Turbo Cobra Project

[Turbo98]

It’s not a terminator but it’s a 4V turbo set-up in my ’98 Cobra. The very basic set-up is:

• 5.3L big bore stroker, BOSS block, coated pistons, coated bearings, Oliver billet rods, Total Seal stainless rings, Probe main stud girdle, ARP hardware, etc.
• Fox Lake CNC ported FordGT heads with valve job
• Ford Racing intake manifold
• “Stockish” cams degreed in using Mod Camponents Adjustable cam gears
• Fore Precision triple fuel pump hat w/3 Walbros
• 160# high impedance injectors
• Twin 60 trim Precision turbos

The car has been through a lot and has undergone massive changes. Everything built by Turbo Connection Racing.

Here is a short clip during some break-in shortly after we got it fired up:

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_vsim5Bqxc"]YouTube - 98 5.3 Stroker Twin Turbo Mustang Cobra Breaking In New Engine[/nomedia]


So far we’ve made 877rwhp with ~13 PSI.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfg-qjUHwNc"]YouTube - 877.5 RWHP 733.8 RWTQ 98 Twin Turbo Cobra on E85[/nomedia]


This car has internal wastegates and they weren’t adjusted and functional yet. So they are basically wide open at all times so in essence, it’s like having a huge exhaust leak. That’s why the turbos aren’t spooling as fast as they should. They are all ready to go now so the next dyno runs will be with them operating normally and we can control boost. The turbos should spool much faster now.

 

[boosted2000si]

Post some pics man.

 

[Turbo98]

Here are a few pics:










We still need to take care of some details under the hood such as powder coating the intake and crossover tube, etc.

 

[Teej281]

Just get the thing cranked up there...just like I told you over on corral!!! Lol

 

[Turbo98]

Well, we're trying! If it was that easy, it would be done by now, believe me. This car has fought us EVERY step of the way. I know most people just drop the new motor in, bolt the turbo kit on, take it to the dyno and it's done. Not this one, lol. It's been a real challenge with many issues for some reason. But it's almost there now.

 

[Sn95Snake]

WOW... Amazing. How much did all of that cost. Sounds rediculously expensive...

 

[Turbo98]

Thanks.

Well, it's not the cheapest route to go for sure. I've always wanted to use this intake as I think it one of the best and most unique ones around. Ford used it on their Grand Am Cup Series car so I thought it would be interesting to throw some boost at it.

I haven't tallied up everything but other than the custom work, it really isn't much more than other 4V Modular turbo set-ups.

 

[Turbo98]

Cracked the 1000rwhp mark at 5100 RPM's. These little turbos are MAXED out. We will back the boost down now and pull it all the way.
[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVQ5fSlwCi4&sns=em"]YouTube - 1002 RWHP 1091 RWTQ 98 Twin Turbo Cobra Dyno Run[/nomedia]

 

[99riocobra]

looks amazing man! unreal setup!!

btw is this the 98 that had been sitting at that shop for a couple years and had an hp kit on it?

 

[Turbo98]

Yes, it's been there a couple years but hasn't been sitting. It's had three engines now and an entire custom turbo set-up built. It's been a long difficult road but Jim has really done a fantastic job in finishing up this car. We've had a lot of issue--none which were his fault. He's been very fair in dealing with all of this. A lot more of the details of this are over on Corral.

 

[99riocobra]

gotcha, i figured it was...sounds good though, glad he's been so good to deal with. car is sick for sure!

 

[Turbo98]

FWIW, here are some of the midrange torque numbers so far. We have since turned the boost down a bit and so far we have made 962rwhp at 22 PSI. We can still make up to 100rwhp/tq more down low at the 22 PSI level. But I honestly don’t think I can harness that kind of power to the pavement. This torque is pretty mind bending the way it is--almost Eaton stuff. We are still manipulating some things to come up with the best compromise.

 

[Turbo98]

We finished dyno’ing the car today. To make a long story short and after going through many different scenarios, we managed to finalize the high and low boost numbers. First we made 1028rwhp/1094rwtq at 5250 RPM’s with two guys sitting on the trunk!!!!! This thing is frying my mind! Then we turned it down and ended up making 982rwhp/1045rwtq at 22.5 PSI for high boost!! We made 762/737 for low boost at 14.2 PSI. This is the range of adjustment with the EBC. I’m even more impressed with how broad the power band is with this engine. Thanks again to Jim at Turbo Connection for building and tuning this creation with all the challenges.

Here’s the 25, 22, and 14 PSI graph:

 

[99riocobra]

unreal man! great results! maybe someday i'll get to see the car in person :beer:

 

[Turbo98]

unreal man! great results! maybe someday i'll get to see the car in person :beer:

Thanks.

Yeah, once I get it back, it shouldn't be a problem. I am going to pull the intake and some other stuff and get it powder coated so I can take some final pics of it. It still has to go to my body guy to have the front bumper painted and a few other things. Oh, he's going to wet sand it and buff it out too.

 

[Turbo98]

We ended up swapping the intake trumpets out on the intake for some shorter ones and picked up a little power. We only dyno’d it with the shorter trumpets at 15 PSI. Basically, swapping to the shorter trumpets gave up no power down low (it actually picked up a little) and shifter the peak power from 5800/5900 to 6400 RPMs. So the power isn’t falling off at all up top. Based upon what we observed, we’re confident that we will crack the 1000rwhp mark at the same 22 PSI level.

Here’s the 15 PSI pull with the shorter trumpets overlaid with a previous 14 PSI pull with the longer trumpets. You can see how the power isn’t tailing off up top. Also, you can see a jump in power down low as it picked up a maximum of 70 ft-lbs of torque at 3500 RPMs:


So now the boost controller is adjustable from 15 PSI to 22 PSI. Here’s the way it ended up:

 

[99riocobra]

amazing setup! can't believe the power at that boost level!

 

[Turbo98]

*****update*****

Well, as promised, after 3 months, I finally have some of the “final” pics of my car. I’ve spent the last few months making a few changes to the car, further cleaning up the engine bay, making cosmetic changes under the hood, and adding gauges, etc. Some of the major changes include:

• Swapped in an ‘03/’04 Cobra radiator (38% thicker)
• Had the intake, fuel rails, and coolant crossover tube polished
• Relocated and swapped to a Moroso aluminum expansion tank and had it powder coated black.
• Moved some gauges around, added two Aeroforce digital gauges, and added oil pressure and oil temp gauges.
• Made 75+ other changes/enhancements which are too many to list

So here are some pictures we took. I didn’t crop any of them yet as I wanted to post them up now so they could look better I suppose.

 

[Turbo98]

 

[Turbo98]

Oh, I almost forgot the engine pics, lol. Here we go!

Engine bay tag:


A glimpse of the Ford Racing intake manifold:


Final engine pics: