Wanting to turbo my car, but....

[Jesse@JDLAutodesign]

how often do you have to do emissions? It's not too hard to keep your stock OEM parts and swap them back on with a stock flash when you have to go through emissions. I imagine its at the most every year? A lot of the time consuming parts of a turbo install (oil pan bung, mounting FMIC) could be left on the car.

[Bigbadvoodooguru]

Does Tennessee have difficult emissions tests?
I've failed an emissions test on a stock MR2 turbo because of a catch can... here in California (visual inspection, scanner, sniffer, rolling tests at different speeds on the roller thing). Also a note so you don't waste money... don't disconnect your battery or reset anything before taking it in... cost me $50 for the guy to tell me I failed the test because I didn't have 100 miles on the counter since last reset.

It is also one of the reasons I'm wary of FI... I've had friends who fail with a CARB certified kit (on other cars). Their only recourse was completely going back to stock, even with CARB certification. And those smog tests were test only, every year (I guess once you fail the next few are all test only, yearly?)

And it is getting much harder to find a "good" smog shop in orange county...

[Alltezza]

Originally Posted by gramicci101

The superchargers that are out there for our cars are pretty decent. They can't match a turbo for all-out power production, but you can get 275-285 whp without too much trouble. And with less heat underhood, as well.

More importantly, a few of the supercharger manufacturers have CARB-legal kits that come with a tune already. So hypothetically you could get the Jackson Racing CARB-legal kit, install it or have it installed, flash the ECU, and drive out with much more power without needing dyno time. Granted, a good tuner and a dyno can fine-tune the base map, but you could still drive out on just the base map if you wanted to.

Since you have a year before you move on FI, you should look at supporting mods. Engine and drivetrain bushings, maybe an oil cooler, wheels and tires, suspension, etc...

So you're saying I can just drive normally and spirited with a supercharger (Vortech, Jackson) I know I may sound like a dumbass but I'm just trying to educate myself here and ask questions. Hopefully other people that are viewing this thread.

The website at Vortech says "Complete systems include a calibration upgrade and all necessary fuel components to boost your FR-S/BRZ to 294HP and 210 lb/ft torque with 9PSI at the factory redline." Is that with a proper tune or with just the replacement map sensor and ECU reflash.

Originally Posted by Bigbadvoodooguru

Does Tennessee have difficult emissions tests?
I've failed an emissions test on a stock MR2 turbo because of a catch can... here in California (visual inspection, scanner, sniffer, rolling tests at different speeds on the roller thing). Also a note so you don't waste money... don't disconnect your battery or reset anything before taking it in... cost me $50 for the guy to tell me I failed the test because I didn't have 100 miles on the counter since last reset.

It is also one of the reasons I'm wary of FI... I've had friends who fail with a CARB certified kit (on other cars). Their only recourse was completely going back to stock, even with CARB certification. And those smog tests were test only, every year (I guess once you fail the next few are all test only, yearly?)

And it is getting much harder to find a "good" smog shop in orange county...

To be honest I really don't know the only thing I can tell you that they did last time I got my emissions with my 2005 Acura RL. The only things they did was they stuck something in my exhaust and opened my gas cap and plugged into my OBD thing in my car, and she got in my car and I'm guessing she's just looking to see if my CEL light is on and I think she revved my car a little bit I don't really remember.

Originally Posted by Jesse@JDLAutodesign

how often do you have to do emissions? It's not too hard to keep your stock OEM parts and swap them back on with a stock flash when you have to go through emissions. I imagine its at the most every year? A lot of the time consuming parts of a turbo install (oil pan bung, mounting FMIC) could be left on the car.

It is once a year. I actually never thought about that lol I just thought it would be a HUGE hassle to take everything out and put all the stock parts back in. And VERY expensive

[Leonardo]

Just find a shop that will pass your car. That is what everyone does with modified cars. There is always someone willing to take your money. I am not commenting either way on the legality of these shops, I just know they exist.

[gramicci101]

Originally Posted by Alltezza

So you're saying I can just drive normally and spirited with a supercharger (Vortech, Jackson) I know I may sound like a dumbass but I'm just trying to educate myself here and ask questions. Hopefully other people that are viewing this thread.

The website at Vortech says "Complete systems include a calibration upgrade and all necessary fuel components to boost your FR-S/BRZ to 294HP and 210 lb/ft torque with 9PSI at the factory redline." Is that with a proper tune or with just the replacement map sensor and ECU reflash.

Yep. The cool thing about the superchargers is that you still have a very linear power curve, it's just a lot higher than the OEM power curve. You can daily drive it, take it to the track, whatever you would do with the OEM setup. I'm told track guys lean more towards the superchargers because of the linear power curve and because of the lower heat being generated compared to a turbo.

Vortech's kit is a reflash; you can always take it to a dyno and have it fine tuned, but the reflash should be sufficient. And I feel like they're expecting you to upgrade the exhaust in order to reach that 294hp number. Compare to Jackson's, where people are getting 285hp with an open exhaust, but the CARB-legal kit is only around 250. The OEM header is less than optimized, but you need to keep it in order to stay CARB-legal.

One word on street-ready ECU reflashes: often they're more conservative than you could get from an actual hands-on retune, just because they have to be made to work safely on a large amount of vehicles under a wide variety of conditions. So, the easiest way to do that is to dial the awesomeness back a bit. An actual hands-on tune will be able to come closer to the boundary of acceptability while still keeping the car safe, because they can adjust for your specific car, your specific driving style, and your specific environment.

If you decide to get it tuned by a third party tuner and you're asking what their focus is, if it's not safety and long-term reliability then you need to find another tuner. Huge numbers are easily attainable, providing you sacrifice years off the engine's lifespan. Go for someone who wants you to still be driving your car five or ten years down the road.

[Sportsguy83]

Originally Posted by Alltezza

So you're saying I can just drive normally and spirited with a supercharger (Vortech, Jackson) I know I may sound like a dumbass but I'm just trying to educate myself here and ask questions. Hopefully other people that are viewing this thread.

The website at Vortech says "Complete systems include a calibration upgrade and all necessary fuel components to boost your FR-S/BRZ to 294HP and 210 lb/ft torque with 9PSI at the factory redline." Is that with a proper tune or with just the replacement map sensor and ECU reflash.

For clarity, the "294 HP and 210 TQ" claim is at the crank, meaning it will be around 250 WHP and 180 WTQ. WHP and WTQ are commonly used to measure kits performance and allow you to compare apples to apples.

[cdrazic93]

Originally Posted by Alltezza

Another topic I would like to ask you guys, is the tuning process. Regardless of a turbo or supercharger I'm still going to need a tune. From what I've read I have to take my car to a local tuner in my area and they put it on the dyno and tune it from there. What I don't understand is what is a good tune compared to a bad tune, and why are they so expensive on kits like the basemap for example. I've read a thread here says something like "Anyone blown a stock boosted motor yet" and I read a lot of posts there and from what I'm seeing our motors were blown because of a bad tune.

There are several reasons why a tune can go bad. Search for FA20Club on google and site reference this site. Youll have a good laugh.

The reason why tunes cost so much is because you need to strap it down to the dyno for hours for the tuner to reporgram your ECU into every possible situation he can think of. All the while he is trying to advance timing without getting any rod knock sensors to go off. Essentially pushing the car to its limits based on the quality of fuel you will be using and how well your tuner knows his stuff.

I have heard of people traveling across the country to have their car tuned by someone who is known across the nation for above excellent work on this car. Since forced induction (no matter the type) is a big investment on a car, I wouldnt hesitate to drive thousands of miles to know my car will be tuned and run safely all the time.

This motor is very strong, so are LSx's 2J's RB's 4G63's...but all are only as strong as what its being told to do by the ECU.

[Alltezza]

I just wanna say I really appreciate all the educational feed back from you all. I definitely know more than I did before.

But I have one more question, this may require me to do my own research but since I am already online at work and reading through this I thought I might as well just ask it. I mean worst thing that can happen is someone says "GOOGLE IT NOOB" lol

I been looking at High flow cats as an alternative to my stock cats, and from what I've seen from searching around Google is that we have a Cat in our headers and in our front pipe or down pipe ( I don't know much about exhaust systems as I would like to) So I was looking into this JDL header (http://jdlautodesign.net/shop/ft86-equal-length-header/) . It offers a High flow cat, but I was wondering if I ordered it without a high flow cat, will I still be able to pass emissions with just 1 cat?

How much better is a High flow cat compared to our stock cat? Should I just go ahead and get the high flow cat for that peace of mind?

[cdrazic93]

Yes and no, sometimes only 1 cat will be enough, depending on regulations. Ive heard of no cats passing, 1 cat passing and two cats passing. High flow cats are designed to be as un restrictive as possible while offering the aid of emissions equipment. From what I have gathered high flow cats dont become restrictive until after 400ish whp.

[s2d4]

Run E85, it'll help with sniffers.

[Scenic Driver]

Originally Posted by rs999

or you can try some of the more drastic things that some VW guys do like swapping downpipes back to stock when state inspections come up.

My TT has an upgraded downpipe with no cat, I use an 02 sensor spacer to keep the CEL from coming on and for the readiness to pass.