This site is going to be used to document my slow downward mental spiral as I attempt to turbocharge my 87 fiero. Originally I was planning on building a small displacement V8 (around 4.3 liters) using various parts from variuos Chevy engines. I was progressing slowly, collecting parts and planning the next step, when I started discussing the project with my wife. Her head almost exploded when I told her that the kit to install the V8 (just to
bolt an engine in) started at $950(from
V8 Archie). She was under the impression from past discussions that the $950 amount was all I need to complete the project. Guess I should have been more clear. Sorry honey.
But anyway, she asked if there was another way to do the project. After some thinking and searching I found a store on Ebay called
Speedy Racer Performance they were selling turbos for less than $200! So I figured rebuild the engine, (which it needs anyway) and build a turbo system for it. I work in a garage with a full machine shop and a race shop in the same building, so I figured I or we could build any part I needed. So after talking to my wife again and letting her know how much less this project would cost I got her blessing to continue.
The pictures on here are of what progress I have made so far and future plans...
I had sold the TBI unit earlier in the cars life because I had always planned on doing something bigger than the stock TBI could handle. I aquired a throttle body off of a 5.7 litre chevy truck (it looks almost identical to a LS throttle body). Picture to the right shows size difference from stock opening to new throttle size. WOW that's huge. So now I have to modify the stock intake to get the new TB to fit. This is going to take a lot of work. First I started by cutting off the coolant passage that ran under and around the intake, GM put it there for driveability with the TBI, but I am going to convert to port injection so i don't need a hot manifold. As I cut more and more of the coolant passage away I realized that the intake was very small inside. Notice in the second picture how small the opening is from the plenum 
to the runners. This can not be good for flow and HP. After some consideration I decided to remove the plenum and the adjacent restrictions and start over to correct GM's poor design. See Third picture.
After having gotten the intake down to short runners and a plate I started to mock up the shape of the intake using cardboard to see how big it needed to be to allow me to use the throttle body, and to see if it would fit in the car. The plenum was looking quite huge to accommodate the size of the TB and spacers needed for throttle linkage clearance. The setup was looking like a low budget version of one of Ron's Flying Toilets. At the same time I was researching intake design theories on the web trying to get some idea of what I sizes I needed to accomplish my goals.I found a few discussion boards where the guys were saying that to decease turbo lag the intake needs to be smaller and have no large size transitions. I had designed an intake tract that went from 2" to 3.5" to a large plenum, lots of lag in my plans. Back the the old drawing board. So I started my search for a new throttle body (smaller but still good sized). Working in a shop that does lots of engine work, we have a somewhat decent selection of used parts and after some digging I found the throttle body off of a 3100 v6. This allowed me to still use the OE 
IAC motor and TPS sensor, so my ECM will be somewhat happy. Next step is to install a piece of aluminum pipe to eliminate the bellmouth shape, and allow me to keep all piping under 2.25 inches, that should allow the turbo to spool up really fast.
