EBAY TURBO BUILD

A bit of an update. I’m almost able to start the assembly on the engine. All of the machine work and balancing is complete with the crank polish being the last thing. The machinist said the the balancing was abhorrent. A 600 dollar job as apposed too 300-400 on a regular gas V8. The only thing is that the piston rings and valves are proving hard to come by so we wait. In other news, as a result of an engine swap I did for someone, I have a seized NA 7.3 on a stand to use as a template for mounting and reference while I fabricate components. So far I’ve been able to fab up my elbow to move my turbo mount up and over to clear certain components in the truck.

I took the existing wiring harness of the ‘89 7.3, stripped out the glow plug wires and replaced them with new wires and routed everything to the new controller location on the dipstick support bracket. I think I will disable the controller function and go manual using the ribbon for the 6v glow plugs. I left all of the wiring from the 7.3 harness for fuel pressure, heater, water in fuel, etc as the loom is to nice to tear apart and it has everything I need in it already. So we’ll we for future use I may be able to use some of those wires for custom connections. You can see also my tree of brass fittings for my pressure sensor locations. I’m doing it this way so as to make room for the turbo down pipe that will get put down past that area. I’m also doing away with the CDR valve and instead I will run three separate vents from each valve cover and the valley pan in to a breather/catch can assembly. This should eliminate almost all crankcase pressure and chances for oil consumption. I’ve found that while running a straight road draft tube from the CDR location that my daily 6.9 would burn almost a quart in 400km’s time Until it started leaking from the valve cover gasket and then it wouldn’t burn near as much. It leaks less oil now than it burned then. Figure that!
I can see why the back of the valley is popular for turbo positions as there is a good amount of room when it’s all cleaned up.

All of the planned machine work is done now and now we are trying to scratch together parts as they are proving more difficult than they should be to get. The last hurdle now is finding a 4.040 piston ring set with the international 7/64 oil ring.Seemingly Non existent unless someone here is able to help with that. So I think the plan may be to do the lands of the pistons out to a regular 3/16 oil ring and then get that ring set.
Has this ever done before? Should there be any considerations?

Your going to need some kind of gusset or brace on your up pipe adapter because that piping will crack holding the weigh of the turbo

Isaac Ristow said:

Your going to need some kind of gusset or brace on your up pipe adapter because that piping will crack holding the weigh of the turbo

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What if I were to weld a sort of spine on the back of the elbow like 1/4" rod or something like 1/2 flat stock bent on the edge?

I decided to do it differently and run the oil feed line off the crankshaft oil gallery. It seems to be an out of the way place to route it.
The inter cooler is something meant for a Mitsubishi Eclipse I think. We’ll see how it does as far as hurting the efficiency of my radiator with all of the blockage in front. I tilted it to give the best approach for the piping entering and exiting on the driver’s side.

For your pistons, if that is all you need, try Northern Auto Parts in Sioux City, Iowa. www.naparts.com
They have the pistons & full rebuild kits ($1700+) using top name parts.

So some time has passed and there has been progress. I have got my block and rotating assembly back from the machinist as previously my problem was finding a set of piston rings for my .040 over pistons which now has been remedied. The compression rings are the regular 5/32 rings found everywhere but it was the oil ring at a special 7/64 that were impossible. So we took out the oil ring land too the new standard 3mm oil ring which we were able to get a set of separately. And I bought a ductile iron moly ring set suitable for the diesel application.

On another note, while running my deliveries at work I got to talking with the school division bus mechanic and he happened to have a NOS International incomplete head gasket kit that did come with a new valley pan. It was useless to him and so it was given to me.

I thought about suggesting to machine the piston in your ring thread, but didn't know if there would be enough material between the land and the piston pin to get it done.

Good score on the gasket set. What was missing out of it that they used? Looks like it's coming together!

CADHOWDY said:

A bit of an update. I’m almost able to start the assembly on the engine. All of the machine work and balancing is complete with the crank polish being the last thing. The machinist said the the balancing was abhorrent. A 600 dollar job as apposed too 300-400 on a regular gas V8. The only thing is that the piston rings and valves are proving hard to come by so we wait. In other news, as a result of an engine swap I did for someone, I have a seized NA 7.3 on a stand to use as a template for mounting and reference while I fabricate components. So far I’ve been able to fab up my elbow to move my turbo mount up and over to clear certain components in the truck.

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Help me out here, I might have missed it. What manifold is this? What does the passenger side look like? I can't seem to visualize what's going on here... (but am very curious!)

Edit: I checked out the original linked thread, and sure enough, there's all the info I was looking for. Look at me go! Solving my own problems! Going to be a great day.

looks like your working off a Rajay kit. How's the down pipe going to work?

Booyah45828 said:

I thought about suggesting to machine the piston in your ring thread, but didn't know if there would be enough material between the land and the piston pin to get it done.

Good score on the gasket set. What was missing out of it that they used? Looks like it's coming together!

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IT WOULD BE EASIER TO SAY WHAT IT DID COME WITH.
- VALLEY PAN/ INTAKE GASKET
- VALVE COVER GASKET
- WATER NECK GASKET
- VARIUOS ORINGS
- INCOMPLETE NUMBER OF VALVE SEALS
- INSTRUCTIONS
- SET OF HEAD GASKETS
AND RATHER FOURTUNATLY IT CAME WITH A PLUG FOR THE CDR HOLE IN THE VALLEY PAN AS I WILL BE VENTING FROM BOTH VALVE COVERS INSTEAD.

Isaac Ristow said:

looks like your working off a Rajay kit. How's the down pipe going to work?

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SO THE WAY I HAVE THE TURBO REPOSTIONED IT WILL BE EASIER TO CLEAR EVERYTHING AND SEND IT DOWN THE STOCK LOCTION BETWEEN THE BELL HOUSING AND FIREWALL.

CADHOWDY said:

What if I were to weld a sort of spine on the back of the elbow like 1/4" rod or something like 1/2 flat stock bent on the edge?

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Sorry I never got back to about this but I would most definitely a spine to the back and maybe some 1/2'' wide flat stock to the sides angled between the flanges. That exhaust pipe will definitely crack holing the turbo up with the heat and vibrations

CADHOWDY said:

So I am in the works with available time and resources of building up a turbo'ed, bored 6.9L with studs. I've posted in another thread on what I have as far as turbo kit goes.

(https://www.oilburners.net/threads/rotomaster.39084/#post-1051719)

The original turbo was in fair shape save for a pin hole in the hot side and in the end out of curiosity, I wrecked it as I was taking it apart. So there in I did some research on the forums for Turbo IDI information and I picked out this turbo off of eBay.

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The price dropped considerably after I had made my purchase.

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In case the pictures don't post...
Cold side: A/R 0.70
Inducer 66.6mm Exducer 84mm

Hot Side: A/R 0.96
Inducer 74mm Exducer 64.5mm

I forget now what all that I looked up and learned before I picked this turbo and flow charts were hard to find that were accurate. I think I was doing a comparison and basing it off of the specifications of the factory turbos that I was able to find accurate information on here. And this one was bigger from what I could tell but I am unsure as to determining what more this turbo could do compared to a factory turbo.

So now to someone who has the knowledge I would like to ask, hopefully with the information provided where does this turbo land as far as operating range and potential output for a rebuilt .040 over bore 6.9L? Not any specific power number really.

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Hey, have you actually run that engine yet? I'm curious about the turbo, if it seems legit?