I've been looking at IDI 6.9 /7.3 engines now for the nearly 8 years I've been a member here, and before that I owned a couple of 99 and up PSD's... If you look at the exhaust manifolds on the late model PSD you'll see the up pipes going to the turbo are "up" right out of the exhaust manifolds, which really simplifies the location of the turbo and gives a place for the turbo to be clocked for the down pipe out of the turbo.
Add to this, the PSD intake, which is really different, since it's almost all tubes, and gets rid of the "intake hat" issue completely, can be sealed up much tighter, and lends it's design to use of an Intercooler.. which the late PSD's use.
Seems to me.. with all the fabrication talent we have between us, someone could come up with a set of jigs to build exhaust manifolds that fit the IDI engines and copy the method used by the PSD for turbo pipes, AND come up with a complete intake system that gets rid of the cast aluminum/intake snail/cobbled it till it works turbo systems used presently..
Someone, somewhere can water jet or plasma cut a set of plates for exhaust, and a set of aluminum plates for intake, manifolds... then use schedule 40 tight bends for the exhaust manifold to weld it up.. "should work" ??
The intake manifold, if you get rid of the intake snail idea.. could be plates mounted to the head with welded tubes, with silicone tubing interconnectors to more tubes, that were plumbed to go to the compressor side of the turbo, or if you are running Intercooler, made with the right bends to connect FROM the intercooler, with the turbo compressor exit plumbing sized and bent to go TO the intercooler..
It would give a whole open spectrum to selection of turbo used.. allow the turbo to be clocked for better access and down pipe. There are a lot more to choose from than back in 1985 when folks first scabbed together a turbo system.. and we keep living with the half-ass choices they made back then..
If someone cares to read up on thermodynamics and what happens to a fluid [air is a fluid in engineering terms] when it is pressurized, travels through tubes of various sizes, etc.. For example, if tube size in decreased, speed of movement increases, pressure remains the same.. etc etc etc...
Bigger tubes don't flow more air necessarily, but the speed it moves as will reduce for the same pressure.. [perhaps a good idea inside an intercooler.. slow down a bit, give more time to shed heat through heat energy transfer of the fins/air cooling effect of the intercooler.. ]
Anyway.... How about it guys? Would need a mockup block with heads and IP with injector lines and glow plugs with a mockup cab firewall to get the clearances right.. I'll bet there are some of those to be had.. Then fab away..
Once all the mistakes have been made and fixed.. make a set of welding fab jigs to produce them as sets..
Anyone up for the challenge????