s13 - Turbo LS build

[91 240]

I’ve been been a member here for a while and have made enough progress to justify starting a build thread. It's taken a while to get to this point, but married life, a 6 month old, and going back to school for a 2nd degree really cuts down on time to work on the car.

Just a little background, I bought this car after graduating high school in 1997. In 1999, I swapped my first SR and enjoyed that for several years. But, during this time, I ended up going through several motors and 4 different turbo setups, enough was enough.

Here’s a bit of the build list:
2001 LQ4 6.0L
317 heads with mild port polish
Patriot dual valve springs
Callies Compstar H beam rods
Wiseco pistons (4.030")
Brute Speed Blower cam (232/240 duration and .595/608 lift)
Masterpower T76 Q trim turbo
JGS 40mm wastegate
JGS 50mm BOV
And much more

This is the car. I want to start off by apologizing for the picture quality. Lighting in my garage sucks and I don’t have a real steady hand apparently.


And the previous setup. T67 fully built SR


Here’s the motor when I picked it up. Dirty, but I’m tearing down for a build anyway.


Here’s the test fit. I was going to try and use the truck manifolds, but I just didn’t like the clearance issues I was going to have.


So I decided to build my own headers. While waiting for piping and flanges to show up I focused on a few other things. I cut out the hatch floor area and made a new flat floor to make room for a new 16 gallon fuel cell. I also added a polished fuel door for access to fill the cell.






All the piping and flanges finally showed and it was time for me to start working on the headers, crossover, downpipe and exhaust.
Passenger header:



Driver header:



Crossover:


Wastegate placement and the beginning of the downpipe:


Then it was on to the exhaust, all 3” except for where it splits to a homemade 2.5” y pipe that mates to the rear half of my Greddy DD exhaust. I really love the look and clearance of this catback so I wanted to make sure I could still use it.









I can’t weld aluminum yet, so I had a friend take care of the intercooler piping along with the BOV flange and AIT bung. I also mocked up the air filter. It tucks up right behind the vent below the turn signal.