How much did it cost to Turbo my VR6? Cost breakdown!

yo yo welcome to today's video today i'm breaking down the costs associated with turbocharging the bora 4 motion i learned a ton in this experience lots of things i could have done differently lots of unnecessary expenses but we're gonna go over that today in the future i'm also gonna make a video on what i think the majority should buy in terms of part selection so if you're interested in that hit that subscribe button also if you've already built your own turbo vr6 let us know in the comments how much you've spent on that share it with everyone else one last thing to note is i definitely got screwed by the currency conversion i live in canada so i'm buying everything with canadian pesos and uh at this particular time that i bought all these parts our dollar was pretty much at its worst a lot of cross-border duties and taxes have also been factored into my parts all right so i'm going to start off with all of the most expensive parts in the build all the pricing by the way will be in canadian dollars at 2200 for my emu black standalone is a pretty serious blow to my wallet despite the ecu only costing 1099 us dollars with currency conversion and duties it ended up being 1650 canadian and then the plug-and-play adapter should have been about 275 us dollars with currency conversion in duties it was 475 so that brings me up to 2100 and then i got a bluetooth adapter with it so about 2 200 for that standalone ecu despite it being so expensive it was money well spent the esu has some serious advantage with being able to tap into flex fuel e85 and with that you can make gobs of power with the vr6 the internals they can support 600 700 horsepower on the stock internals if you have correct fueling and tuning so with ethanol that allows it to be able to make that power safer so with that said i probably wouldn't have bought my next item which was my low compression je pistons for 1400 canadians now the advantage of the je pistons is that i can run pump fuel safely uh between 500 and maybe even 600 horsepower but with the flex fuel 85 you know maybe i could have only gotten 350 to 400 horse out of it on the pump fuel but i could have put e85 in the tank and even a slight ethanol blend would have enabled me to get 600 700 horsepower out of the engine if i wanted to next up is the turbocharger so originally we had a gt3582 first gen garrett in there and it was good but had some issues with uh the v band that was kind of janky welded on ceiling so i decided instead of putting more money into it i upgraded it for a chinese gtx 3584 rs clone that is actually proven it works amazing it's got a larger 10 blade billet compressor wheel and the response and then the oomph that i get from the turbocharger is just drastically more than the first gen garrett so that's really exciting i'm excited to turn it up all in for that turbocharger cost me a thousand dollars uh shipping and duties for the intercooler i wanted a water to air setup i like the idea of having short intercooler piping it's simple you see it it's all there i really liked hpa's typhoon kit and i noticed it was discontinued they weren't selling it anymore and it was a total shot in the dark but i actually emailed hpa and one of their sales guys got back to me and they were like yeah we actually have a partial typhoon kit and you can have it for a thousand dollars that included the intercooler the heat exchangers and some brackets to mount it nothing more that was really cool because it was a fraction of the cost of the entire kit which was when it was new is 3 000 us dollars or thereabouts so the next item on the list is my down pipe it was actually created by a company in france for the ebay log manifold that i'm using um it was good and it was 940 dollars all in with uh modifications to the downpipe to fit the new turbocharger however um it lacks any mounting points in between the turbo and the mid-pipe it literally just bolts onto the turbo and bolts onto the mid-pipe and it just kind of flops around so right now it kind of hits on the subframe hits on the heat shield exhaust so either need to have someone weld on some tabs so that it can mount onto the subframe and stay in one place or have a new one made at a local shop for about the same price probably would have been a better downpipe in the end because i also don't like the flex pipe location on this particular downpipe but it works so while i was doing this build i was trying to get as many parts as i could pre-owned as possible and when you're building vr6 turbo not many other people are building vr6 turbos so there's not many vr6 turbo specific used parts on the market the clutch of flywheel was one that i lucked out on uh i got the collection flywheel is a stage four spec clutch and flywheel for 900. canadian with the duties um it was brand new it was basically never used um but someone had purchased it for a build that they were giving up on the clutch and flywheel brand new was 1400 us dollars and if you know i had bought that brand new and brought it to canada after conversion and duties it would have been two thousand dollars so i saved big on that so the intake manifold is a road motorsport intake manifold for the 3.2 liter vr6 i actually modified it to work with the 2.8 liter the one of the things that i did was i port matched the cylinder head because the ports are different sizes i kind of smooth that transition into the cylinder head and then the other thing that i did was i ran a 3.2 liter throttle body spacer it was actually a flange that's typically used to make a intake manifold for 3.2 vr it's a throttle body flange that i drilled the threads out of and made it into a spacer made my own gaskets and it worked out it cleared the fuel pressure regulator on the fuel rail so that part all in was 800 canadian so for 350 that got me arp head studs i definitely should have skipped on these i'm actually running stock head bolts in the build now you can actually still make tons of power on the stock head bolts probably up to about 700 there's guys who have pushed the junkyard blocks unopened junkyard blocks to 700 horse on e85 with sock head bolts it's probably not until after about 750 to 800 that you would experience head lift on stock head bolts and then you would want to get probably a set that actually fits like maybe some raceware or dp racing makes tool steel studs for the price of stock head bolts too i mean it was 50 bucks you could replace the stock head bolt seven times take the cylinder head on and off seven times so that kind of goes that kind of throws out the the argument that oh if you want to take off your head multiple times then the arp is worth it it's not worth it it's never worth it the wastegate i spent 200 canadian on this was another part that i got used it's a tile genuine tile sport gate 38 millimeter yeah just got it off facebook marketplace 90 bucks for the kings coated rod bearings it was a cheap alternative to the factory coated rod bearings which are the r36 bearings and that's like 300 bucks for this set i spent 160 on a brand new 3.2 liter throttle body definitely could save some money here if you can find one used but around my area there's not a whole lot of 3.2s getting parted out i spent 130 on arp rod bolts this is definitely a must um if you want to get factory rod bolts from the dealer it's like 300 canadian or something stupid like that you know that the arp obviously they're stronger i lucked out i got these for about 70 canadian lesson retail because a machine shop had a bunch of them and they were just clearing them out so if you want to get them now they're probably about 180. so for the head gasket i spent 50 bucks it was an l ring head gasket pretty much an oem head gasket just for cheaper directly from the supplier and then i spent 17 canadian on the cylinder head resurface this was a lot cheaper than normal because i actually took out the valves that are in the way of the machining myself and while i was in there i uh put new valve stem seals in all of the valves the valve stem set was 20 bucks the fuel pump was 130 it was a pretty good score i actually bought it off of someone who had ran it in their mark 4 r32 turbo and they made like 630 wheel horsepower with it it's way more fuel than i need and it came with the fittings already to run it in line so i lucked out there it's an aem 380 liter per hour pump so i knew it would probably cost me 10 bucks for an aluminum 10 am bung for the oil pan and 30 to 40 dollars for someone to weld it on but i was sneaky i found this uh little double knot 10am bung that you can basically just drill a hole in your oil pan and you double nut it on it's got two little seal washers and that only cost me 16 bucks so got a little crafty there if you're doing a budget build definitely go for that just because it's going to save you on fabrication costs definitely got to do your maintenance when you're doing a build like this you know valve stem seals cylinder head resurface so that you don't blow the gasket you know timing chains and guides i had a brand new set lying around that was 350 dollars canadian they're not cheap but genuine ios guides feby guides you know it's all oem stuff 13 bucks for a rear main seal i spent 250 on a fourth gear support and i later learned that you could get that same fourth gear support for probably about 20 or 40 dollars can't remember on aliexpress they're literally the same thing overpaid for that but i installed that as a precaution because i knew i was going to be pushing a lot of power why you might need one is the fourth gear in the o2ms are kind of weak they start to push away from the opposing shaft with a lot of torque and load and when they push away there's less contact on the gear teeth so then you know it's easier to strip the gear teeth both of them 50 bucks to replace the oem crack pipe with a metal one so no risk of cracking in the future no big coolant leaks that are pain in the ass to fix i scored online with the intercooler pipe with the hpa kit i didn't get any uh hoses or a pump so i found a bosch intercooler pump that was used in numerous different domestic vehicles as an intercooler pipe like the land rover the supercharged 4.2 the ford lightning svt i scored a used one on ebay.com for 40 us dollars so it was about 70 canadian but brand new that pump is 120 us so gaskets you know not many people talk about the little stuff but i'm going to start talking about the little stuff all the lines the fittings the couplers the claps we got 10 bucks for the t3 turbo manifold gasket 20 bucks for two wastegate gaskets one for to the log manifold and the other for if i do a exhaust research for the wastegate i spent 15 bucks on a 4an oil feed extension it just made it easier to take on and off that oil feed because it's kind of tucked down in there between the exhaust housing and the compressor housing 20 bucks for the turbo manifold studs and nuts 220 for the aem air fuel ratio gauge i also bought that one used i spent 300 on wiring and different relays um the cables cost a lot for a battery relocation and also i had to do the relay for the fuel pump and wire a 10 gauge wire to the engine bay all of that stuff it was 300 bucks now this was totally unnecessary but i spent 144 on an oil and coolant cap the porsche 911 oil and cool caps i just thought they look super cool and they make the engine bay look really nice so for the various uh clamps and couplers that i used for the build the intake uh cost me about 150 to build it is cheaper than paying someone to weld an intake however it is messier it's bulkier um and if i were to go back i probably would have just paid someone to weld a nice intake another 100 bucks for the couplers and clamps for the intercooler as far as am fittings go i ordered quite a few you have to be careful if you're ordering from aliexpress like i did which listings you're getting because i noticed that all my 10an fittings they actually had a different internal flare and that caused it to leak so i found another listing ordered some from there and that solved my issue all in all for all my am fittings and stainless steel lines it was about 170 canadian this includes oil feed and return and coolant feed in return so the vacuum lines the clamps all the hoses for the water to air was forty dollars and then it was another twenty bucks for a bracket that i bought for the for that bosch pump that i mentioned earlier is actually a fuel pump bracket but the watered air pump was roughly the same size as a fuel pump so another few small parts that i forgot about uh the fuel injectors i actually bought those used off of someone who was also using them in a vr6 turbo he upgraded so i got a thousand cc injectors from snake eater performance for 200 canadian they seem to work great but it's a little hard to idle them they seem to want to use a lot of fuel i also got a cts turbo sai block off plate that was about 40 or 60 dollars we also got a bosch 1.80 brand new air intake temperature sensor that was about 20 to 40 dollars the turbo exhaust manifold was 100 canadian it was it was 70 us if you want to get one these days it's probably about 200 bucks uh 400 for shift fork steel shift forks for the o2m uh there was nothing wrong with the the ones that were currently in the transmission but i didn't want to experience a failure in the future especially driving the car hard and what not so yeah if you uh do the math it equates to about twelve thousand dollars so at the time of making this video that's roughly 9 500 us there's also a lot of parts that i bought for this build that i didn't end up using or i might use in the future so the true cost of the build is probably closer to 13 000 maybe even 14 000 if i'm forgetting anything uh i mean for example there's a 3.2 liter head over there just sitting on that thing that cost me about a thousand bucks so vr6 turbo builds can get out of control pretty quick but like i said hit that subscribe button because in the future i'm going to make a video on how you could turbo charge your car somewhat cost effectively so thanks for watching this video guys i hope you enjoyed now you know how much money i pissed away on making my borah for motion fast

Channel: Third Gear Grind

Views: 42,370

Keywords: VR6, Turbo, Cost, Build, Jetta, Golf, MK4, 24v, R32, 2.8 24v, GLI

Id: 6i2H46Xfvvs

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021