another turbo six!

hey guys, im fairly new to the forum, and have been browsing some threads for a bit now. so here I go, I built a turbo setup for my 96 f-150 m5od 4x4 obd2 maf. the setup is a draw through maf, using the stock eec programing, and 19lb injectors from a 4.6l mustang gt. the turbo is from a late eighties Volvo 740 station wagon td04. no fancy piping as I was just using spare charge pipes that were collecting dust in my garage. the waste gate is set at 8psi and references from the compressor housing, the engine reads 6psi at the manifold, I pulled the base timing back 4 degrees, and am running copper core autolite plugs, after removing the ngk vpower plugs. truck runs awesome considering no tune added to the system head was replaced 6000km ago, performed a bowl hog, and intake runner clean up, exhaust was polished but grinding was left to a minimum. I had to steal a dual core rad from another truck to keep the engine temps cool. truck ran happily at 6psi. at the moment I do not have an air to air or "intercooler as gas guys call em" at this time, before I do any more hi way cruising I will be installing one. at 110km/hr unit is making a constant 6psi suspect very hot intake temperatures. have not noticed any knocking or irregularities, under heavy loads (long 4th and 5th gear pulls). soobeing caught up in the boost cycle/addiction :nono: I moved my waste gate signal to the intake manifold. truck was making 7 psi under full throttle and 9-10 psi under part throttle. once again no knocking noted, took the truck out of town for a highway cruise 60km or soo and back. truck started to miss on cylinder 6, and started to smoke white . suspect head gasket has failed. only smokes when hot and idle. I ordered a set of head studs. does anyone have a suggestion for head gasket and to help it live? im going to leave the truck set at 6psi for future use.

Just because it feels good, and cannot hear detonation does not mean that you are not destroying your engine. To run a turbo you must know what your timing, air fuel mixture, turbine inlet pressure, intake air temp at boost or your playing with fire. When I learned these things the hard way ,the wide band was like 10,000 dollars Today they are cheap. I had to guess at the fuel ratio.

I am a big fan using what you have and bring resourceful... but only if it works. The turbocharger you are using is GROSSLY undersized for this application. If you are seeing boost at part throttle loads then the turbo is likely too small, and if you are seeing boost constantly then the turbo is WAAAAY too small. If I recall correctly, the 740 volvos were equipped with a 2.0 or 2.3 litre engine and the turbos used in them were small, even for those displacements to ensure a quick spoolup. If you had TWO of these turbochargers you would be in the ball park, but with only one you are WAY off in sizing. The exhaust volume your 300 is producing is spooling the turbo at all times and producing huge amounts heat. This is why you are having cooling problems and is also why you are seeing boost decrease at full throttle as you are way off the efficiency scale of the map and overheating the air.

A good head gasket and studs will not fix your problem but would be a good start, assuming nothing else was damaged. While the head is off toss a cheap T4 China charger on the truck and hang that little Mitsubishi turbo on your keychain... Then you should be back in business.

drag-200stag, thanks for the input . I was going by plug color and shape after a hard pull for the time being, like I have in the past with my carb'd big blocks. I have no problem plumbing in an afr and was well aware I was playing with fire, and am fine with the consequences at this time as the engine was getting ready to be pulled soon. as far as tearing the engine down I think im going to drop my other 4.9 in for the winter months and run it n/a, and pull this one out for a good inspection. are these heads prone/common to crack in the valve seat area? I originally was looking for a 40-50% increase in performance and am happy with what I saw out of this inefficient setup. with the exhaust already plumbed It should be no problem changing the flange over. when your saying t4 First Fox, do you mean a t3/t4 combo? thought a t4 would have been a little large for this engine, I have a internal waste gated t4 garrett gt4082 with a turbine a/r .96 that in my mind is too large on the exhaust side for a low flowing head, correct me if im wrong. what kind of exhaust backpressure is a guy aiming for? im used to seeing diesel engine exhaust pressures well into the 60s for 45-55psi for example on large 13-15l engines. im planning to drop intake temps as much as I can, install a fmu and larger injectors. as far as tuning, I was thinking of using moates and their quarter horse, anyone have anything against them? thanks for the imput.

Dug up the ol gt4082 internal wastgate... and found some compressor maps compressor a/r .58, turbine a/r .95 twin scroll t4, think ill split the banks may not be as efficient as if the pipes were perfectly equal length but should still help none the less with spool im thinking, correct me if im wrong.

post up some pics if you can, theres only a couple people that have boosted these motors and even fewer pictures.

Ill have to figure out how to upload them here....tried uploading a couple to photo bucket.http://s40.photobucket.com/user/Seth_Vi ... t=3&page=1

some of the fabricating is on the hack side but took a day to assemble...

well, if it works, go for it!

TD-04's come in a bazillion different configurations... most of the common OEM ones have compressor maps available for them. Chances are pretty good that it is well on the small side for what you're doing. Look for the ID tag on the compressor housing (if you haven't burned it off! :rolflmao: )



mine is a 15G which is from a '96 850T, about as big as they come, even then i'm still concerned it will be too small.


Either way, thanks for posting, very cool stuff. Good to know that it was working, at least marginally, just bolted right on there.

That picture of the garret is the gt4082? probably on the big side but maybe not, its sweet that its a split-scroll turbine... it would be awesome to run a pulse-paired 3-2 manifold for that. Supposedly you can get away with a bigger turbo doing that but i don't know from experience, just reading. Might be perfect with an intercooler and the head work you've done.


oh yeah on the head gasket the fel-pro 1024... its an expensive beast but holy cow it is awesome. At $60 it better be!

oh yeah, and on the Moates QH i did a little reading for a buddy who was looking into it... looks like it doesn't support the 4.9L ford ECU

it does support the 3.8L and you could, at least in theory, adapt all the sensors and wiring harness from the 3.8 over to the 4.9.

each ford ECU has a definition file which must be manually cracked for the QH to interface with it. All the expense and everything... if you were gonna just do one engine for the rest of your life and it was one of the supported models, it might be worth it, but i think Megasquirt is a lot more useful and if you get bored or want to put your truck back to stock, you can take the same megasquirt and run it on your boat or something

Thanks motzingg, my tdo4 is a reman from the tag, doesnt have anything behind tdo4 to id the thing, ill keep an eye on things when its back together and throw in an a/f meter and see what the thing is doing.ill keep it at 6-8lbs soo far im very happy with the results..around town no issues, and mileage was just as good as before 18mpg or soo city, hiway was a different story under constant boost it was like driving a big block on the matt and watch the fuel gauge drop... I have looked into the megasquirt for my bb mopar stuff, but was looking to use the stock eec, ill have to do some digging, love this little truck. On another note is there any major internal differences with the pre 96 efi engines, i know the manifolds are different along wih gear cover and balancer, debating putting the 94 in for the winter or till it blows, i bumped across a post somewhere saying the pre 96 engines have cast pistons?

Thanks motzingg, my tdo4 is a reman from the tag, doesnt have anything behind tdo4 to id the thing, ill keep an eye on things when its back together and throw in an a/f meter and see what the thing is doing.ill keep it at 6-8lbs soo far im very happy with the results..around town no issues, and mileage was just as good as before 18mpg or soo city, hiway was a different story under constant boost it was like driving a big block on the matt and watch the fuel gauge drop... I have looked into the megasquirt for my bb mopar stuff, but was looking to use the stock eec, ill have to do some digging, love this little truck. On another note is there any major internal differences with the pre 96 efi engines, i know the manifolds are different along wih gear cover and balancer, debating putting the 94 in for the winter or till it blows, i bumped across a post somewhere saying the pre 96 engines have cast pistons?

Sorry I'm late to the party. As far as exhaust pressure to boost pressure, 2:1 seems to be OK. As with everything, you have to compromise quick spooling with higher turbine pressure. Its just good to check it, if pressure goes sky high and no more power is being made, its definitely too high. Of course without a gauge, how high is it? I just tapped the manifold with 1/8" pipe tap and use a cheap oil pressure gauge with a copper line. The long line with the small tubing dampens the exhaust pulses so it doesn't hammer the gauge to pieces. Once you see what is happening for the set up you have, you can remove it.

After seeing pictures of your Volvo turbocharger, its definitely too small. The GT4082 may be a little large for what you want to do, maybe not. There are so many different names and numbers. The best way to figure out what the turbo is capable of is measure the inducer of the compressor in mm's at the wheel and the exducer of the turbine. Roughly speaking (and I mean roughly), for medium size compressor wheels each mm is worth about 10 hp.

In the tech section, in Linc's turbo facts there's a link to Ray Hall's turbocharging. You want to look up "pick a map". Read the instructions carefully, some calculations are in celsius. It'll lay out about 5 boost and rpm points and lay them out on different turbo maps to see where you are at for surge and choke. The best calculator I've ever seen. Don't use the "pick a turbo" calc. It will only show you one deal.

I like the idea of splitting the manifold and using the divded housing. There are 2,000 hp turbo motors out there where the piping is not equal or tuned to length. Definitely not an issue for what you're trying to do.

Happy turboing.

The GT4082 appears to be similar to the Holset HX35 that I am using. On my undivided manifold the HX starts making boost around 1700rpm but takes a few more RPM before it wakes up.

The GT4082 is worth a try!

new update, drove the truck a bit today. we got a decent dump of snow. anyhow, connected my vac/boost gauge and found a major flaw in how I was measuring my pressure (had the line plumbed into my charge pipe pre throttle plates) in my first post. moved the line to my intake manifold. truck starts to make boost around 1650-1700 and its all in 2200 rpm. got a little brave (head gasket still munched) and held it to 4000 rpm boost did not dip off and holding 7psi. at a constant 57mph truck is still making about 8-5hg" under cruise, confirmed this with my sensitive 8" 15psi gauge on the return cruise. when the head gasket is fixed ill know a more accurate 60-65 mph cruise vac reading. engine wise vac readings look good reading 20 hg" with throttle plates closed off.

on another note, two days ago got my gaskets in from summit. the new 1024 gasket was nicely creased. ordered another through a local source while I deal with summit... hoping this week to see the studs and new gasket. when the head is off and im checking the head over, ill weld a bung to the exhaust side of things and get some exhaust pressure readings with the td04H-13c.

(how can I upload pics to the forum?)

you cant upload directly here... its a real PITA actually... not only do you have to host them somewhere else, you can't even embed them without scaling them. I guess so people on dial up with 640x480 resolution CRT's can read the forum?

I use picasa, which is google's image hosting service, to host my files then i can either link a picture here or embed in a variety of sizes.



i had written a response here and i got pissed when it wouldn't embed the compressor map so i chucked it.

Got the head gasket swaped ot while i was inside changed my valve seals to positive seals, and cleaned the bowls up. Wraped the exhaust merge pipes. Inspecte all valve seats, chambers look good, piston tops showing no signs of det, deforming or meltage, conpression cold 150 +- 5 lbs. Took a bit to get the thing to stop bucking finally got it.. she likes 40 thou plug gap, 8 deg advance initial timing, pulls 7lbs boost too 4000rpm then starts to drop off with the td04h ehaust back pressure reading 22psi at its peak..at idle pulls 20 hg" at 62mph cruise 8-10hg". Truck hauls!

uploaded photos here including an efi head chopped up (dropped a valve a few weeks back) also photos of the truck after it was converted from 2wd to 4x, im going to try and upload photos directly here if i can. Also im noy sure if anyone is interested in the chopped up sections of the head to pass around for porting or not. Let me know i wouldnt mind seeing them back or i can cut a couple chambers more.

With the new head i opened up the bowls and touched the exhaust a bit, sending the head for machining 3angle valve job (possible oversize intake) 30deg cut on the valves. I also asked for this head to be flow tested with the work done to it. still interested in installing 1.7 ratio rockers with the stock cam, also need to figure out a higher spring rate for the valves for this head. lots of info but seems to be splayed across the forums guys seem to like the pre efi heads alot better for performace, ill keep my eyes peeled for the next time, hoping there wont be one.

If you end up cutting more sections of the head I'd be interested in having one for checking valve clearance. Itd probably become nothing more than a desk ornament after that but I still want one. Just PM me about price and shipping, I'm sure we can work something out.

that photo is very helpful. thanks!

i know its been a bit, but here it goes. i sent my head off to get machined. my guy performed a 3 angle valve job with the stock sized valves and back cut my valves 30 degrees and de shrouded (head no longer has lean burn properties, i had also polished the combustion chamber). i then had him flow the head (for kicks) as i had ported the intake and exhaust bowls and blended them into the runners. the head flowed 200cfm before getting turbulent. the guy for kicks continued to port the head with the head slices i gave to him, and was able to get the head to flow 225cfm@0.550" and the exhaust is 83% of the intake, with the stock sized valves. he left the other ports for me to copy his work. i will post photos in my bucket when im finished.

feel free to pipe in thoughts and comments to any of this im trying to learn too.

in the meantime i ordered comp valve springs 983-12 with ten degree retainers and locks. the seat pressure at 1.70" is 105lbs, coil bind:1.150" spring rate 410lbs/in. i was thinking that this will work much better than the springs i had previously ordered the 903-12's. and that they should also work well if i decide to change the cam up in the future, as comp lists the 903-12's for their larger cams.
i managed to get my hands on some new high impedance 47# injectors on the cheap along with a 44mm external waste gate from the same friend. also changed my turbo out for a gt35 .70ar on the compressor side and the turbine is a t4 with a .68 ar. (this friend has been running a business turbo charging vettes, vipers, and mustangs for a few years now. lately i have been getting my hands on some of his overstock relatively cheap.
as for the tuning of the eec v, we contacted a couple of the guys he uses to program his ecu's. i sent off my box code. the one fellow is able to program my eec v. i was seriously debating going the ms route up to this point.
i cut the td04 turbo flange off my turbo manifold/y-pipe and welded up the t4 flange and my waste gate flange. im hoping the weather warms up a bit soo i can reassemble the engine (truck is sitting in the driveway at the moment, and a car is apart in the garage :roll: ) im getting excited to get this thing running again. ill upload some pics to my bucket and keep trying to load onto here....