Borg Warner turbo in a Turbo Buick!

Nick Micale

Tech Advisor
Staff member
Joined
May 26, 2001
Even though I am an "old-school" person who like proven parts and methods, I also embrace new technology when applied to our turbo Buicks! :)

Most of the T-R's I have done in the past few years have been street performance builds with a attitude, they are kick-ass on the street.

The turbo technology that has been developed in the past 25 years was first exploited with ball bearing center section and then billet wheels. I stayed with old tech turbos as they were simple, affordable, reliable not much gain over the newer stuff.

After being exposed to the new line of the Borg Warner EFR, I found many new and innovative turbos which in my opinion, which are way ahead of the main-stream turbos used in the turbo Buick community.

At this point all B-W EFR turbo utilize 4-bolt housing, but a 3 bolt Buick housing is presently in the works!

The EFR impressed me as it has an internal waste gate which will easily utilize an affordable electronic boost controller.

Another factor is reliability, as the Indy cars all run a B-W turbo for 2 seasons running 200 MPH+ with no service needed, impressive!

The reason for this post is to make our community aware of this product, and you can do your own research on many other details.

I went a step further as I received my EFR 7670 Supercore turbo yesterday, and it will be installed my street Limited. I wanted to take advantage of a 4 bolt turbo with an internal electronic gate and an internal blow-off valve.

Also, not to be different but more efficient, I decided to mount the turbo with the air inlet facing front for a direct cold air intake, and the exhaust will not be restricted by a sharp 90 degree bend inches away from the impeller wheel.

The first mock-up shown below is an approximate position, but I think it will be positioned a little lower especially since we will do a custom alum inner fender, and not deal with the ugly stock plastic piece.

If all goes well, it should be in the road test stage in about a month.

B-W TURBO 2.jpg
 
A cut away was at the GNS booth at the 2015 BG race...WOW, is all I can say!
A side note; A light breeze was blowing, and the turbo was sitting there, spinning away! I guess dbl ball brgs, "unobtanium wheels", work, even when dry.:D I was really impressed w/ the quality, features, compact size..And all the neat bells/whistles.
Shaft speed port, and the items Nick mentioned,,,,,,Plus the exh hsg is stainless.
If the SX400 on the LS gives up, it'll be replaced w/ one of these.(y)
 
Nick, looks awesome, cant wait to hear about the preformance. Know you like the 45a as i do am curious to see if this is a better way to go, plus when the three bolt come out. Thanks Gene
 
I was standing there when Nick and John Norton from BW were exchanging ideas on the build Nick had in mind and has mocked up here for all to see.

Sounded like it was gonna quite the badass then! Looks as if it will be, now. :D
 
What's the ETA for the 3 bolt Buick style housing?
 
Sub'ed...
Would also like to see a list of wheel sizes avail for the 3.8
 
I'm surprised Buick people haven't just welded a 4 bolt flange to their exhaust by now.

Maybe I should do it for my next build since I'm going from hot air to intercooled but not changing everything, kinda custom
 
First a disclosure: I am a BorgWarner employee, more specifically an engineer for the Turbo Systems division and part of my responsibilities include the EFR product line.

I appreciate the interest and plan to make a more in depth post on EFR at a later date, but wanted to address the following questions now:

Approximately a 600HP turbo?

Nick's turbo is a 7670 which is rated at 650HP with a max flow of ~65 lbm/min.

Below is a compressor map for the 7670 taken from our catalog which also can be downloaded from borgwarnerboosted.com

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What's the ETA for the 3 bolt Buick style housing?

We have worked with PTE to create a turbine housing machining based off of the existing 0.85 A/R PTE 3-Bolt casting that accepts the EFR. To date we have made two of them as trial pieces. Those of you that attended or watched the tech session at the TurboBuick.com Nationals may recall that Phoneguy (Bryan Lynch) won the drawing for a BorgWarner turbo of his choosing. He has the first three bolt EFR turbo and plans to run it on his TAI car. I have the second turbo which is shown below:

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A couple of things to note, at this time a stock wastegate actuator will not directly bolt up to the EFR turbo, nor will the J-Bracket that mounts the turbo to the cylinder head. This isn't an issue for people like Bryan that run an external wastegate and don't use the J-Bracket.

As for availability of more 3-Bolt housings, it all depends on interest from the TR community. If there are enough people that aren't bothered by the inability to mount the stock actuator or J-Bracket then it might make sense to bring it to market as is in the short term / rather than fully develop the actuator and bracket mount features before releasing it to the market. Feel free to voice your opinion on the matter.

Sub'ed...
Would also like to see a list of wheel sizes avail for the 3.8

The following page from our catalog will help describe the options:


upload_2016-10-23_21-56-38.png


The rotor group pairings are listed along the top of the page in blue and orange, 7064 thru 9180. These are for the B2 framesize which is the largest EFR framesize.

The nomenclature signifies the compressor wheel EXDUCER and turbine wheel inducer diameters, for example the 7064 is a 70mm OUTER diameter compressor wheel and a 64mm diameter turbine wheel. The exducer diameter is not to be confused with the inducer.

Here is a listing of the compressor wheel inducer diameters for the different rotor groups:

EFR 7064, Compressor Inducer 52mm
EFR 7670, Compressor Inducer 57mm
EFR 8374, Compressor Inducer 62mm
EFR 9174 and EFR 9180, Compressor Inducer 67.6 mm

All of the rotor groups listed above are compatible with the 3-Bolt housing, except for the 80mm which is too large for the three bolt turbine housing.

I'm surprised Buick people haven't just welded a 4 bolt flange to their exhaust by now.

There are a few of us that have done just that.

Back in 2013 my car was the first TR engine that I know of that adopted EFR. My set up is an EFR 8374-D (Twin Scroll non wastegated housing) in a Mazda RX-7. A brief write up is in the following link: http://www.turbobuick.com/threads/holy-efr-batman.405757/

Seth Temple did the fabrication work on my car and we took a simplistic approach and cut off the three bolt flange on a stock header and welded on a T4 flange. Also simplifying the install was the use of an external wastegate, which avoided the need to come up with a solution to mount the stock actuator.

Paul Simmons is on the road with a GORGEOUS true twin scroll set up which separates the firing pulses into each of the two scrolls. He created his own mounting bracket, adapter bracket to mount BorgWarner's super short actuator, and designed and fabricated his own exhaust system with twin scroll turbine inlet foot which keeps the right and left bank separated as they feed into each of the two scrolls. Here are a few photos posted here with his permission.

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Actuator Adapter Bracket

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Actuator adapter bracket mounted to super short actuator and it's cast bracket.

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Turbine inlet flange, CNC machined to accept separate inlets from each bank
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Note the exhaust which separates each bank feeding into the twin scroll turbine housing which keeps the exhaust pulses separate taking full advantage of the twin scroll housing which results in quicker spool as compared to a single scroll housing. Also note the mounting bracket which attaches the bearing housing to the cylinder head.

There are also others that have mounted 4-Bolt EFR turbos to Turbo Regals.

I look forward to Nick updating us on his install.

-john
 
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