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Garrett turbo on an 850 white block
by GeraldJ » Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:20 pm

Well I thought I would jump in with the frist build post here.

I started with a stock 140,000 mile 855 turbo, pewter with tan leather, and the autotragic. Fun for a while but didnt excite me much. I upgraded to a SpeedTuning stage 2 17psi tune. Woke the car up but from a tuning aspect made it run pig rich under boost. I thought more air could help this right? So on to the 19t. When I did this I went ahead and found an 260r manifold to go along with it, as well as a 4bar rising rate FPR. This lasted about 6 weeks before the tranny started to act up.

I was looking over the for sale post on VS and found that a member was selling a tuned ecu and injectors for a garrett turbo setup. I emailed the member back and forth for about a month. Asked a million questions and got a million and 1 answers. Jan (JCViggen on VS) was extremly helpful with finding parts and answering questions. Shipping of my new ecu and injectors took about 9 days.

I sourced a 50trim garrett turbo from an Ebay seller. They were very helpful. I told them exactly what I wanted and they told me the exact price. I had my new turbo with in 10 day.

Next thing to do was to find all the parts and pieces to make it all fit. The biggest problem as the fact that the euro ECU was for a 5 speed. So a swap was in order, this is for another post....

To put a t3 sized turbine housing onto a whiteblock motor only 1 thing is needed to bolt it on. You can do it 2 different ways. i like mine the best. First and easiest would be to buy the adapter from ATP turbo. I didnt like this as it still uses the m8 size holes and studs to hold the turbo to the manifold. The better way is to have the flange machined flat and to have the studs and holes replaced with m10 size retainers. Then all you need is a t3 turbine gasket. Before you just bolt it on you will notice that the hole on the gasket is squared and the hole on the manifold is round. You muct bolt the gasket to the manifold and grind the excess material away. Over time the excess gasket can break off the gasket and go through the turbine.

Next You will have to source some banjo fittings and bolts with 3/8 hose barbs. I found the at the Parker Hose store. I also bought 1 foot of high temp silicone 3/8 hose for the water feed line. The stock hard line was almost a perfect fit. I cut the stock banjo fitting off of the hard line and just used a small piece of the high temp hose slipped over the hard line and onto the banjo that bolted to the new Garrett. On the other end the stock fitting was the same way with a small section of hose to retain the 2 hard lines together.

Next is the water return. The banjo fittings for the water lines have a 3/8 hose barb and the hose barb on the block is a 5/8 barb. I solved this by putting a short piece of high temp hose on the barb, just enough to cover the barb. Then use a piece of 5/8 hose to go over the 3/8 and turbo hose barb. Plumb it to the stock location and your set.

Oil feed line is just as easy. Find a m14 banjo fitting and bolt with a -4 male fitting. 30” of -4 line, stainless braid or high temp, mine is the high temp ‘tuff cover’ from parker. On the hose you will need to have a 90* -4 female on both ends. For the inlet to the turbo just buy a t3 oil feed flange with a -4 male fitting, ebay is a good source. From there the m14 banjo with the -4 male on it goes to the stock oil feed location. The t3 oil feed flange goes on top of the turbo and the hose in the middle.

Oil return is the trickiest. There are several ways of doing this, but I will tell you what I did. Look on ebay for a t3 oil return flange with a ½” npt outlet. Then at the local hardware store get a 90* ½” npt elbow with a 5/8” hose barb. Take the stock oil return line and place it in the block. Make a mark where the hose barb from the oil return and the stock line are the closest. Remove the stock line and cut it square at your mark. Then take a short piece of hi-temp silicone 5/8” hose to make the connection. I used a bit of a long piece of hose, and used some fresh oil to slide the hose onto the stock oil return as much as possible. I used 2 hose clamps and hoped for the best. I did have an oil leak at first but I solved that by sliding the stock line out of the hose a little more to create more pressure on the seal. Then a little high temp silicone gasket maker around the inlet of the return sealed it up.

For boost control I opted for an external gate. You can also use the ATP UIWG if you want that factory look. To do the external without cutting the s60r manifold you have to find or have made a downpipe flange with divorced holes. One is for the down pipe and the other for the wastegate. On this flange I built my own downpipe out of 3” stainless and a flex joint. Welded in enough bungs for sensors and wrapped it in exhaust wrap. For the wastegate you can have it come off of the flange at any angle. I used a 180* 1.5” mandrel bend from summit racing. I cut out a 90* bend from this and cut the legs to length. This made the wastegate sit straight up and down. So now when you open the hood people look at the huge BOV or the polished wastegate first. From here you can plumb the gate back into the exhaust or make a dump tube. I chose the dump tube. Using the left over 1.5” 90* bend and the long section of leg I made a dump tube that goes from the gate to the ground. Pretty much a straight shot. This gives me pretty good reactions under full boost. During normal driving you would never know the difference. The gate does not even crack open till 9-12psi, and I am running 16 for now ( the tune is good for 20). I am working on a water to air intercooler to cool the charge air a little better where I can turn the pressure up.

From there the turbo is pretty much on and ready. The stock charge pipe will bolt on but I recommend a fmic or some sort of better than stock cooling.

For the intake on my turbo I just made my own intake pipe from some 3 inch exhaust pipe I had laying around. All it took was a 90* bend and a couple silicone couplers. Dremeled out the hole for the PTC, that took the longest. On the end is just the MAF and a K&N.

I know I am leaving out a few things and pics but I didn’t take much time to take pics during this build. I was pretty much on my own and did most all work by myself. I did pull the motor for this but not for this reason alone. I also did the 5 speed swap at the same time and RMS. For me doing it alone it was easier to just pull the motor.

Any questions you might have I can probably answer. I have ran into a lot of problems during this and can probably help you out if you are trying to do something like this.

fcpgroton wrote:Wow. Some really good stuff here! We appreciate the entries so far, and hope that we can make a weekly or bi-weekly contest. We can do best Volvo blog post,best picture of Volvo, best Volvo Video!

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TIPSP wrote:Here is a few things I did:

How to make Poly Bushings

My 745T Mods

Custom CAI

macs&volvos wrote:
Nice write ups. Do you mind if I link to these in the RWD section?