I am looking to build my car a little. I just bought a clean DA that came from Vegas and its rust free and real nice…now the problem i got is that i want it to be my daily driver cuz i don’t have room for 2 cars. Now i don’t know if i should build an ls motor for turbo…just like the basics like forged rods and pistons and just everything with the turbo kit running on a good tune at like 10 or 12 pounds…or build a gsr motor with higher comp pistons cams and running it on a tune also. I just need to know what will be the most reliable and what will give me more bang for my buck and still last a good while for me. Thanks for any help
NA if daily
gsr motor with ctr slugs FTW
anything tuned will last… pick a power goal and run with it!
What exactly do you mean by slugs? I know some stuff but im not really that smart at motors yet
Good point. Thats what i’ve heard from alotta ppl. I think im going to go with the gsr mildly built…kinda seems a bit more practical and more cost efficient. For my dd i don’t want too much power but shortly down the road i do plan on building something turboed with alot more power
slugs=pistons…turbo on 10 lbs. hondas love boost, hell my coupe i traded my hatch for has been turbo’d for probably almost 2 years on a 140,000 mile single cam, and it was even tuned by damian nunnemaker :nono: but hopefully winter really is done so i can throw the wheels on and get it tuned by joe fisher so it will actually make some power
well aren’t ctr pistons high compression? like i said, i might not know much about engines but i do know that for putting on a turbo that i would want low comp pistons and for more top end power i would want high comp pistons. So would ctr pistons be good for turbo?
ctr = high compression = not turbo friendly.
the horse, it’s dead already.
A N/A build may be more reliable, but in my opinion less fun to drive on a daily basis. It will be light years into the RPM’s until there is any usable power. Go with a boosted setup and enjoy the torque on the street. Do a turbo build with high quality parts and it should prove to be reliable. Its only going to be as reliable as you build it.
I had 2 turbo hondas daily driven for about a year. Not to many issues. More or less general maintenance type of things. Stay away from cheap manifolds that crack and get a good fuel mgm’t setup. Don’t push the engine to its peak and you should get many trouble free years out of it.
thanks for the help. Now with alot of help talking to nitroice40 i came to the conclusion that i am thinking of going with an ls bottom end…building it with a v-tec head. I will probably go with 9:1 forged pistons, forged rods, 450cc injectors, walbro fuel pump, and run it on a good tune and push like 10 pounds.
I drive a boosted car as my d.d i wouldnt go with a na built boost it
You can make upto 400+ on a stock ls head. the big advantage with the vtec head it revs alot higher ( and flows better). So if the vtec head breaks your bank start with an ls.
Yeah i see that its going to be real expensive to build ls v-tec. I got 120k on my motor but i think im going to just finish buying what i need to complete my turbo kit…install it in the summer and run like 8 or 10 pounds on the stock motor. As im running that im going to try to complete my ls build with stock internals within a year or so. That way by summer of 2010 i know my motor will be good to go. I know the stock one should hold 8 lbs daily for about a year as long as i don’t beat it too bad. So hopefully the boosted stock motor will hold up for like 10k miles or so til i finish my other build
For sure man…check out joe’s success w/ the non-vtec twin cam (fmfkid), he’s the ls-t prodigy.
Thanks. I have been down the Stock LS turbo road a time or to haha. I would stick with like 250whp or less. Dont buy anything smaller then a 57trim turbo.
Yeah i wasn’t planning on more then 250whp. I got a 50 trim turbo already from a trade i took for a bunch of parts on a rusty shell i had, but i might move up to a 57 trim or something if it makes a big difference. You say you have turbo’d a stock ls motor? i checked out your build and thats a sweet car. and if you did turbo a stock ls, did you use it as a dd?
I did turbod 2 civics as my dailys. my first one made 262 went11.87 on bfg’s the next one made like 280ish went 11.88@120 on slicks.
The key to the stock ls’s is to keep the RPMs below 7100.The biggest reason I was running threw the motors is 1. they where close to 200K motors and I was revving them to 7600 to prevent shifting to 5th in the 1/4. The turbo a Ran was a t3/60-1 It made full boost by like 5200.
goodluck
joe
My buddy Boob dailies a LS-T at 260whp. He has over 50k on the setup, and it’s still strong.
LS turbos are the way to go.
thanks to both of you for the help. I have heard from many friends that they are reliable but hearing it from ppl who have done it makes it even better to know. I will porbably do it still just wait a little. I plan on starting an engine build once i boost the stock one so i got a back-up in case anything goes wrong