The Bad Wolf Project

The

Project

Turbocharged 2006 4.0 V6 Mustang

Day One:

On day one, Saturday, we were only in the shop for a few hours. I had driven all night, so motivation was a little low. The only thing we did was look for a mounting location for the Turbo, see how the exhaust would route to it and how the down pipe would route from it.

The location of the turbo was also dictated by the desire for a noninvasive design. Only the power steering line needed to be moved. Nothing else needed to be relocated.

The down pipe comes out between the K member and the engine mount, but sits low enough to allow the use of a full sized filter. I'm probably still going to switch to a low profile design and will post the part number once I find it.

Here is the power steering line. I missed getting a picture of the stock orientation, but it comes down and then routes over towards the passenger side and then back again. This is Ford's idea of a cooling system. I unbolted the mounting bracket from the K member, With a wrench on the sensor, the line was carefully bent out of the way to clear the way for the 2.5 inch piping that would bring exhaust gases to the turbo.

I also started looking at how the IC piping would have to be routed. NO cutting and as little bending as possible was the rule of thumb. As a result 2.5 inch intake piping was used from the turbo to inside the engine bay, where it transitions to 3 inches just before the MAF sensor. The 2.5 inch pipe will not result in a restriction on a sub 500 HP application.

Looking up from under the car into the drivers side of then engine bay. The pipe comes into the bay right by the stock air box.

Sunday: The Real Day One

Exhaust to turbo:

Just a note. I helped figure out some routing issues. I helped hold things in place and had some input here and there on routing. Sometimes my input was considered, sometimes it was not... I know how to weld with a MIG, but have never used a TIG and thus did no welding during the fabrication of this turbo system. I know my way around cars as good as any back yard mechanic and have pretty good knowledge of turbo systems. However, I am not a fabricator. I did very little during the assembly of the exhaust portion or intake portion of the build. I just made it work once it was all put together via vacuum line installation, MAF pigtail relocation, gauge installation (again no cutting required, not even into the firewall) and the eventual tune via an Xcalibrator 2 and Advantage Software.

Another thing to note: This is not an automotive machine shop. The owner does custom exhaust and headers, and even builds custom race cars on the side, but the shop is primarily set up for aluminum construction components, big machine steel and aluminum components like press rollers, and aluminum railings.

Below you'll find all the images on the front side of the exhaust. We worked from the turbo back to where the pipes coming from the CA Ts would form the Y and joined them together with a flex pipe.

With the pipe that gets exhaust to the turbine in place, along with a bracket the conveniently bolts to a factory stud sticking out of the block, we move on to creating the Y pipe from the CATs. First order of business, cut the rusty stock exhaust off. I just love Ford's definition of stainless steel. I guess 2% stainless is enough to call it that for marketing purposes.

With the stock exhaust out of the way and the flanges welded to the CATs, This will make eliminating the CATs with straight pipe very easy when it's time to head to the track.

Below, you can see the formation of the Y pipe that will feed back to the front of the car into the turbo. This is also 2.5 inch piping. Further down, you will see the cut in and install of the wastegate, as this was the clearest area where the exhaust feed and down pipe converge.

Back to the feed piping for a moment... Once the slip joint was welded on to the end of our turbine pipe, it became too long to get in and out cleanly. As we twisted it into place, it would hit the starter motor and just could not be finessed into place. The only solution was to remove the starter, and put it back in when the pipes were all TIG welded and bolted into place for the last time.

Day Two and Three:

I did not get a chance to transfer the pictures from the camera at the end of day two so things are a little mixed. The day started off with the completion of the exhaust from the CATs to the turbo and fabrication of the downpipe flange, downpipe, wastegate plumbing and wideband O2 bung. I'm not fond of the placement, but the reading is only about 0.2 out.

The fabrication of the down pipe and passenger side pipe from cat to Y was the only miss step in the initial creation of this system. Because the CATs were retained in the stock location, they create a clearance issue that forces the 2.5 inch feed and the 3 inch down pipe to cross paths. This can be resolved in a few different ways. The temporary solution, put in to place after I got back to New York, was to create a new feed into the Y that angles up towards the chassis and then back down into the Y. This saved us having to recreate the entire wastegate connection with sub par piping and a MIG welder. The down pipe was also cut and reworked so it would sit higher under the car. It still isn't perfect, but it will do until we can revisit it and recreate this entire section properly.
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Next we worked out the positioning of the power steering line. Pulling it down from when it was tucked away, The bracket was slid down the line so it was off center towards the passenger side and bent backwards so it could be bolted to the radiator support - diagonally across from where it had been bolted to the K member. The original mounting location is the hole right beside that letter R on the K shown below.

The intercooler in the background is mounted. There was one sitting around that used to be on a 500 HP DSM and it fit right up under the cover. This was actually done up on day 1 when I wasn't looking. It measures 29 inches from tank to tank, 10 inches high and is three inches thick

The power steering pressure line is the only stock part on the car that needed relocating. There is more than enough clearance between the hot pipe that runs to the turbo and the power steering line. The line is also still in the direct path of air going under the car for cooling. To date, I've had no problems with heat where the power steering is concerned, even at idle and in stop and go traffic.

The oil drain line: This is the most invasive part of the install.

The 4.0 has a remarkable bottom end design. The mains are actually integral to the oil pan, so instead of pulling off the entire pan, there is a nice little access panel. Great idea right? Well, if you don't subtract points for execution, then yes. The panel is better then having to remove the entire engine to get the pan off, but it's placement makes getting to some of the bolts a little difficult. A small bend in a box end wrench will make this task much easier.

We used #10 AN for the oil drain and #6 for the feed (covered later). The fist picture is of the 10 AN bolted into a custom flange on the turbo. It's really cool having a 2 axis mill on hand to make whatever flanges you may need.

You can't really see it well (right picture above, hole is already drilled), but there is a bung in the oil pan that looked like it was just made for an oil drain line. The oil level will be above this point when the engine is off, but we don't care about that. (as long as it doesn't leak of course.) What matters is the draw tube and filter assembly for the pump is right there sucking oil up into the heads and creating a bit of a vortex that should pull the oil out of the turbo nicely. The feed pressure is about 30PSI so it was not likely we would have any issues with draining.

NOTE: Other than that persistent leak at the faulty original AN to hose fitting on the drain side, the oil feed and drain configuration have worked flawlessly.

Day Four:

We spent quite some time sourcing parts for the oil feed and drain on day three.

On to the oil feed line install. It's a bit tight in this area and we needed to have both ports facing down so they would fit and so we could get a wrench or socket on them.

I put in the male to female 90 T and then put a 90 AN fitting in horizontally .
(not shown but you can make it out in picture 7)

Day 5: Intake

We began day five by lowering the car for the first time since I arrived... for more than 2-3 minutes at least. While the turbo intake pipe was being made, I pulled off the airbox and set it aside, cut the stock valve cover evac hose off and routed a length of 5/8s oil resistant hose from the turbo inlet to the valve cover.

Next up was the IC to throttle body piping. I pulled the loom off the MAF sensor wire and cut the tape off it, extended it forward as far as it would go, and found it would be perfect for what I had envisioned for the intake. The sleeper theme was coming alive.

We used a 3" aluminum tube for the intake pipe that would house the MAF. I pulled the sensor so a flange could be made up and welded on to the new intake. No recalibration was needed at this point, as the stock MAF is 76mm and this pipe was 80. It meant for a slight lean condition at cruise, but I ran premium fuel on the SCT Strategy flash 91 Octane tune for the 900 miles home and did not have any pinging at all.

Work continued on the intake piping for the IC to turbo connection on the drivers side. This was the more complicated of the pipework coming into the engine bay. Due to space it was the only area we made a slight bend in the core support so the IC to bay pipe could be slipped in and removed with ease.

With the blowoff valve installed into the turbo to IC pipe, it was time to set up the vacuum lines. For now, I only needed three connections; one for the wastegate, one for the blowoff and one for the boost gauge. Installing the boost controller was going to be quite involved due to it being in-car, so I left that project for another day.

The pictures above and to the left show the line coming from the primary T to the firewall and then going down towards the transmission tunnel. It wraps tight along the underside of the tranny into the wastegate actuator.

Day 6 is not documented with many images. After running around trying to figure out if there was anything we could do to the GT drive shaft that showed up about noon, I focused on swapping the 7.5 back into the car. While the exhaust was being tied up, I routed the boost and wideband lines into the interior, slipping them in through the passenger side fender into the door jam and then into the car.

It was 6:30PM on day 6 when we started the car for the first time since I got there. It fired right up. No hesitation, no learning, no cell and no limp... she just purred like a kitten. We lifted the car up one more time to check for exhaust leaks and to our surprise and pleasure there were none at all.

The boost gauge was hooked up for the trip back home, but the wide band still needed power. I was in a hurry and at about 9 PM decided just to hack a phone charger and use the lighter plug to get it going before I left IL... about 5 hours after I got the gauge in, I was on the road for 900 miles! No further testing, just a 91 Octane SCT Strategy Flash cookie cutter tune. I could hear the turbo every time I left from a stop and occasionally at the top of second and third... Those of you who have owned turbo cars can just imagine the amount of discipline it takes to NOT push the throttle to the floor. Try it for 14 hours straight. Hah. I got caught playing with a GT in PA up a long hill - 81 I think - and pulled a lean condition bank 2 cell. oops.