The Turbo TR1 - new manifold (part 4)

Slowly, but steadily this stuff's coming together like it should... to admit I am a bit excited by now is a wild understatement. It all seemed rather theoretical up to now, but by now it's basically down to finishing the oil-suppy and then find out which parts I robbed off the bike in the last one-and-a-half years. But I am getting ahead of myself.

First step was to clock the turbo, which is a dead simple job on a new turbo, but a lot less so, when years of caked on oil and diesel-soot glued the whole lot together for good. Weeks of penetrating oil, a heat gun and some (not overly) gentle taps with a Newtonian particle accelerator (a PROPER rubber mallet) and it finally freed up. And just to give you an idea, just how small that lil' turbo is – that's a 10mm spanner below it.

Following the tradition of this being a proper parts-bin-special, this is a wastegate actuator from some Volvo (I think) with a GT1752 as the original actuator worked from vacuum and not boost, because it was operated by the Opel's ECU and not directly. (They were waaaay ahead of their time back then...)

A bit of fitting up of all the components and that VERY satisfying moment of: it's tight, but all fits in there... somewhere.

From a design point of view, this has got to be the single most elaborate plenum/intake manifold, I have designed to this point. It's every bit as three-dimensional as you would think, when looking at these pictures.

And that's actually the fabrication side of things on the cold side of the turbo mostly done.

So what's still missing at this point: I have to drill and tap the compressor housing to get a boost-source for the wastegate-actuator, sort out the oil-lines (both feed and drain), tap the engine case for the oil-supply and then sort out all the electrical gremlins that mostly stem from me "borrowing" parts for my daily and friends' projects.

I do not see a silencer as a high priority item. 😉