RSLRA Turbo Relocation April 2008

by Subachad on Feb.07, 2010, under Automotive

Finally a chance to build something using melted steel. Not sure what it is about basic fabrication work, but it’s almost always a good time. Add to that, I haven’t actually made anything in a while so it’s nice to keep the skills fresh.

The project started by loading up my welder, 4.5” angle grinder, electric die grinder, wire brush, gloves, welding helmet, porting bits and a few other misc fabrication tools into the Skittle and headed off to James for some work on his Beastly rear wheel drive Impreza.

In typical fashion the day started off with me checking out progress on the car. The roll cage is installed, multiple braces, engine, transmission. Sure it’s missing some front fenders and a dash but it’s a mostly complete car.

Seeing what needs to be done, we started by porting out the bolt holes a little bit with the aggressive electric die grinder. This allowed us to drop the flange where the up pipe bolts to the turbo. We then trimmed down some tubing and tacked that onto the flange. This allowed us to guesstimate the height of the turbo and do a little more trimming of the tubing. Clocked the turbo, marked the tubing, removed the extender and welded it up.

That’s pretty much it, you can see in the pictures the finished product which allows us to raise the turbo without actually hacking up the rather pricey Symms header/up pipe. One thing remains however is the downpipe. Not sure how it will be done, but we do know the current downpipe will not work. A future article will address it.