How to turbo a carbureted car

[gettinill565]

Iv got a fiat 128 2 door wagon im restoring, its gonna be one of the very few in the world
its gonna be real madd. I was thinking about putin a turbo in but not sure what that would all entail.
I think that would make for a great show.


any input would be great

[ShowUsYourTints]

Hi mate,

You will need a carby suitable for either a Blow Thru, or Suck Thru setup.

Basically, the turbo will blow air through the carby, as per a normal setup with a throttle body. The carby will need to be jetted according to the flow rate of the compressor. Tricky stuff to get right.

The Draw-Thru through setup sits the carby in front of the turbo. The turbo inlet sucks an air/fuel mixture through the carby, and then compresses it.

Cheers,
Shazza

[Beelzeboss]

The first thing I'd do is convert to fuel injection.

[walperstyle]

If you want to do it right, you should be able to read AFR and EGT's.

[Stazza_Brendan]

The easier of the 2 setups listed above is suck-through setup.
Youll need a Turbo with a carbon seal though as you cant just throw a carby on the front of the turbo and expect it to survive with fuel running through it.

There are side draft carbys perfect for this application. Youll also need a better fuel pump, cannot run an intercooler although you can run a water/methanol mix to cool the intake charge. Youll also have to find someone who has experience tuning these setups. carby-turbo tuning is a bit of an art.

[F@BOY]

Yeah op, no offense, but there really is no point investing the money into turbocharging a carbureted engine. The gains you'll see will be minuscule compared to those of an EFI setup, not to mention with EFI you'd probably see better fuel economy as well. Take a look into fuel injecting your car, weigh the price compared to the turbo setup. If you're serious about gaining more hp, then you might as well do it the right way first, and reap the full rewards of all your hard work later.

[Will66]

There are easier cars to Turbo and the Fiat 128 formed the basis of the Lada Riva which is miserable communist disgrace of a car.

[kingtube69]

You can normally take a EFI engine from the same/similar model car and swap it all into yours. E.G. Take a EFI engine, ECU, Loom, Exhaust and Fuel system fron an AE92 CSi and put it in an SE - The CSi is normally EFI and the SE is Carby like mine.

[MARK_XF UTE]

theres nothing wrong with going turbo with a carbied car, early dick johnson XE grand prix's had twin SU carbies, very late turbo XE's and a couple of XF's were EFI.

[Chevell979]

Another option would be a Procharger it's belt driven centrifugal supercharger they make for big as well as small motors. They work well for blow thru carberator set ups and you don't have the same heat problems you would have with a turbo... don't let them discharge you a carb is way cheaper for that car than EFI and all you need is a wide band AFI sensor in the exhaust to tune the carb for the procharger or turbo. http://www.procharger.com/SPORT_COMP..._compact.shtml

[Hankey]

In the case of my 64 Rambler, i bought a Predator carburetor (variable jets) and sent it to a guy who knows how to prepare carburetors for blowthrough setups.

I gave it extra thick head gaskets to lower the compression, ported the heads and combustion chamber, had it running about 7.9:1 compression ratio, i had my oil pan cleaned and had an oil return welded, had an extra oilpump added to the block, and had it send oil up to the turbo, and it returned right to the pan. I inverted the stock exhaust manifolds and set them to face forward. I CnC milled a custom "Rambler-turbo" exhaust flange, and ran two of these on each side, they joined in the middle where my fan would be (i was running electric fans), and had it bend around to a front-mount, then a Y-pipe with a BOV. then bend up into the Predator carb. i still need to fix some oiling issues before i can run it, but it's running a consistent 17 PSI in an old carbureted V8.

I would NOT reccomend turboing any engine unless you KNOW that it can handle the boost, i only did it because i knew that my block was extra thick, that i had a forged steel crank, and polished rods. i have $3500 into this motor. DO NOT TURBO A MOTOR UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!