Reply to "Turbo kit for Pantera"

Thinking about boost you say?

I've considered turbo'ing my car and at least for the time have decided against it. There are quite a few turbo cars on this site but my personal favorite is Blaine Cameron's (aka Pantera Turbo). Have a looky here at Blaine's build.

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/316764

I corresponded with Blaine and he gave me some very good advice. Without going into all the details, you need to go buy a book written by Corky Bell called Maximum Boost. I bought it from Amazon but it was published in 1997 and is readily available.

In my case, I concluded that building a turbo engine was not worth it unless the build was designed to operate with significant boost (and this is a performance not financial conclusion though the latter may hold as well). For me that meant at least 1 atmosphere. Even on premium pump gas if properly done this puts obtainable HP in the range of 800-1000HP on a >400 CI engine. This requires a purpose built engine with some serious consideration and engineering given to oil control to make the turbos and engine reliable, and intercooling to manage detonation. Without the latter, forget it; you're just building a grenade. EFI is a given. Getting this kind of power to the ground in a Pantera is a whole other discussion but in short it won't be usable except at higher speeds. Blaine's car is intended for open road racing.

IMO, although it minimizes some of the challenges stated above, from a performance perspective, a boosted engine in the ~1/2 atmosphere range just doesn't offer enough performance increase to warrant the additional weight and complexity when compared to a well built normally aspirated engine of the same displacement. >600HP, 400 CI, pump gas, street engines are achievable and reliable depending upon upkeep and driving habits. .

The "kit" at the link in your post does not appear to have any intercooling provisions. It does appear to have a couple Nitrous bottles and spray provisions. The turbos need to be properly sized to build a sensible system. The auction makes no reference to the turbo specs. From my view, they are about the only thing of potential value in the auction presuming they are in good condition. Do you really want to build a twin turbo system around two ebay snails of unknown provenance?

My 2 cents,

Kelly