World’s Least-powerful Turbo Trans Am? (Video)
Dyno session leads to some frustrating results, but this Turbo Trans Am won’t give up that easily!
The world of tuning is full of misconceptions. One of which, obviously, is that all you have to do to make massive power is slap a turbo on something. Anything. Heck, we’ve even thought about turbocharging our vacuum cleaner, just because. But like many ill-conceived ideas that float around the Internet, the turbo myth isn’t always 100% true. Just take a look at this turbo Trans Am build by Diablo Formula Racing.
The crew threw a single turbo on their street machine with grand illusions of making big power. But once the turbo Trans Am was strapped onto the dyno, it sputtered its way to around 300 at the wheels with 6-7 pounds of boost. Not so hot, right? And despite someone’s suggestion that we “add more boost to clean it out,” that doesn’t seem likely to fix the problem.
Instead, the gang throws in a set of fresh spark plugs, which immediately makes the car sound better. With that and a little tuning, the second pull nets a much improved 373 ponies. Then 377 with around 8 1/2 psi. So the obvious next step is to add more boost, of course! But once the crew achieves 381 hp on the next run, they blew a coupler. And then another one. But those efforts, on a 200,000+ LS, eventually netted a much-improved 440 hp.
After the dyno testing was over, Diablo figured out what some of the issues were. An incorrect MAP sensor is what caused the spark plug fouling. The plugs also seem to have a rather narrow gap, and the piping on the intercooler needed to be tightened up. And with peak power at only 4,800 rpm, there’s no reason why the crew can’t achieve their goal of 500+ ponies with a little tweaking!
Join the LS1Tech forums now!
