Hey guys,

What do you think about the new turbo kit for the ls1 that Phamspeed just put out? It looks like a pretty well built kit, and it's cheap too. $3400 bucks for everything exept an intercooler. If you guys remember that guy LT1RX7, who said he was going to make a turbo kit a couple of months back, well this is him. I heard he is going to make an lt1 kit for the same price if there is enough interest. Take a look at these pics and tell me what you think. I am seriously considering the lt1 kit if he ever makes it.

Hot Parts
Polished Hot Parts
FMIC
Lots of Installed Pics

So what do you guys think??

 

he does very nice work.... I dont really like the design, but the stuff is nice! its all about tradeoffs, and he chose the oppisite of what i would.

 

Yeah looks like nice stuff, like Jordon said, the bad thing about the 4th gen f-bodies is the amount of underhood room. I mean everyone would like to build equal length twin turbo manifolds, but you would need a 1st or 2nd gen engine bay to do it right

 

Looks good. Can't wait to see the lt1 kit. Not sure I like the placement of the turbo. Price is right though

Joe

 

Yup....kit looks very good. Hopefully he comes out with an LT1 soon!

 

Ya me too. I e-mailed him about it, and he said he wants to get an initial 5 person group purchase for him to actuelly make an lt1 kit. I wish I had the money right now, and I would get in on that.

 

just curious, what part of the design would you do opposite?

 

lots of things.. just look at the turbo kit(s) i made.

when I build(built) a kit, the only thing I compromise on is "cost" or "pain in the *** to build". Since he is making a production kit, those were his two MAIN concerns. my MAIN concerns were performance(all types of performance). IE, my kit didnt reduce ground clearance at all (no pipes UNDER the k member!!), and I was able to keep the turbo away from the rad/fans.. I road race the car so cooling was an issue. I also used a 3.5" downpipe. WIth that said, no WAY could my kit be a production piece.. too expensive and complicated. I also wanted my setup easier to work on (not blocking the WP and optispark)

He chose to make it cheap and make it easy to build, ane he suceeded. The price is right!

 

I don't like the under the k-member routing. FIrst time you yank wheels at the track and bring it down; I could see you replacing those pieces of plumbing ..

 

I dont think so. If your front tires are nearly the same height as stockers, you will be maxing the front suspension in order to do that. They only go down a tiny bit - you'd also loose your air dam and several other things. IMHO I dont like the under k-member routing as well, but that's a personal preference thing. I think Jordan's work has shown some great ideas for placement, but like he said, fitting it to a production kit would be nearly impossible without increasing the cost dramatically. I would have followed his design for my own kit if I could weld well enough. I dont trust myself on turbo headers yet, so I bought a production kit.

He said he'd do it, and he did. Lets see how the lt1 kit stacks up when he makes it, as we all know plug access on our cars is a pain in the...

 

There are allot of things that can be changed with our LS1 kits but as some of you know there are some compromises that have to be made. Our kit lets you use AC, PS, ABS, ect. With that said, there is no other way of mounting the turbo unless you wanted to go with a small turbo (or two). We didn't take the easy path for the sake of making it simple. Lets face it, we are building turbos kits, this is as complicated as it gets. We did however made it easy for the customers to install. There were allot of different ways we tried mounting the turbos and in the end, this was the smartest.

These kits are our production kits. We have to be able to sell to customers that don't want to tear apart there cars. We also do custom one off kits and hot parts. Now, if you wanted to tear out your AC, PS, all those little small accessories this would be perfect for you. We could make a kit better fitted for your car/personality.

Lets face it, there's always going to be at least a handful of guys that won't like our kits no matter what we do or what we change. That's just the simple truth. The only thing we can do is listen to what the customers want and come up with a kit that hopefully 80% will agree with. If we get that far, I'd consider it a success

 

would that intercooler mount to a 93 trans am?(would it fit in there?) i emailed but noone responded.

 

I guess it depends on how high you yank the wheels and how well your suspension is setup for it coming down. I've seen a number of cars scrape their k-members and long tubes coming down off of a hard launch.. I figure if the k-member is scraping, those tubes are done.

Overall, I think the kit is a great, low priced turbo kit. NO one else out there has one, this should be killer for people who are looking to go that route. Me, personally, my a/c and power steering are long gone, abs is gone too, so, for me, I would be looking for something a bit more suited to me. And as LT1RX7 said, they could do that too.

Good luck!

--Sean

 

I've seen some cars scrape them, but it seems most of them arent quite as "street friendly". If your suspension is set more for drag then yes, you'll have problems - but then you're going pretty hardcore and replacing a pair of pipes curling around the k-member isnt the only thing you'll be doing between every couple passes at the track.

In all the cars I've seen run that were more "street" oriented, very very few got that close to smacking the K-member, espicially on 4th gens where the engine is back atleast a little bit. I havent seen it all though, dont get me wrong. I'd lovet to see what Rick's car does, as he's set a lot of records with his car, and I believe it has the stoco suspension.

Sean - your car has no A/C or P/S so you have room to move them. On a more "track" car you can move them where it isnt an issue. On my car which is set for "street" use, I couldnt lift the front end high enough to make it drop anyway so that part of the kit doesnt really bother me, but you may have seen otherwise.

I really liked that RX7 though. It was a very very nice setup. And the pics of the polished stainless work that were done are VERY nice. I'd be silly proud to have something looking like that under my hood.

And you can buy just the hot-parts, which was a great move IMHO. That'll help sell kits.

 

lt1rx7-
I am not knocking your kit, the quality looks great and as you said- it is great for a well priced production kit. two thumbs up!!!! You had goals, and you met them