72 Duster Turbo Build

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dwhip361

dwhip361

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West Palm Beach
My 72 Duster has been a 7 year project from start to now. I just recently completed the turbo installation and figured I would share some of the build to possibly help others. The motor is a LA 360, .030 over cast piston, stock cast crank. Heads are cast iron 2.02 intake valves, mildly ported. Cam is an old crane mild hydraulic like 480 lift. This is the way the engine came when I bought it. I did re-ring with larger ring gap and new bearings in the bottom end. Before anyone comments about cast pistons, I know forged would be better but if this engine blows it's not the end of the world! The front suspension is my version of the Reilly Motorsports suspension. I feel this may have provided a little more room for the plumbing. The first thing I had to do was move the alternator to the drivers side. I made a custom mounting bracket and had to modify the P/S bracket for the correct belt alignment. As you can see the car has A/C also.

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The next thing was to build a mounting bracket for the turbo. The turbo is the VS Racing cast 7875. The bracket mounts directly to the passenger side head. I purchased a turbo mounting flange from Monkey fab garage that also converted the T4 square flange to a 2 1/2 inch round pipe. Sorry no picture of the flange. After mounting the turbo, I started working on the hot side. I used the block hugger headers from Summit Racing for my manifolds. They stay close to the block and give more room for the pipes.
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After installing the headers I began building the crossover between the headers. I used 2 1/2 inch mandrel bend aluminized pipe. It took a good bit of time with a lot of measuring and fitting. I must have installed and removed the pipe a hundred times to snake it around the k-member. If you notice the oil pan is rear sump which worked out perfectly so the pipe could come under the middle of the engine.
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Very Nice, and keep the pictures coming. I've been very very close at pulling a trigger on a turbo SB. I still may some day.... I get the urge quite often.
 
subcom said:
Nice work! Please show and tell more about your front suspension.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all the nice comments guys. The front suspension is made up of parts that I had from a street rod project that I had changed direction on. The upper control arms are Reilly motorsports, but the rest is from the kit that I had for my 35 Dodge project. It was Mustang II stuff that came from Fatman Fabrications. I custom built the cross member and coilover mounts, mostly by looking at the RMS stuff. Sway bar is a Ford Ranger. Rear suspension is coilover also. Custom fabricated.
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Getting back to the turbo installation. After the hot side to the turbo was complete I fabricated the down pipe from the turbo to the dual exhaust. It is 3 inch aluminized pipe using mandrel bends and some straight pipe. I installed a flex pipe before it split into duals for the exhaust. The cold side was next. It is very simple, 2 90deg. Silicone elbows and a straight aluminum pipe. I welded on the blow off valve. VS Racing.
The wastegate is also VS Racing. Carb hat came from Ebay.
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Amazing job everywhere AND A/C?! So jealous.
Just one observation. Committed in my terrible memory somewhere is the notion that the O2 needs to be 18” from the turbo exhaust port to avoid burning those expensive bastards up too fast.
 
dwhip361 said:
Thanks for all the nice comments guys. The front suspension is made up of parts that I had from a street rod project that I had changed direction on. The upper control arms are Reilly motorsports, but the rest is from the kit that I had for my 35 Dodge project. It was Mustang II stuff that came from Fatman Fabrications. I custom built the cross member and coilover mounts, mostly by looking at the RMS stuff. Sway bar is a Ford Ranger. Rear suspension is coilover also. Custom fabricated. View attachment 1715714265View attachment 1715714266View attachment 1715714267View attachment 1715714269
Click to expand...
What size rear gear are you using and torque converter stall?
 
subcom said:
Amazing job everywhere AND A/C?! So jealous.
Just one observation. Committed in my terrible memory somewhere is the notion that the O2 needs to be 18” from the turbo exhaust port to avoid burning those expensive bastards up too fast.
Click to expand...
Yeah saw some conflicting info on that! I've been following your build for a long time. Yours was great motivation. I have to say I don't know if I'll ever go N/A again. This thing feels amazing!
 
Awesome build and very nice fab skills. Yeah it a hard to go back to NA after having a turbo car lol. Keep us updated on the car, how well it does at the track.
 
I'm not running an intercooler on the car because I just don't have the room. I may run meth injection later if I have any issues.
I ran my air intake pipe through the inner fender into the wheel well to pickup cooler fresh air and so far the highest intake temps have been around 108 to 110 degs. I took a 4 in. 90 deg. Silicone elbow with a 45 deg. Aluminum pipe and used a K&N cone style filter. Worked out great. I plan on building a shield around the filter to keep it from getting wet.

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For fueling, I'm using the Holley Super Sniper for power adders. So far its been really good. I'm using it for timing control. In the beginning I let the Sniper do all the tuning but now I'm doing some custom tuning myself. There's so much you can do with this setup. It's kinda fun to learn something new. There are a lot of videos online and the terminator stuff is the same. There are some differences of course but the basics are the same. Probably about 15 to 1600 all in on the fuel system. So far about 8 lbs.of boost. Knock on wood its still running. It's only seen about 4200 rpm. Taking it easy till all the tuning is done.
 
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