Project Thread Vortech on a tired 1UZ-FE

The 1UZFE EGR Delete Kit is available for sale here.
Thanks for the support! I am definitely going to do something with the PCV on the passenger side. I am not interested in blowing out the rear cam cover. I'm just at a loss right now as to what I should do for the intake piping. Should I order pipes from eBay? Should I get PVC pipes from Lowe's and do PVC intercooler piping for now?
http://www.jblmk3.com/cars/pvc.php for an example of who's done it. Most of what I hear against using PVC for intercooler pipes centers around the HOT gases of a turbo. Well, a centri blower at 5-6psi won't produce much heat at all, I wouldn't think..

The belt wrap is as good as I can get it without fouling on the mounting bolts on the blower. The required grip on the huge 3.75 pulley is also much, much less than that on a 3" or 2.5" pulley, especially when pushing half as much boost. The belt alignment looks OK to my naked eye, but I will definitely be watching the belt wear like a hawk, and will get some cheap belts from the internet to keep as spares!

KC, are you going to stay with the V-9 or are you looking to upgrade to a bigger blower?
 
My pipe is all ebay stuff. Just intercoolers I THINK, can't remember. They sell kits but if you contact them they can arrange anything you want. The kits will probably have things you won't need and will likely be missing some stuff you do need.

Maybe you could use PVC for mock up but I'm not so sure on long term use. That blower will likely create more heat than you think. Mine, just cruising on the highway can get to 120-130 degrees and I've seen as much as 200 degrees at 12psi when I didn't have the water/meth and I wasn't using an intercooler.

The belt wrap from what I can tell looks pretty good. Hard to tell from the vid but looks like maybe 60% wrap or so? It's not as good as mine (about 80% wrap or so) but I can see what you mean about the bolts being in the way and you make a good point about being low boost and such. Your blower looks as though its sitting quite a bit higher than mine.

I could tell that my alignment was off a bit with the naked eye so you might be good. Didn't look too bad but it would chew a belt in two weeks or so of driving. I finally figured out that I had one too many spacers on one of the bolts behind the bracket.

I'm not 100% sure that a bigger blower is what I need but I would really like to break into the 11's.:p I went 12.047 last week. I'm pretty sure I can do it as is but I'd like to be IN the 11's rather than just being able to run an 11 every once in awhile when everything is perfect. The fastest V8 SC400 / Soarer that I know of went 11.7, I'd like to beat that.:D

KC
 
Don't ever use Home Depot pipes of any sort. I used them when I first started building boosted cars and didn't have any luck with them. They'll become junks on car, including their silicone hoses. They can't withstand the heat and vibration on cars. The last thing is they're ugly on cars. :D
 
Yeah, the home depot idea is right out. I'll have to delay completion while I wait on pipes to be delivered from the internet. It doesn't make sense to do a half-ass job right now.
 
I bought an intercooler DIY "kit" from xo2racing.com


I had david pick it up and I bought it off of him. Their site sucks but they do offer a polished aluminum kit with 2 45's, 2 90's, 2 "U"'s and 4 straights with the intercooler and it ran around $200- $250 total.

I connected them with t-bolts anbd silicone couplers but the best way is to have them welded. I had a lot of small leaks and I determined this because once I welded up all the pipes I gained 1/2 a pound of boost afterwards.


But seriously, if a PVC home depot intake fits and does the job, your blower won't get anywhere near hot enough to melt it. I can hold my palm on my blower after several pulls and it wont even burn skin.. Steve has a point with vibrations tho.
 
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Well, here are the bits I ordered:
24" length, 2.75 silicone hose
3" blue 45 degree silicone elbow
90 degree 2.75" aluminum pipe

I'd like to plug the 3" elbow into the black intake chamber, hook the MAF to the end of that, hook up the 2.75" aluminum pipe to that, and then use the length of silicone hose to complete the circuit.
I have only two concerns so far; the hose blowing off of the aluminum elbow, and the suitability of the stock intake chamber piece for boostage. I will find those out when the parts get here - all of it likely by next Friday or so. Which is fine.
In the meantime I can do the odds and ends, such as little nit-picky adjustments to the blower's alignment, hook up the FPR, hook up the boost gauge, and find a solution to the passenger side PCV dilemma.

I got a horrible APC low-profile intake filter from Advance Auto Parts fitted over the snout of the blower. I had to remove the radiator and headlight to do it! There is zero clearance between the filter and the radiator. Eventually i need a better, more workable filtering solution, but this kludge should work for now.
 

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Thermactor, couple of comments/suggestions.

You're lucky you don't have the coolant tank in the way, my piping has two extra 45's in it that it looks like you can avoid.

I don't think you'll be able to run the pipe over the upper radiator hose. Definately not enough room on mine, make sure you check it. My blower is clocked 45 degrees from straight to the passenger side and goes right into a 45 degree coupler running under the hose.

If you don't want to run filterless (don't blame you) here's an idea. Buy a cheap performance FLAT oem type filter. Cut out a section of the filter media big enough to fit over the intake of the blower. Flatten it out and use a large hose clamp to attatch it to the intake.

I used the OEM black intake portion attatched to the throttle body at one point, seemed to be ok. I worry about the MAF handling boost. I blew the cover off of two of them which is why I finally decided to use a MAP sensor instead.

KC
 
Thermactor, couple of comments/suggestions.

You're lucky you don't have the coolant tank in the way, my piping has two extra 45's in it that it looks like you can avoid.

I don't think you'll be able to run the pipe over the upper radiator hose. Definately not enough room on mine, make sure you check it. My blower is clocked 45 degrees from straight to the passenger side and goes right into a 45 degree coupler running under the hose.

If you don't want to run filterless (don't blame you) here's an idea. Buy a cheap performance FLAT oem type filter. Cut out a section of the filter media big enough to fit over the intake of the blower. Flatten it out and use a large hose clamp to attatch it to the intake.

I used the OEM black intake portion attatched to the throttle body at one point, seemed to be ok. I worry about the MAF handling boost. I blew the cover off of two of them which is why I finally decided to use a MAP sensor instead.

KC
Hey KC,
I'm planning on running the charge pipe under the rad hose. There's plenty of room, if I find the downward clocking of the blower to be unacceptable I can easily lift up the radiator by an inch without fouling anything. It wouldn't be pretty though.

I'll wait and see how well the horrible APC filter works out, it might end up being - and staying - OK. I need to do a little bit of fine tuning to get the clearances back where I like them. As a longtime member of bobistheoilguy.com I shudder at the idea of running filterless, lol :) I thought about hose clamping filter media to it, but then I'd lose a ton of flow capacity - I'd have about 1/10 of the available filtering surface area of a normal factory filter setup. I also didn't want to run an HKS Super Dirt Flow style filter because they allow way too many particles to get through.

As far as the MAF goes, you have a good point. As with a LOT of other factors with this setup, I hope my low boost pressure won't be a problem. If I recall correctly, your car has the older Karmann vortex style AFM (my NA-T Supra had an identical one but it was a draw through setup), mine is a black plastic box.
If I have MAF pressurization issues I might have to put it upstream of the blower. That would not be pleasant. Or, as you did, I could get the MAP deal, but that's something that isn't budgeted right now :-/
So far I'm into this project about $1300.
Glad to hear that the OEM intake resonator didn't give you problems. That's one less thing to (potentially) worry about.
Thanks for the post KC,
I appreciate everybody's input in this thread. You guys rule. :D
 
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Well, the FPR is hooked up, the world's worst boost gauge is hooked up, the PCV is resolved, the drive belt looks like it's routed nicely... everything is ready for boost. I just need those hoses to come in. :D
 
Good, so you have a hot wire MAF not a KV MAF then. I don't think pressure will bother the hot wire at all. Worst case, it might leak air past the o-ring but if it did it wouldn't hurt anything. Mine was actually leaking through the MAF which I'm pretty sure was screwing up the readings.

I used one of those APC filters at one point directly on the blowers intake. I didn't really notice any difference running pipe down to the bumper area with a K&N other than lower temps. I don't think it makes any more boost though. I think you'd be fine using it and if it is a restriction, it might help keep you in the lower boost range that you want anyway.

KC
 
That's the sweet thing about the fish and a Vortech.

Mine would be similar but I've spent allot on everything else.

But the Vortech was 900 used on ebay the fish was 100. Add a 100-200 for the piping and misc stuff and you can easily have a low boost Lexus!

KC
 
My blower was $775 from eBay. All the supporting bits are nickels and dimes, but they added the total up to $1285 very quickly :) However... this is well under half of what most every other FI project I've seen comes out to. I'm not going to pat myself on the back until I have it making boost. Driving around with the blower freewheeling makes my car sound pretty ridiculous. People stop what they are doing and look at my car when I drive by. I have a stock exhaust, so my car is all blower whine. LOL!

Would it be bad taste for me to put Mercedes-Benz styled KOMPRESSOR badges on my front fenders?
17_Mercedes_Benz_V8_Kompressor_BadgeS.jpg

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/3D-K...r_Truck_Parts_Accessories?hash=item3a54cd2d4d
 

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My car is operational again thanks to Lextreme and the belt tensioner he hooked me up with.
After I put that all together, I used the pipes I had and the pipes that have come in to hook the system together, and went for a short drive.
Sadly, the old, cracked accordion pipe that hooks up past the MAF is a leaky piece of junk, so any boost made is minimal. Barely 1psi at 3000rpm. When the 45 deg. 3" silicone elbow FINALLY gets in, I can reconfigure the system to get rid of it, and shorten the piping a little bit.
I might have to also junk the EGR valve as KC suggested.
 

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1 psi at 3k might not be so off. Mine makes about 3 psi at 3k with a pulley that makes 12psi at redline. Also keep in mind that most pulleys boost is calculated using a 6.5 inch crank pulley and ours are only 5.5 inches (mine at least).

I'd be willing to bet that the EGR is leaking. For a quick test you can make a block off gasket out of a soda can. Put the oem gasket on the intake and put the soda can gasket between the oem gasket and the EGR valve. This will only work for a very short time before the hot exhaust gas burns holes in the thin soda can material but it works well enough for you to check it quick.

I made almost no boost until I blocked off the EGR valve. I was starting to think that the V-9 was too small for the engine. I even called Vortech and they told me that it was indeed too small.:eek: Proved them wrong I guess.

Good luck!

KC
 
I love the soda can fix. I used it for the EGR pipe at the exhaust manifold, when the pipe was broken and the car was sounding like a 1984 Cutlass Ciera with a broken exhaust :D
I'll check it out.
 
I took it for a quick spin on the highway. A few observations:
1) I've never noticed slow traffic in front of me being such an impediment before.
2) This thing cranks up from 55-90mph in zero seconds flat, as if it's being pushed by the fist of an angry God.
3) It's about 3psi at 4,000RPM, which is good enough for me.

I'm happy!
 
hehe, terrifying freeway capabilities eh?

4psi doesn't do justice from a gauge's perspective... the power is just brutal up top. Congrats on getting it running!
 
Meant to say 3psi above... The gear ratios are pretty fun for freeway battles. Next time an EVO looks at you wrong on the freeway I guarantee he wont have a chance!

Next time your out, try a WOT at 65-70MPH. It's the sweet spot hehe
 


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