Want to run water lines to your Ka-T turbo?

[480sx]

EDIT - If you want to run hard lines to your turbo, you will need these compression tube fittings from McMaster. Here is the part number ---> 5929K23

I had to take the heads back off my car, and when doing so i pulled the intake manifold as well. When i did i found a great way to run coolant to your turbo.

On another note, if you have to take off your heads, its soo much easier to take them off with the intake manifold attached. It takes two people to actually pull the heads off this way, but it saves a ton of time.

Onto the goods.. There are coolant lines that run to your throttle body, then through your intake manifold. This system is setup to heat your intake manifold, which reduces emissions. What you basically do is delete that system(this also keeps your intake manifold cooler, which makes your intake air temps drop, a double plus), and use it to run water to your turbo.

The pipe that you use for the water feed is the water that comes directly out of the heads, through the port in the intake manifold, that is ment to go to the radiator. Theres a three way split there, on the piece that you hook up to your upper radiator hose. One is for the Thermal fast idle, the big one, and the small one is the one that you use for your turbo. It has positive pressure on it from being ejected out of the heads by the water pump. The return line barb connects to a pipe that runs through your heater core.

When you get the intake manifold off, you should find the lines that run through your throttle body. First, trace this line through, and see what its connected to and how it works. Its pretty self explanatory. This is the line im talking about...



You can see in this picture that i have already removed one of the coolant lines running from the hot water return to the throttle body. Then, that line runs through the throttle body and into a metal pipe, where it goes into another rubber hose. After that, it runs into a little spot on the intake plenum itself. You need to take all these lines off, there is no reason to keep that system intact. When you do, you can either just leave them there unused, or do like i did, and remove what you dont need. If you remove what you dont need, it will look like this next picture..

Here, i have pointed to the two spots to hook your 3/8ths inch ID hose to. The one on the left is your feed line, the one on the right is the return.



Thats about it, hope this helps someone.

Modified by 480sx at 8:16 PM 12/19/2007
Modified by 480sx at 8:11 PM 1/23/2008

[GTR PrYdE]

very nice!what turbo is this for?

[bruinbear714]

There's a water feed/return right below the exhaust manifold towards the rear of the engine. I havn't figured out whether it's a feed or return, but nonetheless, using it will be convenient.

[480sx]

I had to edit a bunch of stuff out of my post, i figured out that the high temp tubing i was going to use was way to hard, and couldnt be used as i had intended. It required plasticish compression fittings to screw directly into the turbo, and theres no way thats gona work so i scraped that idea and went back to the drawing boards.

Im going to use a 3/8ths inch 'flexible' steel tubing instead to run my coolant lines to the turbo. Turns out we have a 3/8ths inch tubing bender at my place so.. That worked out pretty well. You can get the tubing itself from just about any parts store that sells brake lines. They typically carry all the way up to 3/8ths inch, at least our local Napa does. At that diameter its not used for break lines obviously, but its made from the same stuff.

A 3/8ths inch pipe thread is what threads into your turbo itself. I will use a brass 3/8ths inch male pipe thread to a 3/8ths inch compression fitting, they sell these at just about any hardware store.

More to come as this unfolds, im sure ill have some more information and pics up as i get my car back together. Also, i plan on doing a LOT of road testing before i give it the OK. I have a nice 13 mile stretch of 55 mph road ill tear up for a few hours and see how my setup holds up.

Ill check out that water feed line your talking about when i get my car back in the shop. Still though i think for ease of installation this way would be the best.
Modified by 480sx at 8:18 PM 12/19/2007

[eazye2000]

Pretty much the same thing I did. Although I don't drive my car in the cold/winter time, I've wondered if it would have any ill effect on driveability of the car on the coldest of days. No idea, just wondered.I have some pictures floating around here somewhere. I may add some if it's ok with '480sx'. I know he didn't approve of my oil drain, so he may not like how I did 'my' coolant lines..

[480sx]

Go nuts man, the more info and pictures we can get on this thread the better chances we have of getting it stickied.

I dont think it maters much if the water running through the turbo is super cold, the turbo is gona get up to operating temps fast. Im not sure it would have any effect on the turbo even if its cold, though i kinda doubt it.

[Florida240sx]

Post all the pics you got. Once we got enough "angles" and tech info We'll make a new thread and put it in article form.

[eazye2000]

I dont think it maters much if the water running through the turbo is super cold, the turbo is gona get up to operating temps fast. Im not sure it would have any effect on the turbo even if its cold, though i kinda doubt it.

Sorry, I meant taking the hot water lines from the Throttle Body and not using them. I've seen Throttle Body's ice over, and hot close because of the ice. But that was a few peoples I met up in Alaska and on on their snowmobiles.

This is all I have. It's terrible. I'll have to clean the 2 feet of snow off my car to get anymore good ones... lol

Ok, yeah. This was looking through your intake manifold runners 2 and 3 I think. You'll get the idea.

This should be self explanatory.

Again, they're not the best, and I was trying to help someone out a while back. And I'm sure it doesn't matter which side you hook up. There is no 'In' or 'Out' on coolant on a turbo, right?

[480sx]

The turbo itself could care less which way its hooked up.

However i was thinking the best way to do it would be to have the coolant feed line run furthest away from the turbo manifold and the engine so it stays cooler. The return line should be placed on the left side of the turbo(looking down at the engine from the front bumper).

[240sxvaj]

thanks for this

[WDRacing]

Stickied

[480sx]

So heres what i did with my coolant lines today. I went to napa, ANY local parts store and got whats called 3/8ths inch 'brake line'. Now, at that size no one uses it for brake lines, but its made out of a bendable steel that works well with coolant. Just so happened to have the 3/8ths inch tube bender handy, and figured id go for it. Also bought these steel compression tube fittings from McMaster.. Part number ---> 5929K23

Heres a pic of the line, and the tool i used. Im not sure how much the tool is, this is an old school one but it works great. If any of the ka-t guys want to borrow it we can work something out.



So i just kinda went at it, hacked the 5 foot sections into a more usable piece of about 2 foot sections. I first started off by using a few scrap pieces to figure out how the thing worked, and how to make the bends exactly at the point you want them. I went through 4 sections of 3/8ths inch tube through this. They are cheap, under 5 bucks a section.

I was left with these..







I think the aluminized coating on them looks pretty good, so i was gona leave it like that. When i took off my intake manifold, i went ahead and got a big piece of rubber coolant line and looped it in between my water feed, and return line. I made sure there was enough line left so when i was doing these hard lines, i would have enough soft line to connect up with the lines running to the turbo. Heres a pic of that..



So tomorrow ill go ahead and finalize everything and make sure the compression fittings worked right.

EDIT - Man i gotta do something about those red wires .

[steve s14]

Looks really nice! I have hard lines on my coolant lines too. I would make brackets at the ends where the the hard lines go to rubber lines by the throttle body because engine vibration can cause the line to eventually crack or break.It happened to a friend of mine.

[eazye2000]

Definitely looks better than mine! Can't see mine because it's a bottom mount, but that sure does look great, as well as functional. I'm sure any turbo would LOVE to see coolant in any form!This makes me re-think a few things. Although not everyone has a nice Ball Bearing turbo, this will sure as heck help people out!

Awesome work!

[GoTRicEo0]

That is very impressive! You could make a junkload of lines and sell em.... (Then u could give me a free sample haha)

[DevilMB3017]

480SX, that's a hell of a nice job. Extremely clean lines.

[jholman05]

What did you use for fittings to get the brake lines to bolt up?

[GTR PrYdE]

Looks effing awesome. Great idea to use brake lines. I wonder if it'd be any more difficult for a bottom mount T28

[480sx]

What did you use for fittings to get the brake lines to bolt up?

Your question is answered in the first line of this thread. You need a compression tube fitting that you can get from McMaster Carr, the part number is listed a few times in this thread.

GTR - I would imagine that its only slightly harder than the topmount, however its not gona be to hard. Id say the hardest part about it is finding the tubing bender. After you spend a little time practicing on a spare piece of tube, you'll figure out what you have to do pretty quick.

Its really neat building something like that from scratch, gives you a great feeling of accomplishment. Again, its not even hard at all, just takes a little practice to get it down.

Also, IMO its the only safe/reliable way to run coolant to your turbo, as i have seen the rubber lines eventually harden and crack due to the crazy amount of heat coming off the manifold/turbo.

[cargod240]

Do you know if this will also work with a turbo from a rb20 skyline, i think the coolant inlet and out lets are bigger then 3/8's

[Driftstar INC]

For the bottom mount set ups , theres a plug in the water jacket that allmost lines up with the t25/t28 turbos , I just used 2 pipe fittings and a short peice of 3/8 heater hose .

[silverkaturbo]

Hey driftstar, do you have any pics you could post up of that setup?

[BMAR240SX]

Hey 480 did you ever finish so i can see a final pic of it all

[480sx]

Thats a resized one i had for my sig. I finished it, drove it for 550 miles, and it developed a serious case of rod knock. Apparently i had a bad ECU that was spraying mass fuel in cylinder number 4 all the time and that washed my oil out with fuel and destroyed that motor/turbo. Just bad luck coupled with carelessness. I smelt a hint of gas in my oil when i checked it but i dismissed it. AFR's were still within the safety margin and the car was running great.

Now im running a borg warner s258 with no need for coolant lines. Iv got those fittings and the lines just sittin around now.When i say im running a s258 i actually mean its sitting around collecting dust while i build a new motor..

[BMAR240SX]

Sorry to ask but is it possible that you have a bigger picture

[480sx]

They were hidding on my HD, i thought i had lost them.

[BMAR240SX]

Alright thanks a lot man i was just having trouble seeing where you connected the return line back into the manifold

[kouki_hmongster]

on that catch can, i see that theres two that comes from valve cover and one goes to somewhere else( want to know). can you get a good picture.

[S13xCrazy]

^^ I would also like to know

Also, I was a bit confused by your pictures. However, I realized the reason. This is for a S14 intake manifold isn't it? The S14 and S13 are slightly different.

[480sx]

That other line runs to my intake before the MAF.

Yea its a s14 intake manifold/car. However the s13 and s14 manis only have a few minor differences, you can still use the writeup for a s13.