406oc.co.uk

Hi,

i just bought a 1999 406 ST 2.0 16v XU10J4R. i'm very happy with it running at 135 hp (based on information i have). but then i saw a guy with the same car as mine having turbocharged engine, nitrous kit, and whole lot more.

as far as i know, most people that has 406 like mine wouldn't add turbo kit for ECU and engine heat consideration. how the hell that guy can put the whole thing on his car? (must've been either a good mechanic or hell lotsa of money).

here's the objectives;
i want to add turbo kit for 'daily' use (street performance). need to catch up tight meeting schedules from one place to another. and also smoke young showoff punks with their parent's 2.0 cars. (yes, i have a rough childhood hahaha.) ;p

here's the question;

1. where should i start ?
2. what turbo kits are good for my car?
3. is blow off valve is neccesarry for turbo? is it neccessary for my car?

any info would be gratefully appreciated.

I'll say it before Niz dose contact Mark @ hiflow heads he will sort you out

thanks mate!

now the only thing matter is to bring it down here .... hehehe

i'm a newbie on euro cars, only drove japanese cars before.

i guess while the HP is increasing, the burden on brakes also increased.
will it disturb the abs work to change the 406 standard disc brake n calipers with other one, such as uhmm... brembo?

I wouldnt bother with sticking a turbo on a XU10J4 engine, just buy a turbo lump to start with. At least you have a platform and a reliable engine that can run 200bhp without serious modifications.

uhmm,

i just took the car from the showroom today, the first time i drive it i noticed that at low rpm the car has a slow response (rather than japanese cars like mitsubishi lancer).

i admit after 3000 rpm the engine started to show some 'teeth' but i actually would be very happy if the car can response better on low rpm (the traffic is hell down here).

if a turbo is too much to do, is there any other method to increase the low rpm response?

a turbo will be expensive, you will need to lower compresion by either getting new forged pistons (best solution) or by using a sandwich plate which is a bit cowboy. Pistons will set you back ?400 - ?600 or ?120 for vaux c20let pistons + cost of getting an engineering firm to Bush your conrods to fit them. you seem to wan to increase lowend tractability, an cheapish way to do this is to increase the engine to a 2088cc you can do this by buying 1.9 crank (from a ny 8v or 16v xu series engine) even the diesel crank will work, you then need to install this with XUD bearing caps and shells.you should be able to pick this up for about ?50 from your local scrappy tbh, a mod i will be doing to my turbo lump in my 306 although if you want to use over 7000rpm on an engine its reccomended to use the 1.9 mi16 crank since this is very well balenced and will prevent twisting at high revs, but you will not get one of these for ?50
as far as low end torque goes there isno replacement for displacement:)

as for the guy adding turbo + nitrous onto his xu10j4r you will proberly find eh is running aftermarket ecu system such as emerald/dastek/megasquirt. megasquirt is a good system for cheap upgrade and mapping, you can live map your car from a laptop i used to have a megasquirt system in a 205gti and am thinkign of adding this to my cab too.

Malachy wrote:a turbo will be expensive, you will need to lower compresion by either getting new forged pistons (best solution) or by using a sandwich plate which is a bit cowboy.

A sandwich plate is not by any means a bit cowboy! There are tuning shops that use a sandwich plate when they turbo an engine if they do not use Forged Pistons...

Me personally I would consider tuning the stock block you have and leaving it N/A... Raise the compression ratio... skimmed head - ported and polished, longer duration fast road cam kit... uprated EFi system!

Larger throttle body - machined / matched inlet and exhaust manifolds.... you could get upto 200bhp out of that block quite easily and then a 25 - 50hp shot of nitrous after that if you still want more...

So much you could do... it really depends how much you want to spend on it...

i'm sorry mate but a head gasket is a known weakness of any engine, especially when you increase to high boost this requires multilayer gaskets to help with this known weakness, and if a tuning shop used a sandwich plate on a conversion for me......... i'd cry and ask for my money back, its just a cheap alternative to spending money on forgies,hell id rather have my old pistons machined to drop compression than a sandwich plate.A Sandwich late will achievethe jobofdropping compresion by allowing more air into the combustion chamber dropping the pressure in it, however it is less reliable and will increase the chance of HGF due to there being 2 head gaskets in the first place.
its just doing the job cheaply and not properly
How is that not a bit cowboy?

Niz406 wrote:
Me personally I would consider tuning the stock block you have and leaving it N/A... Raise the compression ratio... skimmed head - ported and polished, longer duration fast road cam kit... uprated EFi system!

i would not add cams myself, he says he wants to increase low down torque (wants more from <3000 rpm) cams WILL take the power higher up the rev range so it will feel even worse at low revs increasing compression will help however. and a throttle body setup will increase torque across the rev range too but is also very expensive (circa 2k for a decent setup)

Malachy wrote:i'm sorry mate but a head gasket is a known weakness of any engine, especially when you increase to high boost this requires multilayer gaskets to help with this known weakness,

How is that not a bit cowboy?

Ok firstly garages that use two standard HG's on a sandwich plate need to be shut down, the use of competition gaskets is always recommended with any sandwich plate implementation...

And as for the lowering of compression, he could use the std ratio for a low boost application, a small T2 - T25 turbo and a maximum of say 5 p.s.i boost would be suffient to give him that extra low end power band that he wants.. controlled and thermally managed properly and there would be no problems...

But we all know when you have a turbo, its never enough and you always have to try and squeeze an extra couple of horses out of the block...

yep i agree low pressure turbo is fine but youll soon feel the urge to turn the boost up :p

Sounds to me like a standard turbo engine would do the trick here. 173lb/ft from 2200rpm sounds like whats the guy is looking for.

It pretty much would be a tad over the 150bhp... but with the benefit of 16v, which adds to the volumetric efficency of the cylinders.... I never got why the turbo lump was based on an 8v unit...

Keep costs down and low rpm torque high!

Thanks to Niz, Foxy and Malachy,

yes, Foxy is right. i was looking a better response at between 2000 - 3000 rpm. today is the second day i drove it and i'm really disappointed with the low end torque.

but replacing the engine with a turbo engine is not an option for me, cause this ride will be totally modified for the next couple of months, i cannot spare more money for a new engine.

that's why i wish your experts opinion, i don't really care how much HP the engine output is but i really wish the big fellow has more low end accelleration to suit my 20 km = 2 hours drive to work.