In an effort to consolidate all my progress and inevitable questions as I go through this process, I thought I’d start a build thread. I’ve had my turbo for going on three years and have finally set aside time and parts to get this done.

The back story:

My car is an 87 with reasonably low mileage (now 33k), but certainly not easy miles. The current iteration was apparently put together by a doctor in Florida in the mid 90’s as a track day car and the second owner I bought it from used it exclusively for that purpose up here is Ontario for a decade before I bought it.



The day I brought the car home.

The modifications when I bought the car were almost exclusively suspension in nature: Weltmeister sway bars, re-indexed torsion bars of unknown variety, old school Bilstein strut, lowering springs and an LSD equipped S2 trans. Since I’ve had the car I’ve caught up on maintenance, installed VEMS (with new injectors) and gathered parts. I’ve had an attachment to these cars since they were new and someone on my paper route having one for me to stare at twice a week. The plan is to continue using the car as a weekend touring/event vehicle with plans to prep it maintenance wise, for the time attack series here in Ontario.

So far I have accumulated:
Bilstein Escort Cup Suspension (planning on removing T-bars)
Adjustable Camber Plates
Quick ratio 015 manual rack
Tial 38 WG
Turbo Smart EBC (may still use the booste control in VEMS though)
LR Super 53

I spoke to Charlie from Evergreen and it looks like I may be sending the turbo to him for a rebuild and upgrade to a billet wheel. I like the laggy, all at once nature of these cars, but hopefully between the S2 box, no AFM, WG and EBC, it’ll be manageable after Charlie works his magic.

I was chasing a hard start/ low idle condition this last summer and after pulling the intake tonight, I can see why. The wiring harness for then IAC and the temp sensor for the turbo water pump is dried and cracked and one of the vacuum ports in the intake was loose when I pulled the intake off. I managed to find a combination that worked for a reasonable idle warm with slight pedal input on cold starts, so my first question is:

With a Venturi equipped car, how much can I eliminate? Can I eliminate the IAC altogether?