Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hey all never thought about this and if its possible, but im thinking of flying over east next week to buy a car, and was actually thinking while im at it, drive the car back to perth myself and make it a road trip instead of getting it shipped here, would cost me the same with fuel i know but would be more itneresting. anyway.....

My question is...is there any way to disable a turbo on an r34? maybe pull some boost hose out or sumthing? seems abit useless for the turbo to be constantly spooling on a 3000km journey.

Any ideas?

cheers

Edited by supraaah
Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/144505-is-it-possible-to-disable-a-turbo/
Share on other sites

  GTR1993 said:
cruising it will probably not even be making positive pressure, it will be fine.

the way to 'disable' it would be to wire open the wastegate.

well lets just say im in 5th gear and not quite doing the speed limit, it would be spooling up abit wouldnt it? i mean the nallabor plain is a long road my foot might accidently get stuck on the accelerator.

any idea where the wastegate is? and if that would be a viable option?

BTW- i have an external wastegate on my supra (50mm chinese HKS copy) which has seized open, and my turbo still spools up, so wouldnt that be the same principal ur on about? in which case turbo still spools.

Edited by supraaah
  supraaah said:
well lets just say im in 5th gear and not quite doing the speed limit, it would be spooling up abit wouldnt it? i mean the nallabor plain is a long road my foot might accidently get stuck on the accelerator.

any idea where the wastegate is? and if that would be a viable option?

BTW- i have an external wastegate on my supra (50mm chinese HKS copy) which has seized open, and my turbo still spools up, so wouldnt that be the same principal ur on about? in which case turbo still spools.

if your wastegate is seized open how are you getting boost ? dont they vent excess boost ? meaning if its open before you reach set boost level it wont go anywhere

you would use more fuel by "Disabling" the turbo for your trip than you would using the thing.. and even if your cruising along at 160kph you shouldnt be seeing much boost to maintain a cetain speed if any at all

remember.. if you disable your turbo it will be a gutless bucket of junk to drive!!!

Edited by rb26s13
  wun hung lo said:
You're nuts mate. If you don't want a functioning turbo don't buy a turbo car. If you do buy one just drive it. That's what they were built for.

I second this. Drive the thing, you will soon find it doesn't just boost when on steady state cruise.

Best way to disable a turbo? Tip a handful of shotgun pellets down the air intake. Guaranteed to work :laugh:

I agree with the majority of opinion here - on cruise, the turbos are simply "spinning in the breeze" - you should find that the engine is still under vacuum.

If you disable the turbos, and you find yourself in a "sutuation" (eg misjudged how much time/distance you have to overtake a B-double), then you won't have the turbos to assist you in your time of need.

Just leave the damn things alone.

i would have to agree, on the simple fact that you are driving across a desert in a car that you aren't familiar with. you don't know if the thermostat or clutch fan is working properly. so you run the risk of cooking it on the way. at 100kmh there would be plenty of air going through the radiator, but it could still get rather hot. and if something breaks you could be stuck in the middle of nowhere.

to those of u with helpfull and productive comments ...thanks, to the rest of u no one asked u to comment if u dont agree, notice i said "just an idea" i own a supra (hence my avatar) with different turbo setup and different gear/diff ratios, doing 160 even in sixed my turbo is spooling up quite abit, now as a newbie to the r34 i have never driven one, im buying it on my brothers behalf. Once again, thanks to those with productive comments :)

dont be so one sighted, there are different caars out there, if an r34 wont be spooling up at that speed, doesnt mean others wont...thats why i asked

no car would spool up at light cruise at 100km/h

even at 130kmh. the turbo has no relationship to road speed

it only cares about exhaust gas, which is derived from engine load

load the engine up, and it will wind up

the turbo will only spool if you open the throttle

engine load makes exhaust gas, exhaust gas makes the turbine spin

so once more

no car will make boost unless you pull the throttle cable enough

it wont under any circumstances staring winding in 12psi if you are just light crusing along the highway

supraaah - serious answer is that you will not be boosting at all infact you will have negative boost ie. vacuum. at cruise - which is most of the time so you will be just fine in the fuel economy department.

Also there is very little increase in fuel consumption and a lot more efficiency to be had from using the turbo when you are accelerating.

If you are wanting fuel economy what counts is how long you can maintain a cruising speed vs accelerating time. So if you drive in a way that you brake less and therefore don't have to accelerate back up to speed you will get more fuel economy. Accelerating hard onto the freeway will not see you use more fuel! What you will get is better power to weight ratio output from your lighter engine which has a turbo instead of a larger and heavier engine.

Once you drive it, check out the boost guage, this will show the boost negative or positive. Its definately extremely negative when you are cruising.

Do try to drive when accelerating with the rpm in the powerband where your engine is most efficient ie.over 2200rpm.

Don't forget the energy is used to get you up to speed and lost in braking. How hard you accelerate so long as you aren't going to brake for a while especially makes almost no difference to the fuel economy.

So feel free to use that boost to get you up to speed but try to maintain the speed without having to brake. If that means driving slower to make it through all the lights in the city without braking or coming up to a lower speed so when you do brake you don't lose as much energy from your last acceleration thats the way to go for fuel economy.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • My first car was a HG. I'm very familiar with them. A mild cam upgrade is a good idea. The 186 is a very flexible engine - meaning it has good torque from down low. You can give up a little torque down low for quite a lot more excitement in the mid range, and a bit more up top - but they are not exactly a rev monster. You need to upgrade valve springs at the minimum. For a bigger cam, you'd want to make sure it wasn't still running the original fibre cam gear. That would be unlikely, given that most of them shat themselves in the 70s and 80s, but still within the realms of possibility. Metal cam gear required. Carbies are a huge issue. The classic upgrade was always a Holley 350, which works, but is usually pretty bad for fuel consumption. The 186S had a 2 barrel Stromberg on it that was very similar to the one on the 253, and is a reasonable thing if you can find one, and find someone to help you get it set up (which is the same issue with setting up a 350 to work nice). The more classic upgrade was twin sidedraught CD type carbs, or triples of same, or triple Webers. The XU-1 triple Webers being the best example. You can still buy all this stuff new, I think, but it's a lot of coin to drop. And then the people able to set them up are getting fewer and further in between. There's still some, but it used to be everyone's** dad and uncle could do it. **Not everyone's! But a lot. All in all, I wouldn't get too carried away with the engine. Anything you do to it without a full rebuild for power and revs will only make it slightly faster. I am all in favour of a complete teardown rebuild, with nice rods and pistons, 10 or 10.5:1 compression, and a clean port job with at least a big enough cam to run 98 with that compression, if not bigger. And if I did that to a dirty old red motor, I'd want to inject it too, which I'd struggle to fight against the devil on my shoulder that would argue for ITBs and trumpets. But the bills would start to mount up, and it will still never make stupid power. OK, a few people still know how to build absolutely mental red motors, courtesy of the work that went into HQ racing and modern knowledge being applied. But even a 300HP red motor is no match for an RB20 with a TD06. So you have to decide what it's worth to you. I'd just put a set of 6>2>1 extractors, a 2.5" exhaust and an electronic ignition conversion/dizzy on it and just run the old girl like the fairly slow old girl that she really is.
    • Thank you so much for the comments.  This is very interesting and gives me some great ideas to think about. Keen to keep it simple and relatively classic looking. That said, i am not too worried about staying 100% period correct.  A little extra performance and relatively good (or improved) economy is just what i am looking for. Ill be keeping any parts i swap out so if i get nostalgic i can always swap it all back in.  Right now just trying to get some good ideas from people in the know (I still have a lot to learn in this space). Thank you again!  
    • Wrt the engine, you're very much limited by 'production quality' as to how much extra power you can extract from them (I'm talking i6 red-motor) -- a lot here depends on how 'authentic' or 'period correct' you want the modifications to be... ...I'm too old... <grin>...the first true performance engine Holden made, was in the HD/HR models ~ this was the 'X2' performance pack...it came with twin downdraft strombergs on an otherwise unimproved intake manifold, with a two piece exhaust manifold (reckoned to be as good as extractors)... ....these engines were built upon the '179HP' cylinder block, which included extra webbing in the casting to make it stronger and less susceptible to block distortion... The next performance i6 came out with the HK Monaro (also found it's way into the LJ GTR Torana ... the car I wish I hadn't sold)...it had pretty much the same manifold setup, but was built against the '186S' block...this block retained all the extra webbing of the 179HP block, but added a forged steel crankshaft (instead of the stock cast crankshaft), because it was possible to snap the crank... ...apart from the inherent weaknesses in the stock (cast crank) blocks, the next limiting factor is the cylinder head porting & combustion chamber design, and the actual valve sizes. Back in the day, you could buy a 'yella terra' cylinder head (from stage 1 to stage 5 gradients), and this was the way to get serious power out of them -- with the extra breathing of these heads, you could fit a triple SU or DCOE Weber setup... ...obviously, these mods were a waste of time on a stock cylinder head/camshaft grind. My housemate rebuilt the i6 in his VH dunnydore about 6 months back -- this is a 186S block with the 12port 2850 blue motor head and intake/exhaust manifolds, with a dual throat Weber off an XF Falcon mounted on an adapter plate ; it's not a bad makeup...got more torque & fuel economy just light-footing it about on the first throat, but stand on it and it makes more giddy-up than the standard 2850 blue motor that it replaced. Personal note: I'd just fit an RB30 and be done it it 馃槂  
    • Thanks for sharing. That's a great video! My buddy is doing the same thing on his build (S chassis struts and towers). He's building an S14 with billet RB30 shooting for 2000whp... a race car with a TH400 just like this video. For a road car I just couldn't go this route as the strut has to be almost vertical and the caster is not going to pivot correctly (let alone camber gain). You think the R32 frontend is bad, wait till you put a MacPherson strut on without modeling it all in Solidworks to check geometry. I'm not saying it's a bad way to do it but I'd be really curious to see how it affects the geometry.
    • Hey Christof and welcome!  Sounds like an awesome project! I'm not sure many of the regular users on here would know much about the HK but I could be wrong.  Looking forward to updates.
  • Create New...