is an overboost sensor in the inlet which will cut ignition if too much boost.

I do have the original spec sheet somewhere, if I find it ill post up here.

Cheers for taking the time to post up some info Tristan, I know your busy.

When Turbo Technics did your conversion (in 1985?) they didn't have access to anything like the engine monitoring equipment avaiable today, wideband Llambda's wern't invented until the early 1990's and EGT probe's in the mid 2000's. Hell even knock sensors didn't exist for another year when they did you car so they really had to be very careful as all they had to monitor the AFR etc was one of those massive old Krypton machines we use to see in garages. Perhaps they had something a bit more advanced but still when did the conversion they wanted to build an engine that would last as long as 150K miles with no issues and a lot had to be worked out on paper then put into practice.

Please don't misunderstand me I'm not knocking the work they did, it's a fantastic car and a great bit of motoring history that I'd be very happy to own.

A T3 depending on spec is quite a large turbo, the ones I've been looking at don't really have the right sort of compressor maps for a 2.0 engine, where as most T28's do.

I would also agree that in an ideal world to turbocharge the 2.0 3A engine the compresion should be lowered, I could pull the head and either buy or make a solid copper head gasket to drop the comp ratio. Thought given I have access to both a mill and a lathe it would't be all that much work with the sump off to pull the pistons out and machine the crowns. I don't really want to do either given the engine has now been comp tested as well as a leak down tested and is really very healthy.

Sodium filled exhaust valve's have pro's and con's, yes they deal with heat better taking strain off the guides and seals but they are actually more prone to snapping as the stems are not solid steel. If your engine was built today they would almost certainly use an Inconel alloy for the valves as oppossed to sodium filled items. So I'm not too bothered by that issue on a low boost engine.

With all that said the old 8V engine isn't really a great candidate for turbocharging, it's not cross flow and the crank is bloody heavy, both negative's if you want optimal turbo results. I also can't really figure out a good way of advancing the igntion timing, which again is required to get good results.

I seem recall Turbo Technics got 170bhp out of your car which is pretty dam good going so given a stock G60 is 160bhp with a very wide torque curve peaking at 225NM @ 4000rpm I think it would make more sense to stick with that.

I now have an intercooler (thanks Dave) and a couple of very sticky wheel and tyre options, 14" with Dunlop track tyres or 15" with Toyo 888's.

It's also occered to me that perhaps I should start by fixing it with the stock 2.0 still in place and get the car through an MOT before an engine swap.

Charlie and I had a B2 Audi 80 Sport field car which we stipped everything we could out/off, no glass, just the three VDO gauges taped to the top of the steering column and the bare bone's of the heater box and blower as we didn't want to get rid off the matrix, it was our emergancy cooling system and only source of heat in the winter. That car shared the same 3A engine, it was 2WD so didn't have the same drive train losses and weight but for 115bhp it was pretty rapid. It was also the only field car we failed to kill, it survived several two/three hour sessions of heavy abuse with no water pump belt, the oil got pretty hot but it didn't blow up. We simply stopped using it after being given a Subaru Legacy which we also stripped out but left the windscreen in, that also had 4WD and low box meaning it could be abused to a much higher degree. We did however kill that in quite spectacular fashion with a really ambious jump.

[K Simmonds]

My post's tend to ramble and a lot of it is me thinking out loud, so please anyone feel free to engage in the discusion regarding turbocharging a NA engine...

The post above waffles on a bit and I failed to cover a couple of points, not sure what they did to the warm reg or metering head on Tristans Scirroco which as I said was enginnered to give optimal results with the technolgy avaiable at the time and be a safe long term set up. Pretty sure the T3 on his car is just oil cooled, though happy to be corrected.

I'm also 99.9 sure if Turbo Technic's were to do the conversion now the entire K-Jet sytem would be binned and a full EFI set up with an ECU installed in it's place.

The turbo's I was (am) considering are T28 knock off's so a bit smaller, a GT2871 copy I think would be the best choice, the compressor map is a good fit for a 2.0 engine. they're so cheap I nearly pulled the trigger on one yesterday for £80 on special offer using an eBay voucher, however it was also water cooled which I would want to avoid for simplicity's sake.

There's a mirade of option's avaiable so I figure another super cheap turbo will pop up should I want one, I've spent hours going back through the feed back of the vendors of these knock off's and the vast majority of buyers are very happy with their purchases. Which actually blows my mind a little considering how much a genuine Garret GT2871 costs, even a second hand one would be probabaly more than double the price of a new Chinese offering.

Anyway, I'm sure one could get away with adding a bit of boost to a stock K-jet 3A engine in a relitivily safe manner, with acurate boost, AFR/Llambda and EGT data on hand. Though it would require expermentation with injectors and other componants to achive a decent result and there would be a bit of risk invovled. My logical conculsion is given the limitation's of turbocharging a stock 3A engine I'm not sure I'd get any more power than fitting the G60 engine, at least not safely. Though it could be fun.

Another thing that put's me off is the cost and availabity of K-Jet componants, the car needed a new fuel acumulator the entire time I owned it and before Tristian had it for a year. A new one if you can find it is £400! which is mental so I did some research and found that a MK1 Golf GTI unit would fit and do the job and I purchased a good second hand one for £50. However somewhat bizarrely the problem with old one now seems to have gone away after being stood for well over 12 months and the car now starts fine. Where as before I had to open the bonnet and slacken off the supply line at the metering head and turn the ignition on and off until I heard a slight noise from the acumulator and the fuel would then flow. I'd then turn the igntion off at the first sight of fuel, pinch the supply line up and quickly start the car which would then run perfectly. If I switched it off for longer than 10 min's I'd have to repeat the process and it drove me bonkers.

I'm going to fit the MK1 Golf one anyway as the one on the car that gave me hours of hassle is very rusty, I also need to fabricate a new bracket for the fuel pump which is a new genuine one which I fitted to try and solve the starting issue. I'm 99% sure that set up will supply enough fuel for a G60 engine, the pump is rated at 7 Bar and the acumulator is designed to supply a steady 5 bar to the K-Jet metering head. The G60 FPR is 3 bar so should be happy enough with that supply.

[K Simmonds]

I know people like pic's so here's my choice of 15" wheel and a couple of sets of Toyo 888's in 195/50/15. One set of the tyres is nearly new with 4mm of tread and cost £150, the other set are just legal and cost £40, I purchased them as spares, two of them are actually pretty good still. I went with the flat face Ronals as they're very understated and ET 37 so will increase the track slightly. They were also very cheap at £80 for the set with four budget but faily new decent enough 205/60/15 tyres which will go into stock for my stock C4 wheels.

I've gone for this type of tyre as I figure a very light car with a lot of torque is going to struggle for grip, I have R1R's on my RS2 which are basically 888's with a more rain friendly tread patten and I really rate them if grip is your main priority. However there are down sides, they come with 5mm of tread new, the side walls are very stiff (they're a sod to fit) and the 888's are quite noisy compared to normal road tyres.

[K Simmonds]

Thanks to Dave I have another 'new' part, a pretty dam tidy ABY intercooler, it has a very minor pully mark which is very common and doesn't bother me at all, it's probably three times the capacity of the stock G60's unit so is more than up to the job.

Corrado parts have now slowed down after an initial rush, I still have loads of stuff to sell including the leather interior. Anyway have decided to forget about turbocharging the 2.0 3A engine for now. Though I'm going to hang onto it, who knows I might find time in future to pull the head off and machine the piston crowns and well as fit new valve stem seals, converting it to EFI would also be the way to go. There's a member on here called Leafbox who's done that which an MC five pot turbo with what's looking like worthwhile results.

Some folk in on the VW scene fit a cross flow head from a later 2.0 8V engine to their G60's, I forget the code but it's one of options found in the new beetle. That said I have a freshly skimmed KR 16V head on the shelf. That's basically an S2 head with one cylinder missing, the valves are actually the same part number as well as the lifters. I know people fit them to 8V engines but it's not something I've really researched in depth.

Though I do know that greatly increases it's suitability for turbocharging, some people on the VW Vortex forum are getting well over 300bhp out of them with EFI aftermarket engine management. Though if it means buying new pistons that's a non starter, I can mill the existing 3A ones depending on the amount of meat on the crown.

Anyway, that's enough thinking outlook for the time being, I have firewood to process this weekend as winters on the way and my central heating is rubbish. Oh well it's great exercise and I actually enjoy it.

I forgot to add.... It's been two years this weekend I since I got out of hospital after I broke my arms, my right which was real mess and now contains over a dozen screws and bolts as well as a couple of plates is 100% fine, if It was't for the scar I'd never know it had been operated on.

However, my left which only had a minor fracture at the elbow still is a bit troublesome, I can work around it and there is certainly slow improvment but I have to be very careful not to agrivate it again. It's been over a year since I B worded it up moving the 30 valve engine and I really don't want a repeat of that performance.

[Tractor Dave]

Nice. Glad you like it. It made 315BHP recently in my Nothelle

[K Simmonds]

Thanks for the good deal and sorting out that spare slave cylinder for my RS2.

I'd forgotten how big an ABY intercooler is, much better job than a 3B one, will be interesting to see if I can fit it behind the front bumper skin.

What have you replaced it with, an RS2 set up?