Bill

Here is the method that I came up with.

Remove driver side motor/turbo mount. Have machine shop weld 1/2" of material to the bottom of the turbo mount. Then machine 1/2" of material off of the top of the turbo mount. Use a 930 turbo base gasket, as this process will remove the O-ring groove. My turbo now sits 3/8" lower and easily clears the intake manifold. All lines to the turbo still fit fine. And best of all you do not raise the intake, and avoid hood and strut brace clearance issues. My machine shop did this work for $80.

Jeremy Himsel

The issue with doing it this way is now the x-over pipe won’t line up correctly because the turbo sits 3/8” lower and you will need to “persuade” it to bolt up to the hot housing which makes is even more “loaded” and stressed then before. By persuading the flange downward to bolt-up, most of that stress would be at the header flange or the crappy stock header welds. I would also imagine that the down pipe bracket may not seat against the block bolt properly unless you bevel out the hole (provided you’re still using the stock down-pipe) and if you use a MAF j-pipe similar to the Vitesse kit it will be a real pain getting the bottom of the j-pipe to clear the top of the alternator. I just modified the bottom of the t-body and return spring bracket to get my turbo to clear. It took me about 15 minutes to do it.

Bill

Jeremy,

You are correct, the J-pipe is now tight at the alternator. But at mid-point not at the clamp, so installing the J-pipe is not difficult. And the exhaust bolted right up, non-issue. I have enough clearance now with my T04E that I could have only machined the mount 1/4". This would improve the clearance at the J-pipe.

FSAEracer03

Interesting mix of ideas here.
Jeremy, a beer for your great signature!

The T04E I'm going to (someday) install already has some material machined off of it's compressor housing. I'm pretty sure it'll fit either way, but I'm considering putting a heat blanket on it. The only easy solution to all of this, that doesn't itch me the wrong way, would be to machine my own 1/4" spacers. That way I wouldn't have to do much machining and won't 1) raise the intake to high or 2) f*** with exhaust placement.

Now the main problem... getting the money for tuning hardware and all the other secondary parts I have to get to do the buildup how I want it.