I was also thinking about doing this but my car has 179k on the motor and was wondering what should i do first before i slap a turbo kit and run around 5-6psi

 

Has anyone here gotten the KA-T stage 1 package from XAT Racing? I was thinking of doing that, but need to know how reliable your car is and if you had any problems with it. All they do with the engine is just change the injectors with SR injectors. But they also dyno tune it after the turbo is in and everything else. Oh and my engine is in great condition the guy I bought it from had it completely rebuilt. It only has 8k on the motor since the rebuild. Just wondering if they do a good job. Thanks!

 

xat does do an awesome job, but for the price of the stage1 kit, i would rather piece the stuff together myself, install it myself, then have then tune it.

 

Yeah I agree they should work on the engine's internals for that price! is your car KA-T?

 

no its not. ive been doing alot of research on it though cause i might do a mediocure build later on.

 

i had a t25 set up on a 85k stock block with sr injectors fmic tuned ecu stock MAF. i loved it ran a 13 @ 106 on slicks spiking at 10.6PSI had a electronic BC. if you have perfect compression do it. if its done right an not using cheap parts then you will have a perfect turbo DD like i did never had any problems and spent about 1700$ on the set up. but if u do it dotn run high boost all the time keep it down if u wanna keep a workign engine. an after 3 weeks i got tired of the t25 an was planning to buy a built KA an do a top mount gt28, its fuckign addicting.

 

Yeah, but with the stage 1 kit you get a t28 already so at least you get that deal

 

I think the KA-t setup is solid if done correctly. I know guys that have done over 500 whp on a stock motor, relability is an issue at those levels. I have another friend that makes a reliable 300+ whp on his KA-t with plenty of road racing and autoX. Read thru his site KA24DEvelopment.com :: , check his links for the better 240 forums.
From what I have seen with other KA-ts the pistons are the weakest link. Make sure you have a good tune and you should be fine at a 200whp level. Why are you looking at the t25/t28 VS a t3/t4, are you looking for quick spool? All the KA-t guys I know are running t3/t4 series turbos.

 

it all depends on the tune. with a good tune, you could run a t3/t4, but from reading up, without doing some sort of rebuild to the motor and using a different headgasket, its going to fail.

 

if you run a t25 at under 8psi on a good ka, it shold be good and not to unreliable. but anymore than that and you are taking some risk's. like i said before, the 2 things i would replace that are the weakest links in a kat are
1st the head gasket (even if you only want 200hp). and then the pistons at anything really above 300hp. in all reality if you have good pistons and a good hg then the kat should be nice and reliable motor till about 350hp. it seams the weaknesses on the ka don't really start to show themselves until about the 400hp mark. after that it gets alot more involved. needing bigger head studs, rods, head work, oiling work ect.