????Best way to spend 2k????
- Thread starter gnjay
- Start date
Turbo6Smackdown
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2005
hey, i emailed you a list of typical first mods. After that stuff is completed, you can start throwin huge turbos and injectors at it. Good luck.
Adam Connell
Monster Truckin since 87'
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2006
What do you have done already?
Underboost
Mr. Dull
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2005
Whats up Jay?
J
JCotton
Guest
Gary Wells
White turbo Buick trailer park trash
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2002
UNDER-PRESSURE
..... Member .....
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2006
Scantool, Alky injection, TT chip, Injectors, 340 pump & hotwire, adjustable FP regulator, RJC power plate, TH down pipe, K & N air filter, Shift kit, Spring cleaning. Tune the car & enjoy 11 second reliable power.
Turbo6Smackdown
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2005
ok ill post it here, but its huge.
Turbo6Smackdown
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2005
Ok here’s the deal. A lot of people like to try and tell others, about what makes the car go fast, and nothing else. What they won’t tell you is, how not to break things in half (u joints, drive shafts, floor boards, roofs, A pillars, connecting rods, and head gaskets) and they wont tell you how to keep er runnin good, and long.
Before you go strappin on all these go fast goodies, you GOT to stiffen her up, and make her reliable. If you don’t, you WILL crack the roof and A pillars and motor mounts. That is an absolute guarantee. I bet you your paycheck.
Go to 'kirbanperformance.com' and check out part numbers 6756, 1586, 6744, 6564, and 6571. These are all the 4 frame brace kits, and the engine tie down strap. if you don’t use the strap, and you try a brake torque launch, to spool up the turbo, you’re going to split your motor mount. Drivers side. I already did it 3 times. Take it from me. Yea, I know you’re going to get 'Well I never did it, so ya don’t need it." Doesn’t mean it wont happen. Do it now, and save yourself the trouble for later on.
Now that your frame and engine are secure, you have to get at least, a scanmaster and gauges (boost, tach, oil pressure, and water temp in the MINIMUM!! ). If you don’t know what the cars doing, you will blow it up. trust me. So much air is being rammed down the engines throat, if there's just ONE LITTLE discrepancy ANYWHERE in your system, it will become readily apparent.... reeeaaal quick. In the form of shiny parts being ejected from your engine bay. Before you start boosting these cars up to 20 pounds of boost, things have to be in order. Or you’ll soon see why. Go to The Grand National / T-Type / Turbo Regal Buick Spring Cleaning Guide and do what they tell you. Overall its just a basic maintenance area. Once you check those things off, go to the other areas. Quick Reference Page For the '86/'87 Turbo Regals and '89 Turbo T/A Go here, and print this page. Then, plug in the scan master, and cross reference this page to the numbers on the 'master' If you have any questions with these numbers, you can post em here, and these guys will square you away, or you can actually contact THE MAN direct. His name is Mike Licht from full throttle speed on our boards. (its amazing the support we have here) He will clarify fact from fiction as far as deciphering those numbers, as he invented the scanmaster (well, helped anyways)
Now that your car is doing what it's supposed to be doing, and is solid now, go over the suspension. You can have 1100 horsepower like cal hartline, and if your suspension sucks, you’re going nowhere fast. The things to cover are control arm/trailing arm bushings, control arm stiffness, sway bars and their bushings/mounts, shocks, springs, airbags, pinion snubbers and frame braces. Now that you already got the braces done (right?!) do the rest. Starting with the cheapest mods, and working your way up, are the air bags, and rear sway bar. Air bags are like 60 bucks a kit, and a sway bar is like 150 or so. GET AGGRESSIVE!!. REAL ATR rear bars, Which is AWESOME. I'd get one IMMEDIATELY if the car doesn’t already have one. After that, you can reinforce the rear arms. They’re a b*tch getting on and off, but reinforcing them is easy. You can find out how to do that anywhere on here. Or, you can go to the local steel place, with the control arms in hand, and look for 2 or 4 pieces (its on you) of scrap plate stock. You’ll need like 1.5" wide by 7" long pieces. Or whatever fits those arms. Take em to a muffler shop, and have em draw a few beads. Bam, stiff rear suspension. While they’re off, nows a good time to replace the 4 or 8 bushings, if you have the time, money and motivation. If not, just throw em on there and be done with it. Next is the shocks. Bilstein. Hands down. They’re the cheapest and the best. There are cheaper, but they’re not better than Bilstein. The springs are fairly cheap too. I wouldn’t do the lowering springs, as they tend not to let other things fit soo good. Keep the stock height. Front sway bar? Leave it alone. It's perfect stock. Finally tires. If she’s a street racer, do some good z rates up front, and whatever sticky tires you prefer on back. But be careful. You cant skimp on tires for our cars. They will go up in flames with our torque. Now that the suspensions covered, you got 3 other places to go. Lightening, heat management, and tuning. Notice I stay away from the genuine HP making additives till last. I do that cuz they’re simply not necessary. (for now) What you already got is good enough for now. You can coax a ton of torque out of what you got already, just by tuning, saving weight, and keeping the heat down.
Radiator. Make sure its a good one. There’s several options out there, but the cheapest seems to be the camaro rads from 87 to 92. Then, there’s a myriad of fans. You can scope those options out from the board. There's a ton of 'em. Gbodyparts has em, as does several other places. You’ll need a harness too, as I THINK our stock harnesses are inadequate.. I think.
Of course, you’ll need a 160 thermostat, but i'm sure there’s already one in there. (double check of course) Also, make sure both the rad hoses are squared away. If you don’t have the fans rigged up to use a manual switch to turn em on, you’ll have to have the chip programmed to turn em on. In the summer (which you shouldn’t be running the car in the winter) you can also run purified water, with water wetter, or rmi 25, and I see that help a lot of guys too.
Now that she’s cooler, work on its weight. The typical mods that save weight, are aluminum rear drums, aluminum bumper supports, aluminum bumper mounting brackets, lightweight starter, smaller battery (your car runs off of its alternator not its battery, don’t worry about cold cranking amps. you’re not 'cold cranking' it for 30 seconds at zero degrees anyways) fiberglass bumpers, fiberglass hood and trunk, aluminum 15 or 16" wheels, leaving the spare and jack out of the trunk, and not running a 300 pound speaker box in the rear. Just those changeovers right there, is worth like a tenth and a half straight away. (and a lighter car handles better too) There’s other stuff you can do, but some of them are semi, to fully permanent, and not only do they hurt the originality and resale value, but they affect the buicks inherent comfort and luxury. They include yanking the rear seat, entire radio system, entire heating/air cond. system with compressor and condenser, pulling all the motors that make the accessories power, (windows, locks, and seats) and throwing on fiberglass doors. Those are mods best left to serious track racers. Then of course there’s the little stuff, that’s more of a pain to do, but still worth a couple of lbs if you’re so inclined are hollow sway bars, aluminum pulleys, aluminum drive shaft, and lightweight flex plate. I wouldn’t worry too much about those though.
Ok, After you did the basics, ya gotta do air in, air out, and fuel.
"Air in"
Start with the air filter, and work forward to the turbo. If its a 'high flow' filter variation. Good. Any filter like Accel, K&N, AFE (my favorite), Air Raid, Spectre etc etc will work. Preferably mount the filter outside the engine bay, but if you cant, oh well, anything is better than a stock box. Ideally you want to make all the piping to the turbo inlet bell as big as you can, (with 4 inches being good for the fast cars, and 3 inches being pretty adequate for most of us street cruisers.) Including the filter. But do what you can for now. Address each part. Filter? Check. MAF? Try to get the widest Chevrolet maf you can (you’ll need a translator of course) , after that, the maf tube. Aluminum is the best, but get what you can. Any sort of flexible ducting, usually tears. Screw that. Get a solid maf tube. Ok, if you’re running an aftermarket turbo that doesn’t use a separate inlet bell, there’s nothing you can do. If your turbo (the stockers or the TA49's) uses an inlet bell, you can either fill the little oil tube hole, (with aluminum rod, or jb weld) then port & polish it, or you can run one of those billet versions from kirbans.
They flow more, and are bigger. Now, all of that is kind of useless, if the hole on the inlet side of the compressor housing isn’t bellmouthed. All ya did, is ram all that air, right into an almost quarter inch shelf so to speak. Round that off too. And lastly is the air into your engine, after your turbo. Do you have a stock IC? If so, you may want to consider the "duttweiler neck modification". It's proven to work and is relatively cheap. After that, there’s the doghouse. You can either get a good one (about 200 bucks new, from hemco) that flows more evenly, or you can just throw an RJC plenum plate in there, for about 30-50 bucks. It helps the air flow evenly to all cylinders. The stock doesn’t do that so well. It's actually kind of important.
There’s your air in. The 'air out' is simple as well.
Switch to a good 3" down pipe. Externally wastegated's are better, but expensive. If you just want to bolt one on immediately and go, a good 3 incher from SE turbo or gbodyparts is the ticket. They’re brand new, and are of the latest technology. If you’re runnin stock, yank the exhaust elbow off, and port & polish that too. you can smooth out the inside, and open up the mouth a bit (where the donut gasket goes) once you did that, you can either go to a bigger stock style downpipe like kirbans, or you can just keep the stocker on there, and run a 'cut out' where the cat used to be. If you have to deal with emissions, slip fit the cut out on there, and clamp it on, then just bolt a cat in there when you gotta go do your testing.
Of course we all know by now, that the turbo is a HUGE form of restriction, and ANYthing you can do to help out flow after it, is always a big help. Now I'm not saying to run a dual 4" system, like a big diesel does, cuz that’s simply not needed. But I'm also not saying, that you don’t need a really good breathing exhaust either. A decent 3" single shot, or a dual 2.5" with good downpipe and straight thru mufflers is all you need. If you cant get a good one for now, an open dump is just fine. Now that the air in/out is addressed, we gotta go thru fuel.
Fuel.
Like I said before, address each part at a time, starting from one direction, and moving forward. Fuel is VERY important in our cars. Very important. Like I always say, start from the tank and move forward in a 'flow chart' kinda way. Gas tank. Is it the right one or an aftermarket one. Our tanks are turbo buick specific, cuz they have baffles in it. Yes, they’re important. Yes, I know you 'went 11.3 without baffles" but Id make sure they’re in there if I were you. Secondly, is it clean. No use trying to clean all the rest of the system, if you’re just going to suck up more sediment eh? Clean it. Once she’s clean, address the pump. Is it a 'known good' aftermarket pump? No? Replace with a good pump. If yes, then verify it. Do whatever you need to do to make sure it works. I don’t know,, grab a meter and do the little checks you do. Voltage checks, flow rate checks with a big tub, and if possible, check the 'check valve' etc etc. After you know its good, look at the fuel sock. Is it decent? good, check the fuel line, and then re-install. Mount the tank back up, and start tracin fuel line. Look for kinks and/or rot. Check tightness and serviceability of the joints/connections. Fuel filter? You already know about that. If it needs changing, change it. Trace some more line. Is it good to go? If not, you know what to do. All the way up to the rails and afpr. Are your rails good? Any sediment caught in em? Does the regulator hold some pressure? Is it adjustable? If not, throw an aftermarket one on. It's a mandatory thing. If there's a fuel gauge on there, check her too, make sure it works, and holds some pressure too. Once that's done, do the injectors. "Pour in the tank" injector cleaners are only semi helpful. One bottle wont do it either. You should use it as a regimen. Do one every fill-up for 3 times in a row. After that, you can do it once every third fill-up. Though, I doubt any of our cars need it, as most of them not only reside in a nice garage, but never get cheap fuel, or let their tanks run all the way dry. Most tr owners, when in doubt, just pull the injectors anyways. Cleaning the injectors don’t necessarily help them, if there’s dryrot in the seals, or actual sediment inside them. A true 'cleaning and flowing' from a reputable vendor is actually a better route. Like witchhunter or some other places around this site. Now that the fuel system is addressed part by part from the tank forward, you can start on the other mods. Fuel and air are the most important aspects because if one little part in those systems isn’t working properly, you'll be going nowhere. It could be something so minute like some faulty wiring to the fuel pump (very common in our cars) and the pump wont spin like it should be, and you’ll be leaning out bad. That’s bad juju in a charge air car. Or let some dirt get up into just one injector tip. And hit a couple WOT bursts, and see what happens to that one piston. That’s why ya gotta keep an eye on these things.
With suspension, heat mngt., weight reduction and the air/fuel system checked out, you can begin to tune what you already have.
Depending on what you already have, or if you’re going to just yank everything out tomorrow, cuz you have a PT88 turbo and 110 pound injectors, because you want to turn 9’s tomorrow, then you already have a game plan. But for most new buick owners, the plan should be, to learn with what you got, and use your present combo as experimentation time. Improve what you have.
(so that you don’t blow your new 50 dollar head gaskets, or your new 1300 dollar turbo in the future) If you’re runnin a bone stock intercooler, see what you can do to make it more efficient. Try a better aftermarket shroud, from someone like Keith mease, stripping the core (tubes and fins) to bare aluminum, to see if till give its heat up a bit quicker, and install the dutt neck option. See what just those mods did. Record it, and move to the next project. The turbo/exhaust elbow. Port this, polish that, bellmouth this… see what that does, by itself, and record it. Have your injectors cleaned and flowed, and of course, record any changes. Add a manual boost controller, see what that does. Experiment on the core you already have (core meaning the turbo, injectors, intercooler, and heads) Make what you got fast, and learn from it, so you know what to do, and what NOT to do on your future parts.
Heres some hints here. Turbo Buick Technical Articles and Resources (Technical Archives)
Turbo Buick Performance Build Ups/Recipes
86-87 Turbo 3.8 Liter Engine Sensors
Malfunction Codes Reference
Glossary of Commonly Used Terms
And finally the history of it all.
From the military, I found out that, "Ya don’t know where you’re going, unless you know where you’ve been"
Buick V6 History
Turbo Buick Basic Information
Buick Performance - A Brief History
Study this stuff on gnttype. It’ll show you what you need to know. That’s the best weapon in street racing. Knowledge. I’ve seen it time and time again. He who spends the most time in the books, wins. Don’t believe me? Ever see an older vette driver lose? All the time. Ever see the really young supercharged mustang drivers lose? All the time. Its cuz they don’t want to study. One just reads the paper and drinks coffee all day, cuz he thinks, cuz his car’s a ‘vette’, he don’t need to study. And the other one is too dam young and undisciplined to study. All he wants to do is play playstation, and listen to rap, when cruising his new mustang.... You’ll soon find out, when they become unsuspecting victims of the Buick 3.8 turbo.
The "quick reference pages, trouble codes, and sensor locations" should be printed out, stapled together, and stored in your centre console, along with a good powerful flashlight (like a streamlight or surefire) and a 'multi-tool' like a leatherman or gerber. In the trunk, should be a small rubber mat, for getting down on the ground in good clothes, and big SOFT beach towel, for putting on your fender, when screwin around in the engine bay. Scratches stand out on our cars, like a bulldogs ballsack. If one doesn’t carry these things around, they will soon learn why lol. Yea, they brake down once and a while, but that’s because they’re 20 year old cars, that are still street driven. That's ok, they’re still the coolest cars around, and totally worth it in my opinion.
Before you go strappin on all these go fast goodies, you GOT to stiffen her up, and make her reliable. If you don’t, you WILL crack the roof and A pillars and motor mounts. That is an absolute guarantee. I bet you your paycheck.
Go to 'kirbanperformance.com' and check out part numbers 6756, 1586, 6744, 6564, and 6571. These are all the 4 frame brace kits, and the engine tie down strap. if you don’t use the strap, and you try a brake torque launch, to spool up the turbo, you’re going to split your motor mount. Drivers side. I already did it 3 times. Take it from me. Yea, I know you’re going to get 'Well I never did it, so ya don’t need it." Doesn’t mean it wont happen. Do it now, and save yourself the trouble for later on.
Now that your frame and engine are secure, you have to get at least, a scanmaster and gauges (boost, tach, oil pressure, and water temp in the MINIMUM!! ). If you don’t know what the cars doing, you will blow it up. trust me. So much air is being rammed down the engines throat, if there's just ONE LITTLE discrepancy ANYWHERE in your system, it will become readily apparent.... reeeaaal quick. In the form of shiny parts being ejected from your engine bay. Before you start boosting these cars up to 20 pounds of boost, things have to be in order. Or you’ll soon see why. Go to The Grand National / T-Type / Turbo Regal Buick Spring Cleaning Guide and do what they tell you. Overall its just a basic maintenance area. Once you check those things off, go to the other areas. Quick Reference Page For the '86/'87 Turbo Regals and '89 Turbo T/A Go here, and print this page. Then, plug in the scan master, and cross reference this page to the numbers on the 'master' If you have any questions with these numbers, you can post em here, and these guys will square you away, or you can actually contact THE MAN direct. His name is Mike Licht from full throttle speed on our boards. (its amazing the support we have here) He will clarify fact from fiction as far as deciphering those numbers, as he invented the scanmaster (well, helped anyways)
Now that your car is doing what it's supposed to be doing, and is solid now, go over the suspension. You can have 1100 horsepower like cal hartline, and if your suspension sucks, you’re going nowhere fast. The things to cover are control arm/trailing arm bushings, control arm stiffness, sway bars and their bushings/mounts, shocks, springs, airbags, pinion snubbers and frame braces. Now that you already got the braces done (right?!) do the rest. Starting with the cheapest mods, and working your way up, are the air bags, and rear sway bar. Air bags are like 60 bucks a kit, and a sway bar is like 150 or so. GET AGGRESSIVE!!. REAL ATR rear bars, Which is AWESOME. I'd get one IMMEDIATELY if the car doesn’t already have one. After that, you can reinforce the rear arms. They’re a b*tch getting on and off, but reinforcing them is easy. You can find out how to do that anywhere on here. Or, you can go to the local steel place, with the control arms in hand, and look for 2 or 4 pieces (its on you) of scrap plate stock. You’ll need like 1.5" wide by 7" long pieces. Or whatever fits those arms. Take em to a muffler shop, and have em draw a few beads. Bam, stiff rear suspension. While they’re off, nows a good time to replace the 4 or 8 bushings, if you have the time, money and motivation. If not, just throw em on there and be done with it. Next is the shocks. Bilstein. Hands down. They’re the cheapest and the best. There are cheaper, but they’re not better than Bilstein. The springs are fairly cheap too. I wouldn’t do the lowering springs, as they tend not to let other things fit soo good. Keep the stock height. Front sway bar? Leave it alone. It's perfect stock. Finally tires. If she’s a street racer, do some good z rates up front, and whatever sticky tires you prefer on back. But be careful. You cant skimp on tires for our cars. They will go up in flames with our torque. Now that the suspensions covered, you got 3 other places to go. Lightening, heat management, and tuning. Notice I stay away from the genuine HP making additives till last. I do that cuz they’re simply not necessary. (for now) What you already got is good enough for now. You can coax a ton of torque out of what you got already, just by tuning, saving weight, and keeping the heat down.
Radiator. Make sure its a good one. There’s several options out there, but the cheapest seems to be the camaro rads from 87 to 92. Then, there’s a myriad of fans. You can scope those options out from the board. There's a ton of 'em. Gbodyparts has em, as does several other places. You’ll need a harness too, as I THINK our stock harnesses are inadequate.. I think.
Of course, you’ll need a 160 thermostat, but i'm sure there’s already one in there. (double check of course) Also, make sure both the rad hoses are squared away. If you don’t have the fans rigged up to use a manual switch to turn em on, you’ll have to have the chip programmed to turn em on. In the summer (which you shouldn’t be running the car in the winter) you can also run purified water, with water wetter, or rmi 25, and I see that help a lot of guys too.
Now that she’s cooler, work on its weight. The typical mods that save weight, are aluminum rear drums, aluminum bumper supports, aluminum bumper mounting brackets, lightweight starter, smaller battery (your car runs off of its alternator not its battery, don’t worry about cold cranking amps. you’re not 'cold cranking' it for 30 seconds at zero degrees anyways) fiberglass bumpers, fiberglass hood and trunk, aluminum 15 or 16" wheels, leaving the spare and jack out of the trunk, and not running a 300 pound speaker box in the rear. Just those changeovers right there, is worth like a tenth and a half straight away. (and a lighter car handles better too) There’s other stuff you can do, but some of them are semi, to fully permanent, and not only do they hurt the originality and resale value, but they affect the buicks inherent comfort and luxury. They include yanking the rear seat, entire radio system, entire heating/air cond. system with compressor and condenser, pulling all the motors that make the accessories power, (windows, locks, and seats) and throwing on fiberglass doors. Those are mods best left to serious track racers. Then of course there’s the little stuff, that’s more of a pain to do, but still worth a couple of lbs if you’re so inclined are hollow sway bars, aluminum pulleys, aluminum drive shaft, and lightweight flex plate. I wouldn’t worry too much about those though.
Ok, After you did the basics, ya gotta do air in, air out, and fuel.
"Air in"
Start with the air filter, and work forward to the turbo. If its a 'high flow' filter variation. Good. Any filter like Accel, K&N, AFE (my favorite), Air Raid, Spectre etc etc will work. Preferably mount the filter outside the engine bay, but if you cant, oh well, anything is better than a stock box. Ideally you want to make all the piping to the turbo inlet bell as big as you can, (with 4 inches being good for the fast cars, and 3 inches being pretty adequate for most of us street cruisers.) Including the filter. But do what you can for now. Address each part. Filter? Check. MAF? Try to get the widest Chevrolet maf you can (you’ll need a translator of course) , after that, the maf tube. Aluminum is the best, but get what you can. Any sort of flexible ducting, usually tears. Screw that. Get a solid maf tube. Ok, if you’re running an aftermarket turbo that doesn’t use a separate inlet bell, there’s nothing you can do. If your turbo (the stockers or the TA49's) uses an inlet bell, you can either fill the little oil tube hole, (with aluminum rod, or jb weld) then port & polish it, or you can run one of those billet versions from kirbans.
They flow more, and are bigger. Now, all of that is kind of useless, if the hole on the inlet side of the compressor housing isn’t bellmouthed. All ya did, is ram all that air, right into an almost quarter inch shelf so to speak. Round that off too. And lastly is the air into your engine, after your turbo. Do you have a stock IC? If so, you may want to consider the "duttweiler neck modification". It's proven to work and is relatively cheap. After that, there’s the doghouse. You can either get a good one (about 200 bucks new, from hemco) that flows more evenly, or you can just throw an RJC plenum plate in there, for about 30-50 bucks. It helps the air flow evenly to all cylinders. The stock doesn’t do that so well. It's actually kind of important.
There’s your air in. The 'air out' is simple as well.
Switch to a good 3" down pipe. Externally wastegated's are better, but expensive. If you just want to bolt one on immediately and go, a good 3 incher from SE turbo or gbodyparts is the ticket. They’re brand new, and are of the latest technology. If you’re runnin stock, yank the exhaust elbow off, and port & polish that too. you can smooth out the inside, and open up the mouth a bit (where the donut gasket goes) once you did that, you can either go to a bigger stock style downpipe like kirbans, or you can just keep the stocker on there, and run a 'cut out' where the cat used to be. If you have to deal with emissions, slip fit the cut out on there, and clamp it on, then just bolt a cat in there when you gotta go do your testing.
Of course we all know by now, that the turbo is a HUGE form of restriction, and ANYthing you can do to help out flow after it, is always a big help. Now I'm not saying to run a dual 4" system, like a big diesel does, cuz that’s simply not needed. But I'm also not saying, that you don’t need a really good breathing exhaust either. A decent 3" single shot, or a dual 2.5" with good downpipe and straight thru mufflers is all you need. If you cant get a good one for now, an open dump is just fine. Now that the air in/out is addressed, we gotta go thru fuel.
Fuel.
Like I said before, address each part at a time, starting from one direction, and moving forward. Fuel is VERY important in our cars. Very important. Like I always say, start from the tank and move forward in a 'flow chart' kinda way. Gas tank. Is it the right one or an aftermarket one. Our tanks are turbo buick specific, cuz they have baffles in it. Yes, they’re important. Yes, I know you 'went 11.3 without baffles" but Id make sure they’re in there if I were you. Secondly, is it clean. No use trying to clean all the rest of the system, if you’re just going to suck up more sediment eh? Clean it. Once she’s clean, address the pump. Is it a 'known good' aftermarket pump? No? Replace with a good pump. If yes, then verify it. Do whatever you need to do to make sure it works. I don’t know,, grab a meter and do the little checks you do. Voltage checks, flow rate checks with a big tub, and if possible, check the 'check valve' etc etc. After you know its good, look at the fuel sock. Is it decent? good, check the fuel line, and then re-install. Mount the tank back up, and start tracin fuel line. Look for kinks and/or rot. Check tightness and serviceability of the joints/connections. Fuel filter? You already know about that. If it needs changing, change it. Trace some more line. Is it good to go? If not, you know what to do. All the way up to the rails and afpr. Are your rails good? Any sediment caught in em? Does the regulator hold some pressure? Is it adjustable? If not, throw an aftermarket one on. It's a mandatory thing. If there's a fuel gauge on there, check her too, make sure it works, and holds some pressure too. Once that's done, do the injectors. "Pour in the tank" injector cleaners are only semi helpful. One bottle wont do it either. You should use it as a regimen. Do one every fill-up for 3 times in a row. After that, you can do it once every third fill-up. Though, I doubt any of our cars need it, as most of them not only reside in a nice garage, but never get cheap fuel, or let their tanks run all the way dry. Most tr owners, when in doubt, just pull the injectors anyways. Cleaning the injectors don’t necessarily help them, if there’s dryrot in the seals, or actual sediment inside them. A true 'cleaning and flowing' from a reputable vendor is actually a better route. Like witchhunter or some other places around this site. Now that the fuel system is addressed part by part from the tank forward, you can start on the other mods. Fuel and air are the most important aspects because if one little part in those systems isn’t working properly, you'll be going nowhere. It could be something so minute like some faulty wiring to the fuel pump (very common in our cars) and the pump wont spin like it should be, and you’ll be leaning out bad. That’s bad juju in a charge air car. Or let some dirt get up into just one injector tip. And hit a couple WOT bursts, and see what happens to that one piston. That’s why ya gotta keep an eye on these things.
With suspension, heat mngt., weight reduction and the air/fuel system checked out, you can begin to tune what you already have.
Depending on what you already have, or if you’re going to just yank everything out tomorrow, cuz you have a PT88 turbo and 110 pound injectors, because you want to turn 9’s tomorrow, then you already have a game plan. But for most new buick owners, the plan should be, to learn with what you got, and use your present combo as experimentation time. Improve what you have.
(so that you don’t blow your new 50 dollar head gaskets, or your new 1300 dollar turbo in the future) If you’re runnin a bone stock intercooler, see what you can do to make it more efficient. Try a better aftermarket shroud, from someone like Keith mease, stripping the core (tubes and fins) to bare aluminum, to see if till give its heat up a bit quicker, and install the dutt neck option. See what just those mods did. Record it, and move to the next project. The turbo/exhaust elbow. Port this, polish that, bellmouth this… see what that does, by itself, and record it. Have your injectors cleaned and flowed, and of course, record any changes. Add a manual boost controller, see what that does. Experiment on the core you already have (core meaning the turbo, injectors, intercooler, and heads) Make what you got fast, and learn from it, so you know what to do, and what NOT to do on your future parts.
Heres some hints here. Turbo Buick Technical Articles and Resources (Technical Archives)
Turbo Buick Performance Build Ups/Recipes
86-87 Turbo 3.8 Liter Engine Sensors
Malfunction Codes Reference
Glossary of Commonly Used Terms
And finally the history of it all.
From the military, I found out that, "Ya don’t know where you’re going, unless you know where you’ve been"
Buick V6 History
Turbo Buick Basic Information
Buick Performance - A Brief History
Study this stuff on gnttype. It’ll show you what you need to know. That’s the best weapon in street racing. Knowledge. I’ve seen it time and time again. He who spends the most time in the books, wins. Don’t believe me? Ever see an older vette driver lose? All the time. Ever see the really young supercharged mustang drivers lose? All the time. Its cuz they don’t want to study. One just reads the paper and drinks coffee all day, cuz he thinks, cuz his car’s a ‘vette’, he don’t need to study. And the other one is too dam young and undisciplined to study. All he wants to do is play playstation, and listen to rap, when cruising his new mustang.... You’ll soon find out, when they become unsuspecting victims of the Buick 3.8 turbo.
The "quick reference pages, trouble codes, and sensor locations" should be printed out, stapled together, and stored in your centre console, along with a good powerful flashlight (like a streamlight or surefire) and a 'multi-tool' like a leatherman or gerber. In the trunk, should be a small rubber mat, for getting down on the ground in good clothes, and big SOFT beach towel, for putting on your fender, when screwin around in the engine bay. Scratches stand out on our cars, like a bulldogs ballsack. If one doesn’t carry these things around, they will soon learn why lol. Yea, they brake down once and a while, but that’s because they’re 20 year old cars, that are still street driven. That's ok, they’re still the coolest cars around, and totally worth it in my opinion.
Turbo6Smackdown
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2005
this is the basic route most people take. itll show you what to do, when you want a reliable car, or when you want to start going faster.
Turbo6Smackdown
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2005
they work good for cooling their air charge but... most daily drivers just do a good stock location, like precision turbos, or gbodyparts versions. theyre both hot too. I think id do the least expensive of those two to be honest. Plus, with most front mounts, ya gotta make sure your cooling system is on its best behavior on top of that...Id just do a stock location..(after i did the other stuff first)
But, did ya do the frame braces, engine strap, spring cleaning, and mandatory guages and scanmaster yet??
Remember what i told you. Youre going to crack your A pillars and motor mounts man... The stock body/frame from the factory, was not built to handle the torque from these motors. Trust me when i tell you youre going to crack your A pillars. Get the 5 braces, Do the spring cleaning, get the guages/scanmaster, and tune what ya got. After that, the suspension comes first. youre going to go nowhere fast like i did, if you make it faster than it already is, on its stock shi**y suspension....
But, did ya do the frame braces, engine strap, spring cleaning, and mandatory guages and scanmaster yet??
Remember what i told you. Youre going to crack your A pillars and motor mounts man... The stock body/frame from the factory, was not built to handle the torque from these motors. Trust me when i tell you youre going to crack your A pillars. Get the 5 braces, Do the spring cleaning, get the guages/scanmaster, and tune what ya got. After that, the suspension comes first. youre going to go nowhere fast like i did, if you make it faster than it already is, on its stock shi**y suspension....
UNDER-PRESSURE
..... Member .....
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2006
Start with the basic's & keep the car simple. Easy to go real fast with stock parts when properly tuned & real easy to go real slow with Great expensive parts on a mix matched combo. Save the race parts for the race cars & get the stock combo dialed in first. When your in the 11's then start looking at go fast parts. Just my opinion.
I agree and drop a few extra on a GT3255e turbo.
Have it tuned properly and enjoy uncontrollable stock tire performance:biggrin:
UNDER-PRESSURE
..... Member .....
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2006
I can't thank you enough Otto for talking me into the Alky setup!! I LOVE IT. My car performs better than the race gas state of tune & is the Single best performance item i've ever seen for these cars.
