Evolution of the Turbo SE-R III

Aaron LaBeau posted on August 16, 2010 13:27

Note from the author: These articles and this project started in the spring of 2002. As such some of this content may be somewhat dated but hopefully it’s still enjoyable to read. Despite their age, these articles serve as a brief guide for installing a turbo kit. When possible we've updated sponsor links and we've edited the articles to freshen the content. New articles are planned for this project in the future. Enjoy!

If you're in the market for a custom turbo manifold for your SR20 it would be best to start a discussion here.

In this third part of our series, we travel down to F-Max Fabrication in San Diego, CA for our turbo manifold buildup. Jhame Peters, owner and fabricator, was ready to take the SR20DE to a new level. His turbo manifolds for Toyota, Honda, Lexus and Nissan engines have proven to make high hp numbers and give incredible reliability. Still, we wanted something better than what was currently available and, at the time, we were willing to sacrifice durability to get better flow from an exhaust manifold. As it turned out, we got a lot more than we were asking for.

Owners of SR20 powered vehicles have it pretty good these days when it comes to the decision process of turbo charging their vehicle.

The Burns collector merges all the wild bends toward the turbo.

The choice pretty much comes down to how much hp do you want to make and more importantly how much money are you willing to spend. Our peak hp goal (400 wheel hp) is well within reach of previous SR20 Turbo setups. But this time we're starting out with a different main ingredient - the GT 3037 turbo. We also wanted to push the limits of what was already done in a streatable no nonsense project car.

An initial mockup with tac welds.

When we first approached Jhame about this project he already knew we would want something different. Just by noting we were using the GT 3037 turbo, he knew something exotic was in order as far as the manifold design.

What happened next was something that sounds like it's out of a turbo enthusiast's dream. It started with Jhame leading off his checklist with a casual "wada you want" like we were ordering a cheeseburger.