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After years of research, debating and not getting the power out of the engine I wanted I went
ahead and installed a turbo kit. The quality of the LC Engineering Turbo Kit was good overall,
but there were some issues worth mentioning.
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Quality:
This was by no way a bolt on kit. There was some level of fabrication involved as well
(expected). After reading the poor instructions the AFM wasn't even addressed as far as how to
fit it up with the turbo kit. The exhaust downtube shipped had a small hole in it so I had to
have a replacement shipped to me. The downtube also hit the IFS bolt. The air intake tube that
goes from the turbo to the throttle body wasn't quite long enough so that had to be modified.
The supplied oil line hose was too short so I had to go buy some.
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Installation:
First to do was the oil lines. The return line was the more difficult. The oil pan had to come
off. To do that the front diff and cross brace had to be unbolted. With
the diff out of the way the oil pan could be pulled out. A fitting had to be welded onto the
oil pan and then the oil pan, diff and cross brace could all be put back on.
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Next the return line had to be routed in such a way that it wouldn't melt from touching the
turbo header. The in line oil hose wasn't very difficult, but the hose was too short so I had to
go buy some longer hose. To tap into the oil from the engine I had to make an aluminum adapter
to attach two oil pressure sensors and the oil in line. With all the oil lines routed and
attached to the engine it was time to move on to the next step.
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It was time bolt on the turbo header, turbo and exhaust downtube to see how they fit. The
header and turbo went on fine, but the downtube hit the IFS bolt. When the suspension was moved
up and down it rubbed on it. In the end I had to enlarge the bolt holes on the header and
downtube to be able to rotate it enough in such a way that it wouldn't hit the IFS bolt. This
is also when I noticed the hole in the downtube. LC did ship out a new one and I sent the bad
one back, but this was an annoyance that I shouldn't have had to deal with. Once everything was
bolted on and tightened the clearance for the IFS bolt was about an 1/8 in. which wasn't
great, but it worked. It was also at this point that I removed the power steering hose and had
a new one made that was shorter and didn't get in the way of the turbo and header.
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I was now able to attach the oil lines to the turbo and the air intake tube. The fit for the
intake tube wasn't to my liking. It was a little on the short side and caused the rubber L-bend
tubes to not fit as well. I added some length to two places on the intake tube and then it fit
nicely. It was also at this time that I had to attach the AFM to the turbo. The instructions
said nothing as far as how to attach it so I had to do some planning of my own. Luckly I
already had a Downey Air Intake and I was able to use part of that which made it easier. It
was a tight fit, but I got the AFM and air filter in with barely enough room to take off the air
filter.
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All that was left now was to attach the downtube to the exhaust. The old exhaust didn't mate up
to the new downtube, which wasn't much of a suprise. I had to cut apart my old exhaust, add
some tube and weld on some flanges. Then it was time to check over everything and fire it up.
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Testing & Tuning:
The engine runs with about 2 psi, which is what the wastegate is currently set to. At full
throttle the engine is running real lean. After maxing out the adjustability of the AFM it still
runs lean, but not as bad. I most likely will need to get a 5th injector to address the issue
of not enough fuel. The truck is still driveable, but I need to be careful and not run full
throttle for long times. The truck definately has more power, but I wont know how much until I
do a dyno run and I wont do that until I get the engine running correctly.
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