88 Pickup, 22RE, standard shift, SASed.. I intended to leave it at the farm but it seems i have driven it more than my daily driver in the last week since I got it back on the road. The muffler fell off and i'm cheap so I went to the parts house and got a bunch of fittings and a $35 "turbo" muffler or something of that sort. it was cheap.. it has a 2.5" inlet and outlet so i had to get the fittings to step up to it. Got it all together and welded up and it isn't loud, but it does NOT sound good. Its got that bumble bee fart can sound, just quieter. Its louder than stock which I would be okay with if it didn't sound like a friggin mosquito.
The obvious solution is to turbo it... for what a good cam and header costs I could build a log style manifold and source a turbo from a salvage yard, probably a volvo. I would run a secondary AFR gauge to be sure that it didn't lean out and limit boost to whatever the factory ECU would handle. From what I understand that is roughly 5 pounds or so. My problem is that I know absolutely nothing about this motor. Truck shows 190k on the odometer. The motor does not smoke or use oil. I have put about 10k miles on the truck and had no issues with it other than the water pump going out. When the time comes to rebuild I plan to go with low compression forged pistons, head studs, port and polish the head, cam, Megasquirt, yada yada..
Adding a turbo now is lighting a fuse to a time bomb. Is it worth the gamble? I know it wont help power at idle but that's what low gears are for. I'm running 35's and in third it will run 70 but it sounds like its about to come through the floor. 4th gear will hold 65, and 5th won't break 60, and don't hook a trailer to it (farm truck...). Before the SAS and 35's it would run 70 in 5th on flat ground no problems with 31's.
A swap is not in the cards because I want to stay as light as I can and if I swappped it would be an LS and all the goodies. If I did that I would just build a buggy. I would do a swap if it didn't require an adapter and would bolt to the factory trans.
What say you guys?
The obvious solution is to turbo it... for what a good cam and header costs I could build a log style manifold and source a turbo from a salvage yard, probably a volvo. I would run a secondary AFR gauge to be sure that it didn't lean out and limit boost to whatever the factory ECU would handle. From what I understand that is roughly 5 pounds or so. My problem is that I know absolutely nothing about this motor. Truck shows 190k on the odometer. The motor does not smoke or use oil. I have put about 10k miles on the truck and had no issues with it other than the water pump going out. When the time comes to rebuild I plan to go with low compression forged pistons, head studs, port and polish the head, cam, Megasquirt, yada yada..
Adding a turbo now is lighting a fuse to a time bomb. Is it worth the gamble? I know it wont help power at idle but that's what low gears are for. I'm running 35's and in third it will run 70 but it sounds like its about to come through the floor. 4th gear will hold 65, and 5th won't break 60, and don't hook a trailer to it (farm truck...). Before the SAS and 35's it would run 70 in 5th on flat ground no problems with 31's.
A swap is not in the cards because I want to stay as light as I can and if I swappped it would be an LS and all the goodies. If I did that I would just build a buggy. I would do a swap if it didn't require an adapter and would bolt to the factory trans.
What say you guys?
