Turbocharge British Leyland 4-kabanger? or no? (Page 1 of 2)

You're saying "turbo", but you're talking about "fuel return line".  Just what exactly do you have in mind?  A full FI conversion to go with your turbo?  Sounds like overkill.

Think "old school".  Just blow a low pressure turbo (3-4 psi... maaaaybe 6) straight into the carb and re-jet the carb accordingly.  Simple.  Lemony.

And if your carb isn't up to the demands of 65 hp... get a bigger carb!

To answer your question, though... if you're going FI, probably best to construct a swirl tank and just run your return line to it.  Then you'll have a low pressure feed pump in the tank (or gravity feed if you put the swirl tank below the level of the main tank), and a high pressure FI pump between the swirl tank and the fuel rail.

Really, really overkill for 65 hp, though.  More fuel lines and fittings that can leak, more fuel pumps that can break, etc.

If it's a 998, then it has Siamesed cylinders except between two and three....head gaskets might be an issue. My Cooperized 998 would "wire through" between the cylinders...the 1275 would be better, IMO. Late 998's (they sold Minis up here until 1981) used much lower compression with very dished pistons, so there's a piston option if you want to try serious boost...but stay away from the air injection heads!

What about upping the compression, a cam  and some headers? Turboing it seems like a quick way to the DNF column. With catastrophic results, like in non-repairable, holey block, etc etc.

Hey, I have a turbo motorcycle for sale. 81 1300cc 6 cylinder Kawasaki with a draw-thru 15psi turbo on it. It's water cooled, has low compression pistons, shaft drive, and water injection. It's reliable on 93 pump gas. Came 120hp stock, never dynoed it with the turbo, but it's probably pushing 200hp. The bike wieghs 660lbs, the engine is probably half that.

We're running a modified setup with a 1275 head on the 998 block, so that gives us a budget equivalent of a big valve head. Compression is about 11.5:1 and we had the cam reground for cheap, too. All of that gives us about 50hp at the wheels with the current setup.

The drivers at Sears got probably about as much as can be gotten out of that car/engine as it was built-- and they drove 2nd and 3rd gears right off of it (we've just learned). So I think our residual this time around has to be used to get the transmission working again-- In addition to it kicking out of 1st as it has from day 1 (who needs first?) it now kicks out of 2nd, and 3rd is a vague sorta guess at where it has moved to (ummm, is this it SCRRRRRUUUNNNCHHHHH --no, that's the reverse gate)

It's gonna have to be August before we go for forced air injection/rod ejection.

Well, my residual request is in. We'll see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZL_ZpLGi8c

It was done on a dynojet in 2nd gear. I actually think the claimed numbers are higher than the truth, so I don't trust raw numbers. We were just going for fueling corrections and could care less about the actual barstool hp numbers. That said, I was rather tickled that it got that high!

The 50 whp mini was flying around our 295 whp jaguar at Infineon. Goes to show you what hp means.

Turbocharging it would be cool... but I'd bet money you'd regret it... then again I would have bet money against the Shitroen completing more than 3 laps also.

BINGO we have a winner......  the MOST powerful car in the Lemons field got passed by the 50whp Mini.......  Really who else has more than 295whp.....I don't know of anyone within 30whp of that.....

My advice is DON'T DO IT.....why...IT WILL BLOW UP....when you have a well running car that is competitive don't mess with it...... increasing HP will only break it FASTER....

Yes I know...its way more fun adding boost + speed...but it rarely works.....(again other than eyesore at 4 psi)....I think Eyesore and the turbo Saab are the only turbo cars to ever win....

Ok, well, we were able to get some tranny stuff cheaper than we had expected, so that's, ahem, "fixed":  we've figured out a way to pressure feed some bearings that have severely worn bearing surfaces in an effort to get it to last 1 more event-- I guess that's one good thing about the engine and transmission sharing the same oil-- we tapped into an oil galley in the block and ran a piece of brake tubing down to the layshaft of the transmission. *might* help. We'll see.

Anyway, the upside is that we got some o-l-d turbo stuff to try and rig up. Cut up the firewall to make room for it (can't just turn the exhaust upside down like everyone else, unfortunately. Intake runners in the way). There's about 1/8" of shaft play on the turbo, though. One guy on our team who plays with volvo turbos says it'll probably break the shaft sooner than not, but could potentially last the race...

MIGHT happen .

Oh, I'm flattered when you called the mini "competitive". Nearly squeeked into the top 25%. I guess that's competitive.

Exactly right.

Its hard to install a supercharger that cost $50 on an $80 budget......I'm good, but not THAT good......   No matter how hard I crack the whip on Evil Clint....I just don't see it happening..... 

Plus its just not HOT enough in May to add boost......if your gonna add boost it must be for the August race at Thunderhill.....  :>)  That way its guaranteed to fail in spectacular fashion!!!!   

Hmm a normally aspirated 928 that overheats in 70F weather.....  clearly the solution is boost in 100F weather.... :>)