97 legacy gt turbo swap?

[whitesubbie]

Hey everyone Im new to the forum but not to cars. I mostly deal with rotaries. This car is my daily and I was wondering If I could just throw on a wrx turbo setup and how the car would run.

 

My car is a 97 gt ej25 dohc

 

stock wrx turbo

stock wrx tmic with aftermarket bov

turbo inlet tube

walbro+ safc+injectors?

Am I missing anything?

 

I only plan on running 5psi or so, main question is how will the afm and the stock ecu respond to this setup. Timing issues? Would it run okay with a safc tune?

[Platinum_Racing]

Head gaskets = BOOM

 

The EJ25 had weak head gaskets to begin with. The DOHC heads were better than the SOHC heads when it comes to making head gaskets last, but they're not immune. Boosting the engine is only asking for trouble.

 

And if you do decide to turbo the engine the ECU wouldn't really cause any issues. You might want to have the car tuned. Timing would be the biggest issue.

 

In conclusion, the car will react as expected to the boost. Moderate power gains, major drop in reliability. My prediction is the car would run well for about 3,000 miles (Or 1 oil change) before you pop the gaskets.

 

If you Really want to turbo the car, look around the interwebs and find a company who will make you thicker gaskets that will both last longer, and slightly drop the compression ratio.

[whitesubbie]

Well im putting new heads on the car, your saying I should buy cosworth 1.5mm head gaskets? How can the oem head gaskets fail that bad with such little boost? The engine that is in the car has a 20k balanced assembly with 3 angle valve job heads.

[Kraziken]

Take it from me. For a daily driver, is this your only car? I would not recommend randomly throwing on WRX parts and expect any reliability.

 

By the time you invest the blood/tears manufacturing something, or looking into turbo kits, you are better off doing a WRX motor swap. There are a few people who have done it and for the effort involved, your better off getting a solid platform. From there you can move up, because if you think 5 psi will keep you satisfied, you are wrong.

[sqc151]

KABOOOM!!!!!...<< nuff said.

 

you have a nice platform, save for a swap and do it right. then sell the GOOD engine and remaining parts to recoop from the expense. its like recycling.

 

ps: ur missing a whole bunch of parts.

[Platinum_Racing]

Well im putting new heads on the car, your saying I should buy cosworth 1.5mm head gaskets? How can the oem head gaskets fail that bad with such little boost? The engine that is in the car has a 20k balanced assembly with 3 angle valve job heads.

 

The OEM gaskets don't need boost to fail, they do that on their own enough in stock form.

 

Even if you forget about boosting the car, the EJ25's before 2004 always pissed through head gaskets... More often than not a pre-2004 EJ25 will have new head gaskets installed sometime in it's lifespan. Like I said, the DOHC GT engine held up better in the head gasket department for whatever reason, but it wasn't exempt from the issue. I'd go so far to say that probably 40-50% of all EJ25's before 2004 had some kind of head gasket issue sometime in it's life.

 

Either way, if you've got fully balanced internals and fresh heads on there you're already in good shape. If you want to boost the car and you already have a good base, you might as well go all the way. Drop the compression, get some good gaskets cut for you, and boost it past 5 PSI. You already have the basis for a killer motor with the stuff you already have put in it. Even if you forget the boost and gave the heads a nice port/polish with port matched intake runners you'd probably notice a generous improvement in performance. The DOHC motors breath decent enough as is but if you ported those heads you'd have a N/A serial killer on your hands.