Kinugawa 20g turbo review

[Tom N]

Couldnt really find any reviews on these turbos on SR motors so I am making one.

After looking into several turbo upgrades for the car I decided I wanted to stick with the factory T2 platform. The GT2871r seems to be the choice that so many go with. I`m sure there a great reason but I didn’t want to do that. Having been a DSM guy for the last 15 some years I contacted Robert from Forced Performance to see if I can get a FP green or even a 20g in a T2 housing. He didn’t have the stuff to do it. I was about to just buy the Tomie M7960 as it is a TD06 SL2 20g in a 8cm housing. Well I am told by a local guy about Kinugawa turbos and that they sell MHI style turbos in a Nissan bolt on turbine housing. So I do some reading into them and learn that Kinugawa is a basically Kamak turbos from Tiawan and are pretty popular over seas and are becoming popular here in the Subaru world. Found many people using them on Subaru boards with lots of positive results.
So after several emails ( which they answered promptly ) one of which was to confirm they do balance these turbos, I decide to give them a try and order their TD06 SL2 20g in 8cm housing with 3in anti surge cover.
It left Tiawan on Oct 2nd and Arrived at my house with signature delivery on Oct 6th.
That’s some fast delivery.





Came packaged well and looks good so far. Comes with coolant and oil lines using banjo fitting for all except oil return (obviously)
Also came with multi layer steel gaskets as well as new studs and bolts for the manifold and turbine housing.
And also a free keychain flashlight.

















After removing the stock manifold/turbo/02 housing I got to enjoy dealing with nuts that were hit with a welder on the turbine housing to manifold.





So new turbo is connected to the manifold and 02 housing and going back in the car. Install was not bad. I will say the lines you get are very much so universal in that the oil return pipe is too long and I needed to cut it down, but it worked after shortening it.
Both coolant lines are longer than they need to be and the size of them back the one that bolts to the block a bit difficult as where the lines screws on the the banjo fitting wants to hit against raised areas on the block when tightening the bango bolt down. I had to have the line sitting in this one specific direction to work. But all the lines supplied do work.







Took the car to the dyno Saturday morning so Martin could reflash the ecu. Car would smoke some at first ( oil smoke ) when going wot but it seemed to start to go away after a few pulls. Only problem we had was the little internal gate cant keep up and when the boost hits it starts to jump up and down especial above 18 psi.
If we turn the gain all the way down then it would smooth out some but we lose the benefit of a electronic boost control. You can see on this picture I took ater a few runs how the HP jumps up and down early on.
So next up is locating a S15 manifold to put a external on.
Car made 346/348 at 18psi




I will update this as it goes whether its good or bad.
Planing to hit the track this coming Thursday. Car went 12.48 @ 113 on the stock turbo last week. We`ll see how it does on this new turbo.