Reaper is 100% correct. WhiteCivic, please show me where your 90% to 10% ratio of blown motor cases are user error. I like to see facts, not made up forum talk. And from experience, I know that you can put together a pretty good setup for a D motor for around 1100-2000 bucks. Just takes a little patience.

 

If you're not going to do it right, don't do it at all.

If you can't afford to spend $1500 on a pieced together custom turbo kit with used quality parts, you should just give up and stop providing profit to these chinese companies making cheap *** turbos so that they can go out of business and stop causing idiots like you to think that a generic no-name turbo has quality just because it says so in the eBay listing.

3k-5k is a heavy exaggeration. Many (and most) people boost their Civics reliably with reliable parts for under $2000.


And do you call sh!tty oil seals in a sh!tty turbo going bad "driver error"?

 

Example of driver error causing a blown motor. A few years back I worked at Intense Motorsports a local tuning shop here in Arizona. I was involved on a build on a 97 RX7 TT. Did a new motor and japan spec turbos(Efini if you know RX7s). The build was mild and was ment for DD. After the build and tuning was done the customer came back about 2-3 weeks later with blown apex seals(piston rings on a normal motor). This in turn blow the new turbos, killed everything. The error was he was told not to boost until the motor, turbos and clutch broke in. He was boosting the motor and he turned up the boost past what was safe for his set up. The car was tuned for about 350whp safely with AEM EMS by Jason Seibels of AEM.

 

thats still not technically driver error. something the driver did before driving caused it to blow the motor.

 

that's not driver error; an example of driver error would be someone coming into a turn hot and understeering their car into a tree. An example of driver error would be racing your rsx-s and accidently dropping to 2nd instead of shifting to 4th when redlining 3rd (I'll see if I can find the video... I LOL'd so hard when I first saw it).

The point is, eBay kits are JUNK. I'd give it an 85% chance that they'll blow your engine, a 14% chance that they'll work fine but make much less power than a decent setup running the same trim turbo at the same boost, and a 1% chance that you'll be happy with one (assuming you're not ignorant (in the literal sense of the word)).

*edit: founditfounditfounditfoundit!!!... a k20a2 sounds pretty good at 10k rpm... pretty sure it's not good for... well.. anything, but it still sounds cool

 

IDK man, i'd give them an 85% chance that something in the kit will break before you blow your engine. That is, assuming you get a tune... which most people with eBay kits don't.

 

okay, how's this?

100% Fail:

-66% something breaks
-23% your engine blows
-10% you aren't happy with the power
-1% you are happy

 

Yeah the turbo kit wont blow your motor thats all in the tune or lack there of,they just dont last to long. Chances are that the turbo will leak oil early in life or the mani will crack. Cast manis are a much safer way to go than tubular. If you go with an Ebay kit dont use the turbo get a Garret or some other good brand and get a kit with a cast manifold. This will be a good setup as the intercoolers are fine and a custom down pipe will be needed anyways.

 

That still doesn't account for boost spike. Boost spike definitely has nothing to do with the tune and it's definitely not good for the engine.

 

Boost spike is caused by a faulty waste gate or under sized waste gate not the turbo. Again this is an important piece of a turbo system dont use the crappy knock off waste gates that come with ebay kits. If you have a quality turbo with an interenal waste gate then you dont need to worry about this. If you have an external waste gate the get a Tial or HKS. I personally like the internal waste gate turbos, it just makes the install easier(no dump tube) but they dont work as efficently.