The "Ebay" Turbo
Instructions & My Experience
Update: 04-23-2011 - It has been a year since writing this little muse and I have to say after pushing the turbo from 5lbs to 7lbs I am pretty happy. I am now definately able to get out of the way driving down I95. No real problems noted, right now my attention has been turned to other things and I just got a nice D16Y7 block that I may send out to the machine shop or sell for nice DOHC B16. Even with the turbo and the odometer now getting 1000 miles short of the 200k mark I must say these motors and built like tanks. I have learned alot about this car and the maintenance and working on cars from this little project a year ago. Once I am done rebuilding a motor I will put this one up on the same place that helped get more HP out of my ghetto ride. "Ebay"
Update: 02-01-2010 - Since the writing of this arcticle I have been running this system on the stock engine just fine. I have have not had any issues yet. Granted its running at the lowest boost setting possible but in this respect I try to play it safe and encourage you to do the same.
Not all "Ebay" turbo kits are created equal. So I hope this guide will help everyone to make an informed descision. Below is my experience with this particular brand of turbo kit made by EMUSA. While this guide is not very detailed it will hopefully help someone somewhere who has never done it before like I have. Just remember I don't take any responsibility for what you do to your car because of that is posted here. With that said I am sure that the material here may be useful if not written then it is nice to have pictures.
Pros
- $$CHEAP$$ - These kits are pretty cheap. But don't think that they will fit out of the box. Especially if you wanna keep the power steering and A/C compressor. I paid $819.00 for mine and I needed alot of elbow grease. Total man hours spent making adjustments during install were around 12 hours.
- Bolt on no crazy stuff like timers,computers & gauges (you can do that if you want) Basic manually adjusted wastegate turbo ready to bolt on.
Cons
- Fittings. Such as these are often cheap and thin--->
- Sometimes missing parts like bolts or nuts.
After you finish taking everything out of the box make sure you have everything accounted for. I say this because I got mine and I was missing the bolts that go from the turbo to the exaust manifold. Other than that the kit seemed to be fine so far. So here is an account of what I did and all of the steps that I have taken to get my little civic to join the forced induction community. I guide will assume that you have some working knowledge of your car. If you have no idea what I am talking about in this guide then STOP READING!. Find someone that can help you out like I did.
START (Get your car to look like this)
The first thing you wanna do is to get you car jacked as high as possible because it will make things alot easier. You don't need a lift or anything like that but you wanna be able to get under it safely so that you can work on it very easily.
Next you take off the bumper start with the plastic pop rivets along the front where the A/C is, you will need a flat tip screwdriver to get under the rivet and pop it up so you can take the whole thing out. After that is done take the bumper and the foam absorber and set it aside.
Now would be a good time to try to fix straigten the fins on the radiator if they look really jacked up. It will maximize cooling
.
The Next thing you wanna do is to loosen the bracket for the A/C condenser or take it out completely if you take it out everything becomes easier. Since I did my car in the fall going into winter I figured I would not need it anyway. I would recommend sucking the gas out and not putting it into the atmostphere. Next is to take out the old manifold by loosening the 9 screws and then the screws that go to the CAT as well as the screw holding the old downpipe to a bracket on the engine block. While you are there start cleaning up that side of the pipe with a steel brush or dremel or however you like. You want to make sure the metal gasket is in good shape and clean too. If the gasket is toast go buy a new one it's like $15 bucks at National Auto.
I must say that I had to back track because of the fact that my A/C will stay in place. So what I wound up doing is hammering the downpipe until it was semi flat to allow clearance from the A/C compressor.(See Below) This allowed the clearance that was needed to allow that kit to be installed without any contact between the downpipe to the A/C compressor.
The most important part is tapping the oilpan and setting up the oil feed lines. There are many methods to do this and since my kit provided me with the parts that unfortunately required some welding I was forced to improvise. I can only say that your experience may very in this respect. If you drill a hole in the oil pan and put everything in place it should look like this. 
After you are done with the oilpan make sure you get a new oilpan gasket because while you are downthere you might as well replace it. Screw one part of the oil return line into the oilpan and let the other hang. Later you will be screwing it to the turbo. screw down the oilpan and make sure everything is nice and tight.
Next find the oil pressure sensor it is right above the oil filter and take it out carefully. Here is where creativity sets in yours may look different but with the parts that came with the kit I was able to make something that looked like the picture below.
Again don't overtighten it because the block is aluminum.
Next get the new manifold and attach it to the engine block. Tighten it all down, if you have cleaned everything you should not have to worry about leaks. Take the turbo & downpipe attached together like the picture below and Torque it down, from here you will need help because it's heavy unless you are pretty buff. Bring it up from underneath the car and put everything in place. You will have to move it around quite a bit to fit though but it works.
Next you make sure you have all the bolts to screw the turbo to the manifold. It will help if you have a partner to hold the turbo while you torque down the 4 manifold bolts from underneath. you should end up with the end result like below.
At this point start hooking up the rest of the oil return lines to the turbo and gently tighten them. You do not want to mess up the fittings as they are alimunum.
Make sure your O2 sensor and everything else is hooked up as well.
After everything underneath is in place and the exaust is hooked up start running the oil feed line that you just hooked up to the turbo itself. I found that the line supplied was too short and not the right angle. I wound up getting some 1/4 copper tubing from home depot with some scompression fittings. Hooked it up and no leaks.
Once all of that is done all you really need to do is hookup the intercooler. Again make sure you have all the required hardware and if you are missing something go to home depot or buy more of what you need on ebay.
Basically the rest is pretty easy take the intercooler piping and screw it all together a section at a time. You may have to make some modifications to the wheel skirts as I did.
Also make sure that you hookup a vacumm like to the Pressure relief valve(Blow off valve) otherwise you may cause some damage to the turbo. Once you are done hooking up the vacum hoses make sure everything is button up.
