Just a few ideas/thoughts to throw in here, first why does everyone want to go turbo? The main reson to use a turbo over a supercharger is it takes power to run a supercharger, as it is driven by the crankshaft, small four cylinders are just not capable of doing this, but we are talking about a 4 to 4.3 liter V-8, it can turn a supercharger just fine, a centrigugal supercharger is no bigger than a turbo, just mount to the side of the engine and runs off the belt, want to add or subtract boost, change the pulley, that simple, upgrade cost you what $100 for new pulley.
Another benifit of this would be, you don't need new exhaust manifolds made, sure headers would be nice, but only necessary for those looking for higher horsepower numbers. I am not saying give up the turbo thing, because it is still cool and would yield the same result, I'm just throwing out an idea, it may be cheaper and easier?
As far as how much power the engine can handle, if someone can help me out here, sometime in the mid 90's there was a car on the cover of Hot Rod magazine the cover said Streetfighter I believe, any way it was a handbuilt car, red, had a cockpit set up, real exotic looking, as my memory recalls, I know it had a 4.0 Lexus in it, stock block and cranck, I know they had to change pistons to lower compression, not sure about rods, it had twin whipple screw chargers on it running somewhere around 30psi of boost, nitro/methanol mixture of fuel, and it was putting out about 1500 horsepower so reliability shouldn't be a problem, I would just get a set of pistons made to lower compression. Also has anyone checked out the new Blast/Sard racing sc400, running low 7's, anyone care to research thier mods? What they did for a tranny? etc
Ok trying not to write a novel here, as far as electronics, I would take a serious look at the new Aem ems replacement ecu, they don't make a direct plug in for lexus V-8 computers, but they have a universal model which someone could easily make a plug adapter for, In fact I will look into doing this, for those of you that don't know this computer completely replaces the factory computer, and anything that was originally controlled is now able to be adjusted, it also has auxilliary wires to add other stuff, this thing can do it all,boost control, timing, fuel, whatever have seen the units under $1400
Anyway, I got to go, I have many more ideas, but I'll save them for later, any questions, feel free to ask

 

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the car you're thinking about is of peter's homepage:

http://www.users.bigpond.com/pgscott/bullet.htm

as for turbocharged/supercharged... the debate is an ongoing thing. mech tech did a custom turbocharge (and other tuners doing stealth projects going on as of this writing)...powerhouse, blown_sc400, and a host of aussie side projects do the supercharge route... since their seasons are opposite of us, the forced induction route must also be the opposite all projects spent wellover 10k (i suspect) on their projects.

regardless of it's a turbo/supercharged, a production kit is yet to be available (not including the c's one which is for j-spec vehicles and seems not easy, at least for us, to get or utilize). ecu seems to be bottleneck for the sc4. if the aem ecu (with a harness adapter) can be made to work for the sc4, i suspect there would be more people turbo/supercharging their cars.

since swift makes a supercharger kit for the gs400, seems a majority (if not all) supercharge their gs400 when they go the forced induction route.

since toyomoto makes a turbo kit for the sc300, seems like everyone turbo's a sc300 (it also shares many parts with the supra engine..aka engine/part swaps).

i speculate until someone makes an affordable forced induction street kit for the sc400, the debate will go on...it's not a question of turbo/supercharge, but a question of who will be the first and at what cost. if it can easily be replicated, you may see other tuner shops trying to tap this market if it proves economically viable. just a matter of r&d to get the product to the market.

 

808state you make a good point. The end user spends their money on R&D labor, that's not done otherwise unless you're talking about big tuning houses like HKS or GReddy. Like when my ECU upgrade was made, they really had no idea how to make it work, I paid to have that part of it discovered. WR only made money on time spent, and didn't make much at all on the few chips that were sold. I was talking to Leo a while back and he is considering making a truly universal, user programmable ECU upgrade with maps you can load yourself (portability from car to car, which would be cool). It has to stay fairly universal part-wise, I think that's why most people use superchargers instead of turbos. No custom manifold to build, etc. A little easier for your "average" speed shop to handle.

 

Holy Lord Jesus Mary mother of God Almighty!!! The 1UZ-FE powered Groundfighter is insane! 50 PSI, F-16 jet fighter canopy, four 1000-amp batteries, aviation-grade hydrolics, nitromethane fuel, 2000 horsepower, 404mph top speed. Hahaha, it's so ridiculously excessive it's funny! Good to know the 1UZ-FE can handle that kind of raw power.

The 400hps blown Bullet Roadster also chose a Lexus V-8 over a Chevy big/small-block.

 

Well...I never said to be a guru on the SC400 so please bear with me if I make erroneous judgments. My experience comes from a 7MGTE engine. I know that when I increased the boost on that engine from the stock 6.4 PSI to about 11 PSI (below fuel cut), I would only gain about 35 RWHP with about 50-60 at the fly I am gaining. I had a straight DP with no cats in place to the exhaust. If I decided to run 1 BAR, then I would still only be at about 300 RWHP. I would need to do extensive modifications to the transmission, I believe a stage 10 tranmission rebuild is what they called it at pro performance in hawai'i. I also know that the HG could not take that boost with stock being torqued at 58 ft*lbs with typically you need it at 72 ft*lbs. True, MKIII's are notorious for blown HG's.....however, even with the MKIV engine, able to withstand about 600 HP easily, people would still work on the engine, e.g. cylinders to lower compression, or HG and a head stud kit, etc.

I was just saying for me, I am not willing to sacrifice the duration of the engine life for the sake of having a turbo car. I bought the SC400, initially, not because it was a super powerful car, but because the aesthetics and reliability appealed to me. I originally owned a GS300 and loved it, and thought the V8 engine would be appealing.

I also was only saying that there could be other considerations in adding a turbo to the vehicle. I know that, in my limited experience as compared to yours, when a teenager would bring his car into our shop, he would want to turbo a NA supra. We would explain that it costs a little more than just the price of the turbo. They thought they could slap on the turbo for about $6K and be done with it. I mean, we had to explain about the ECU, FCD, FMIC, I/C piping, Exhaust set-up, etc. Then, the price was well over $10K.... I was just throwing out some ideas that I thought may overlap. Like I said, I don't know this (SC400) vehicle well, and I am trying to learn from people that do know it much better than I do.

Well, I disagree with you there on the straight through exhaust not giving optimal boost. I mean, there is a considerable difference in running a straight DP bypassing both cats. Doing dyno runs with a cat-back and without a cat makes a huge difference to me. I mean, from looking at the specs on a webpage and crawling underneath the car, the most restrictive part of the exhaust for the SC400 looks to be right near the engine up front rather than the mid-mufflers, but maybe I am wrong, maybe a straight DP from the headers on the SC400 when turbocharged would not give optimal boost.

I mean don't get me wrong, I like all cars, well, except BMW's. I don't like bimmers nor the mercedes, well, maybe I would be interested in an M5 or the CLK 430 AMG 55....but those are way out of my price range. Hey did you guys know the BMW is coming out with a 1 series, priced around $18K?? I think big marketing mistake maybe, because how can you keep your quality/reliability name when making a cheaper car?

Anyways, I do like mustangs, not necessarily the new SVT cobra, but I am rather fond of the 66 Mustang and also impartial to the 68-70 SS Camaro, or my dream car, a 64 1/2 corvette split window with a 427. So, of course I would like to turbo the SC4, I don't know if it is commercially feasible or economically feasible for me either. I mean, if it was around $6K, then okay, but if it is going be pushing $10K and higher? I would start worrying, not only because of the cost, but because I don't know if anyone around where I live could actually WORK on the vehicle without me worrying about whether they are screwing anything up. I mean, all performance shops claim they can do mods to any type of car, but when people would come in with a VW and say I want a chip, we would be like sure....but then in the back be like what the hell....how the hell does this work.....so my concern is not only about cost, but about whether enough shops would embrace the idea to become familiar with installing it and tuning it properly. What are your guys thoughts on that issue?

 

jderry, what shop do you run? Oh, and the split window Vette was in '63, my ex-girlfriend had one a few years ago, it needed some bodywork, but it ran nice (the car, not the girl).
- Jon

 

Hi, I'm new to this group and don't even have an SC400 yet (I'm looking, but they are rare in my part of the world). I haven't been through this entire thread (don't have 2 days to spare right now!) but I noticed a couple of posts re the ability of the transmission to handle increased power. The following info may already have been posted, however, I'll throw it in anyway. Toyomoto did a 630HP SC 300 (Street Power, August 1997) and, to quote, ".. the internal parts from an SC 400's transmission were stuffed into the SC 300"s transmission case...." Also, MechTech have done two twin-turbo SC 400s (about an extra 100 rwhp, so quite a bit more at the flywheel). Apparently the transmission on one has failed but the other is still going strong. The Australians have done quite a bit of work with this engine and one site (www.powerhousecorp.net) report on a 500HP SC 400 with a stock drivetrain.

Best of luck with the turbo project. I'm more interested in a supercharged version.

Barry

 

i don't know of any MKIV Supra guys that fool with the head gasket or anything at all until around 900-1000bhp levels

plenty of SupraTTs making 800-1000rwhp on the stock bottom end; not 600hp

and 7M-GTEs had headgasket problems for one main reason; the torque rating on the head bolts was like 54ft-lbs and should have been around 72ft-lbs. do that; and you'll have a much longer lasting head the 2jz-GTE headgasket is rated at 1000hp

Scott, Lex,

do you know what you guys are suggesting? twin T04s on a 4.0L V8? Do you know how much AIR that is? Here is something to get you into the know... my Talon TSI AWD, with a T04 turbo (it is a 2.0L 4cyl with a much lower compression of 7.8:1), would run 10s in the 1/4
now imagine TWO of those on a motor twice as big... and just 500lbs more weight tacked on

you're talking about 850-900RWHP at higher boost levels (around 21-25psi) and around 600-700rwhp at lower boost levels
guys, I say again, thats just NUTS for a entry-level kit
try the T28/T3 hybrids that we were talking about; those could make more than enough power; prolly 450rwhp at 10-12psi

The 300zxTT had it first I believe

 

I talked to my mechanic who does mostly high performance mustangs. He said he can supercharged a Lexus LS or SC 400 for about $8,000. How much horse? I would said about 10 psi. 10 psi would give us about 450 rwhp.

 

So is the turbo kit or blower kit ever going to materialize? I've seen at least ten different setups recommended, but if a T28 can get us at 450rwhps for a lot cheaper, I'm all for that. I'll never take my SC above that anyway. 400rwhps is good enough actually. That's good for 12s.

 

I WAS fairly serious about doing a blower last fall,but I'd decided that I really just want a car to drive that's reliable and fun,not outragously fast,maybe reliable.
I'm sure someone will come up with something interesting.
There's some used Mustang blowers fs on ebay that would probably work with a little fussing.These guys have 302s and keep upgrading to better blowers,selling the old ones.

 

Good point, i just sold my blower (P600B) for $600. I upgraded to ATI F1SC. I am thinking about getting a used ATI P1SC. It has its own oil system, you dont have to punch a hole in you SC oil pan. Self contained blower are very easy.

 

This thread is losing momentum. Lets get it started again.

I am hoping we can get this project underway by having someone create a very well designed set of manifolds for the SC400.

Once that is done couldn't many others use this piece to design the rest of the kit?

Is there someone who specializes in these types of fabrications and isn't too expensive?

I am a newb when it comes to this stuff but I just feel that we aren't going anywhere without these items.

 

it may not be much; but there's a guy over in east florida, not sure of his real name; but he's got a shop that specializes in RX-7s... but he builds custom manifolds for various cars... he's very very good; i've seen his work

his handle is crispeed on rx7forum.com

 

Actually there is a guy from Irwindale California call E.L. Protypes (Not too sure about the Initials) will build custom turbos. I called and they said custom turbo will start from $4000 and up