1987 Olds 5.3L LS turbo swap

[GBodyscuffle]

One day i will boost my 87 cutlass, my fuel system is already setup for boost, just not financially practical right now since i need to redo my interior and motor after paint. But its always in the back of my mind since i need a new engine anyway to go ahead and procharge the beast.
I absolutely love the sound of turbos spooling, but a procharged old school small block sounds bada$$ too!

Getting a turbo now wasn't in my budget either lol but you only live once and you can't take the money with you when you go so I spent it. My fuel setup now is good for 750hp.
And that's one thing you can't recreate with an ls is the old school small block sound. Love em but I love my ls as well lol

 

[GBodyscuffle]

Fellas, finally got some pictures today of the turbo mounted where its going to sit. I quickly abandoned a front mount off the engine, just way too much to work around with my truck accesories so it is what it is. The exhaust routing is still in the air but Im hoping to make it work with the configuration in these pictures, just minus a few elbows at this moment.
I'm going to probably end up running twin wastegates, 1 at the first elbow coming out of each header. Might not be best but I just cant prioritize a single wg with how i decided to do run my exhaust.
I broke my bandsaw blade like an idiot so I have to wait till I get to town and get another one. Maybe Wed. I will have a chance to get to lowes or home depot. But for now if anyone has any constructive criticism I'm all ears. The owner of vs racing, Viren, suggested 2 44mm wg's at each header or either get a single and weld it directly to the turbine housing, still discussing this with him and gathering outside information as well.
Enjoy guys.

 

[Texas82GP]

Very cool man. It's happening!

 

[GBodyscuffle]

Very cool man. It's happening!

Thanks man I'm real excited.

 

[GBodyscuffle]

Got my passenger side merge into the y pipe mocked up.. Starting to really come together now that ends are actually meeting lol.. Didn't have any more time to get much done than this, had a pretty busy weekend. Hopefully I can get some more done this week after work and stuff.

 

[GBodyscuffle]

Alright guys got a little bit more done tonight after work. I got the driver side header connected to the other side of the merge and tacked up. HOPEFULLY this will be its final place and I will weld it up. Yes it looks a little rough, at least I think so. The fitment between some of it has some slight gaps but nothing crazy that will be a pain to weld up. I do think it does look pretty awesome though. And super excited to see what kind of power it can make.

If i had better equipment it would look alot better, but hey I try to make do with what I have lol. This car is by far one of the most in depth, demanding builds I have ever done before. My family was never into modifying cars as the way I am with this one, yet we still had our own automotive repair garage for a number of years. So with my being the black sheep that I am, I had to go about this on my own for the most part except for encouragement from friends on spending thousands of dollars to turbo charge something and put it into a car it was never meant for lmao. But hey its been great so far and now the light at the end of the tunnel is near for it to be rolling again. Here are a few more pictures of what I got done tonight.

 

[Opie Knievel]

Damn, that looks good! Where are you gonna put the wastegates and blow off valves?

 

[GBodyscuffle]

I'm going to put a wastegate at the first elbow from the header vband. 1 on each side. I could not give a single wastegate enough priority with exhaust flow because of how I ended up making this. Kinda bit me but I would feel better with them this way know that there should be little to no issues with exhaust gases enter the gates.

 

[Opie Knievel]

No blow off valve?

 

[GBodyscuffle]

I forgot to add that, my bad lol. Ill have either 1 big or 2 small bov's in the intake tube right before the maf and throttle body. I will probably just go with one big one for the sake of not having to do the extra fab work and extra cost.