TurboToffi
New Member
Hi guys!
I´m a 25 years old guy from Finland who don´t speak too good english, but I´ll try my best...
I haven´t made any project thread about my car anywhere else, but I´ve been reading thru a couple of threads on this forum and noticed that many of you guys like "custom-made-cars" so maybe somebody will like this!
It all started a few years ago as I bought a cheap Lada 1200L -87 to drive with while I was building my new garage. At that time my other car, a Nissan Almera that was in a very good shape didn´t need to be driven because of the risk of being scratced or something like that...
The Lada as it was when i bought it:
MY -87 39000km !!
It can also be used as a lorry
When my new garage was finished I took the Lada inside to make it a little bit funnier to use...
Some of my friends had, at that time, started to build their own driftcars.
I couldn´t understand why everything had to be so expensive on a driftcar so I set up a goal:
I will make my Lada ready for the drifttrack with a maximun price of 1000€!
...
...
...
...
... nobody believed me ...
... , but last summer as they arranged X-treme Drift Challenge at Botnia Ring here in Finland I was there with my Lada!
It cost me about 700€ so far and that includes one set of new pistons too...
There were a few problems to solve, like for example:
Will the 1,2 litre Lada engine be able to spin the wheel on dry tarmac?
Will the steering/chassi be useable on a racetrack?
And maybe one of the biggest cuestions: Will it be streetlegal?
The answer for these three questions are found:
YES, IT WILL!
I started to collect used parts from friends and I work in a workshop which helped me a lot to learn what parts could be used where...
I bought two Garrett T28 turbos from a friend for 80€. One of them had a damaged compressorwheel and in the other one the bearings were finished.
So I made one out of two and sold the rest of the parts to another friend for 50€. So the turbo cost me 30€
The intercooler comes from a Mercedes 200 CDI that has been crashed so one end had come off. I repaired it and used it on the Lada. I made it fit behind the grill son nobody would notice anything...
I started to make a new intake/exhaust manifold. I made it out of waterpipes as they were cheap and wery easy to work with.
The collector:
I moved the battery to the other side so the turbo should have enough room.
I fabricated the airpipes, exhaust, oil catch tank, modified the oil sump for the oil from the turbo, installed a throttlebody from a Ford Sierra.
The fuelrail is by the way made of some old Michelin commercial stuff
As engine management system I chose Megasquirt as I had tried it on my Volkswagen Beetle earlier. Nowadays I also sell and install them at my company TS Mekan,
The fuel pump is from a Volvo 740 with K-Jetronic injection. They work wery well even at high pressure because the K-Jetronic works on a higher fuelpressure than newer injection systems.
I bought an old cheap Cobra Imola seat that I installed with Sparco 4-point seatbelts.
My Lada driving experiences have teached me that:
1. The wheels do NOT turn enough!
2. You sit as you do in the toilet as you drive a Lada. The steering wheel has the same angle as an old tractor!
Therefore I cut of the steering axle and moved it up above the frame in the instrument panel. The steering axle comes now straight against the shoulders of the driver
I found some cheap 15" steel rims from Renault Megane/Laguna.
I grinded off the centre of them and turned it the other way.
Now i have a the ET at 10mm in the front and -7mm in the rear which means that i use the whole fenders!
Back to the engine!
Last summer I didn´t dyno the car. I just tuned it on the street.
The guys on the Finnish Lada forums say that a stock cylinder head gasket will only hold for about 0,5 bar of boost!
They also say that the pistons will brake before you reach 1 bar!
They are WRONG!
Neither the gasket nor the pistons have any boost pressure limit!
It´s the max. cylinderpressure that says how much they last.
I have realised this by using a too weak ignition system.
Last year I used the stock ignition coil from the Lada and the distributor to send the spark to the cylinder that should have the spark.
The Megasquirt fixes the timing and the dwell times.
With the stock ignition coil I had to use a dwell of 4ms to fire the spark.
This caused knockings every now and then as i had to put the ignition timing so early at about 1 bar of boost (about 31 deg). The high cylinderpressure blew out the spark until the pressure was falling so the spark managed to jump over.
This has cost me 12 pistons in about one year...
I bought a better ignition coil to solve this problem and now I can use a dwell time of 1,5ms.
The custom made triggerwheel
Once I had the cylinderhead off I went to Suntech Motorsport to check the duration and lift on the stock camshaft and to test the cylinderhead flow.
Thanks to Marcus at Suntech Motorsport.
Before I put it all together again I ported the head.
This time I was dynoing the car and I got:
200,4 hp and 225 Nm at 1,2 bar of boost!
The boost is now at 1,4 bar!
Here are some pics as the Lada is in action:
Hope you enjoy reading my story. I will tell you more about the chassimods another day. My brain wants a break
Please ask if you got any questions...
/ Toffi
I´m a 25 years old guy from Finland who don´t speak too good english, but I´ll try my best...
I haven´t made any project thread about my car anywhere else, but I´ve been reading thru a couple of threads on this forum and noticed that many of you guys like "custom-made-cars" so maybe somebody will like this!
It all started a few years ago as I bought a cheap Lada 1200L -87 to drive with while I was building my new garage. At that time my other car, a Nissan Almera that was in a very good shape didn´t need to be driven because of the risk of being scratced or something like that...
The Lada as it was when i bought it:
MY -87 39000km !!
It can also be used as a lorry
When my new garage was finished I took the Lada inside to make it a little bit funnier to use...
Some of my friends had, at that time, started to build their own driftcars.
I couldn´t understand why everything had to be so expensive on a driftcar so I set up a goal:
I will make my Lada ready for the drifttrack with a maximun price of 1000€!
...
...
...
...
... nobody believed me ...
... , but last summer as they arranged X-treme Drift Challenge at Botnia Ring here in Finland I was there with my Lada!
It cost me about 700€ so far and that includes one set of new pistons too...
There were a few problems to solve, like for example:
Will the 1,2 litre Lada engine be able to spin the wheel on dry tarmac?
Will the steering/chassi be useable on a racetrack?
And maybe one of the biggest cuestions: Will it be streetlegal?
The answer for these three questions are found:
YES, IT WILL!
I started to collect used parts from friends and I work in a workshop which helped me a lot to learn what parts could be used where...
I bought two Garrett T28 turbos from a friend for 80€. One of them had a damaged compressorwheel and in the other one the bearings were finished.
So I made one out of two and sold the rest of the parts to another friend for 50€. So the turbo cost me 30€
The intercooler comes from a Mercedes 200 CDI that has been crashed so one end had come off. I repaired it and used it on the Lada. I made it fit behind the grill son nobody would notice anything...
I started to make a new intake/exhaust manifold. I made it out of waterpipes as they were cheap and wery easy to work with.
The collector:
I moved the battery to the other side so the turbo should have enough room.
I fabricated the airpipes, exhaust, oil catch tank, modified the oil sump for the oil from the turbo, installed a throttlebody from a Ford Sierra.
The fuelrail is by the way made of some old Michelin commercial stuff
As engine management system I chose Megasquirt as I had tried it on my Volkswagen Beetle earlier. Nowadays I also sell and install them at my company TS Mekan,
The fuel pump is from a Volvo 740 with K-Jetronic injection. They work wery well even at high pressure because the K-Jetronic works on a higher fuelpressure than newer injection systems.
I bought an old cheap Cobra Imola seat that I installed with Sparco 4-point seatbelts.
My Lada driving experiences have teached me that:
1. The wheels do NOT turn enough!
2. You sit as you do in the toilet as you drive a Lada. The steering wheel has the same angle as an old tractor!
Therefore I cut of the steering axle and moved it up above the frame in the instrument panel. The steering axle comes now straight against the shoulders of the driver
I found some cheap 15" steel rims from Renault Megane/Laguna.
I grinded off the centre of them and turned it the other way.
Now i have a the ET at 10mm in the front and -7mm in the rear which means that i use the whole fenders!
Back to the engine!
Last summer I didn´t dyno the car. I just tuned it on the street.
The guys on the Finnish Lada forums say that a stock cylinder head gasket will only hold for about 0,5 bar of boost!
They also say that the pistons will brake before you reach 1 bar!
They are WRONG!
Neither the gasket nor the pistons have any boost pressure limit!
It´s the max. cylinderpressure that says how much they last.
I have realised this by using a too weak ignition system.
Last year I used the stock ignition coil from the Lada and the distributor to send the spark to the cylinder that should have the spark.
The Megasquirt fixes the timing and the dwell times.
With the stock ignition coil I had to use a dwell of 4ms to fire the spark.
This caused knockings every now and then as i had to put the ignition timing so early at about 1 bar of boost (about 31 deg). The high cylinderpressure blew out the spark until the pressure was falling so the spark managed to jump over.
This has cost me 12 pistons in about one year...
I bought a better ignition coil to solve this problem and now I can use a dwell time of 1,5ms.
The custom made triggerwheel
Once I had the cylinderhead off I went to Suntech Motorsport to check the duration and lift on the stock camshaft and to test the cylinderhead flow.
Thanks to Marcus at Suntech Motorsport.
Before I put it all together again I ported the head.
This time I was dynoing the car and I got:
200,4 hp and 225 Nm at 1,2 bar of boost!
The boost is now at 1,4 bar!
Here are some pics as the Lada is in action:
Hope you enjoy reading my story. I will tell you more about the chassimods another day. My brain wants a break
Please ask if you got any questions...
/ Toffi
i'm a really big lada fan, and used to have some 
