Piece together a kit with legit parts that will last more than a few months. Those manifolds are garbage and will crack very easily.

 

ive seen tons of those manifolds crack. IMO scott get the edelbrock kit. its probably the best stock d series kit around for the money. and yes, maintenance is key to keeping any motor running well for a long period of time. thats a no brainer. piecing together a kit is a good idea, but u run the risk of some parts not being compatible with each other. its easiest (espeically for your app) to just buy the whole enchilada at once, spend the day putting it on, break in the turbo and head to the dyno. then there are less problems with parts conflicting and shit not going right during assembly.

so tell me kumar....when u say maintenance, do you mean beating the everliving shit out of your cars and changing the oil every 3k miles?

 

buy the kit and ditch the turbo

 

unless you trying to make 320+

 

My ebay kit (ssautocrack) has worked like a charm for years, but of course it wasn't a complete kit by any means. My manifold has never broken, but I did blow the first turbo (I wasn't running an oil restrictor) I bought another one off ebay for $120. It comes down to how ghetto you want your rig to be. Me; I don't care how ghetto the setup was long as it scoots. Of course if I was made of money I would have had a nice custom setup made. Then again; if I was made of money, I probably wouldn't be turboing a D-series anyway.

P.S. I doubt the kit in the original link above would crack, it appears to be a simple but cast unit, similiar to the old Drag style manifolds. Rather than the crappy tubular stainless manifold that I have.

 

anything can be made to work, while this manafold looks better then many. the crappy silicone couplers will fail eventually. like I said anything "CAN" be made to work. I've made the gamble on a lot of EBAY stuff and I road race 5000+ miles a year. I'd say 90% of it fails. but if your good at repairing things and monitoring the condition of your parts with regularity, you'll be fine. but if you can afford a slightly higher "buy in factor" like some have recommended go with the Edelbrock and you'll never have to bother with chasing failures. I have modified almost all my ebay components to function in a racing enviornment.

 

The way i see it is as a spanish saying goes "Lo barato sale carro" translating into something that is cheap ends up being expensive in the longrun. Perfect example: My uncle bought a 93 Accord sedan for my cousin at 1,600 with some issues and many miles. the car worked fine for about a year then the engine blew up leaving my uncle out 1,600 because he wanted a bargain and a quick fix. Morale of the story, quote as stated above. I'd rather save up my money and get some good quality parts over time then to just buy a cheap kit because i can't wait half a year. Of course there is people who have had an ebay turbo kit or even ebay turbo pieces and have had great success and no issues at all with them like treekiller and others on here but it all depends on power goals, how you maintain it, how often you abuse the engine, tuning etc..

 

although he did get a year of use for only $1600, heck a CHEAP car payment is $200 a month so 2400/yr.. that was why i grew up buying beaters. if you could get one for less then $400 and it lasted you 6 months it was a win since you'd get at least $200 bucks back when scrapping or selling it broken. so the beater car argument is lost on me... if you buy old nissans or GM cars (even the occasional subaru) you can get a beater that will last.

 

Well as far as buying beaters i was referring to his personal experience with it. maybe someone else has had this type of experience from buying a "beater" turbo system.

 

Yeah, thats pretty much my definition of maintainance. What would you describe as maintainance besides spray painting your bumper and hood every 2 months?