Raising the suspension & fitting the new turbo - Part One

It had been a long time coming, finally the three of us were all together for a full weekend of sorting out the car. The whole weekend had been allocated to two things. First thing was to sort out the rear suspension, second was to replace the old smoky turbo. When we purchased the car we new that both these things needed doing within the first couple of months and now it was the time to tackle them both. We had even found a track day at Cadwell Park on the following Tuesday that we could attend if all the work had been completed. A fun few days were in store.

Sourcing & fitting the turbo

After undertaking quite a lot of research on turbos we were just about to settle for a T25 turbo as they were quite easy to lay our hands on and would provide a nice upgrade to our standard T2. However, just as we were about to source a T25, a reconditioned T28 hybrid had just been listed on eBay (with a correctly setup engine this could be good for 220bhp+) As we had a small capacity engine we needed a .49 housing rather than the .69 that is normally on the T28, by some freak chance on eBay was the exact T28 hybrid we needed. We negotiated to pay £250 which was a bit of a gamble, as we really did not know the history of it, but as it came from a reputable source we decided to take the plunge. It's easier to gamble when there's three of you :o) Now all we had to do was match up all the oil in/out and water in/out pipes.

In the week leading up to our main mechanical weekend, myself and one of the other owners had been trying to lay our hands on all the relevant turbo parts. We'd discovered that everything we needed to fit our new turbo was a different size, oil in need to be smaller, oil out was a T piece and water in was a different sized banjo bolt. After much frantic ordering on eBay we managed to source all adaptors and fittings (inc ordering for a second time when one of the parts we'd bought did not fit). The last part we needed arrived on the Saturday morning, it looked like everything was coming together.

As I'd been spraying WD40 on all the bolts for the past week the old turbo came off quite easily, a few awkward bolts, but nothing major and within an hour and a half we'd got the old T2 out. There was quite a bit of oil in the intercooler (see picture below) and a large crack in the housing so it was clear that our old turbo was pretty knackered.

Hole left in our engine with the turbo removed.

Once the old turbo had been extracted and put alongside the new T28 it was clear how much bigger it was.

All that was required now was to fit all the new adaptors and connectors we'd spent days researching and hook up the new turbo.

Oil out - we knew this was quite a bit different as we'd gone from a normal oil out fitting to a T-piece but luckily we had a spare oil out lying around from a Renault 21T so with a small amount of bodging and a new gasket it was possible to get this to fit.

Oil in - the connector arrived in the post and sort of fitted into the top of the turbo and in my naivety I thought we could make it fit or find a suitable adaptor from somewhere like Demon Tweeks, we just needed to take off the oil pipe and take this, with new adaptor to a specialist motorsport shop. A task for later.

Water in/out - Our new banjo bolt purchased off eBay fitted and the Turbo came with the water out pipe attached so another two parts crossed off.

Exhaust elbow - Our current T2 turbo only used four of the five bolts so we fully expected that our new turbo would be the same or even better, use all of the five bolts. To our horror it only matched up with three of the bolts, things were not looking good. We either had to risk using only three bolts, try & find a way round it with an adaptor or buy a new elbow. Once again, naively something I thought would be easily sorted by adding to our afternoon shopping list.

Actuator & actuator bracket - We had two options for our actuator, use the standard one or fit a bigger one from the Renault 21T. We matched up the one from our T2 (with a T2 the actuator is riveted to the bracket) we once again had a nasty surprise the bracket fitted the opposite way round, the only way we could get this to fit would be to separate the two parts, which is easier said that done. Using the T3 actuator seemed a good possibility it was big enough and we could hopefully use the bracket off the T2. With a bit of bodging it should work.

So out of all the new parts required, we scored two out of seven, things weren't looking good, but with a trip to Demon Tweeks planned we thought all would be fine. So we downed tools and decided it was time to pay a visit to Demon Tweeks.