I was wondering if you put a turbo on a truck like mine with with true dual exhaust and ran the turbo off the passenger side piping right after the manifold, would it screw anything up. I mean does it make backpressure on that bank of the engine, and the drivers side would not have as much restriction and blow something. I really cant explain well what I am trying to say. But is there any reason that you couldnt run a turbo off the passenger side exhaust manifold, and not even mess with the drivers side, or do both sides have to have equal amounts of restrictions. Cause I can find nice T-3 turbos for like $100 and all I would need is piping, oil lines, maybe fuel upgrades and a tune. It would cost under $500, and it would probably make at least 6psi. Comparing this to a supercharger setup, this is so much cheaper.

 

if you are going to the trouble of one turbo, why not 2? wouldn't be much more work.

 

I understand what you're saying beastie and can't figure out how that could be set-up, I know this doesn't really relate to a 5.0 but on my '65 bug I had a turbo and we joined the exhaust and had the turbo right behind a y-pipe.
6psi isn't that much, it might not be worth the trouble, I know a guy with a 4.9L and a turbo running only 5psi and he gained about 15 horses, which he easily could have done with a cam and heads for much cheaper then what he spent on having to make his own turbo.

 

It is not recommended to run a turbo off of only one bank. It would be an unbalanced situation as you suspect. If you run a single turbo, you have to merge the banks into a single collector.

I vote for twin turbo. Has anyone ever seen this done on F-150? Offer up some pictures if available. I think that twins would rock if properly setup and tuned.

Check out www.turbomustangs.com for a lot of neat turbo Ford small blocks. There are some good examples of single turbo setups.

Where are you finding T3's for $100? Are these junkyard units?

 

Yeah there is a junkyard by my house, and when a car comes in with a turbo in good condition, they pull them off and store them in the main place.

 

Usually you want to run a twin turbo setup on a V engine. You could put the turbo between the y pipe but then you need an electric oil pump to bring the oil back to the oil pan because the turbo would be set too low for gravity feed. You can gain significant horsepower with a turbo, even at low (~6psi) boost, but it all depends on how it's setup. Your best bet would be to do heads, a cam and a turbo because turbo's like a different cam profile than you have now. You couldn't run too much boost without an intercooler anyways because your engine has relatively high compression.

-Jon

 

Another fun website to check out is www.toohighpsi.com

There are several creative turbo and supercharger setups that give a good idea of what kind of options are out there for "low-buck" efforts. Some are really basic setups, but involve custom fabrication that not everyone can do at home.

B

 

Sounds like too much trouble for not much