Hodakaguy

Well I just finished installing my TEC Turbo kit in my 86 pickup.
The stock turbo (130,000 miles) was still building boost but was
blowing oil out the turbo, when I removed it the housing was cracked
in the normal place and the manifold was also cracked. Couldnt see
the cracks in the manifold from the top, ended up being most of my
ticking sound I was hearing.

The TEC kit is very nice, a couple small things you will have to do,
the new OEM exhaust manifold I bought from Toyota has different
pitch threads where the turbo bolts up than the adaptor that comes
in the kit. Jason said just to re-tap the manifold, I would rather
just use the correct bolts but they have a wierd wide flat head to
fit recessed into the adaptor and a quick trip to the local bolt
supply houses failed to yield the correct bolts so I ended up just
re-tapping the manifold. It would be nice for TEC to just supply the
correct bolts!

The intake lip on the new turbo is slightly larger than the original
turbo and because of this you have to stretch the original 90 deg
rubber intake elbo to get it onto the new turbo. 20 year old rubber
doesn't want to stretch very good and mine cracked in 3 places while
trying to install it. I was really wanting to get the kit installed
that day but no one in the country stocks that elbo so I ordered one
from Toyota and waited a few more days to finish the install. I
called TEC to see if they stock that part, they don't but did tell
me that they always need to be replaced because the old ones won't
stretch. It would have been nice to have a note in the kit that
said pre-order a new elbo so that you won't have to delay the
install.

I ordered a new 2" exhaust "kit" with the turbo from TEC at the same
time. It comes with mandral bends and a high flow cat and muffler.
If I had to do it over again I would have just had a local muffler
shop build the exhaust. All the kit came with is a couple strait
pieces of 2" exhaust and 5-45 deg elbos, clamps a cat and muffler.
None of them are pre-flaired, butt joints only. I was going to
install it my self but becouse of time just had a local muffler shop
do it. The down pipe that came with the Turbo kit is very nice
though.

I added a port to the down pipe so that I can wire in a Pyro gauge
and I'm also adding a boost gauge. I ordered a 2 gauge pillar from
http://www.well.com/user/mosk/gaugepillars.htm
The pillar looks great and I'm hoping to get it and the gauges
installed within the next few days.

The kit works very well, as I mentioned earlier the original turbo
was still building boost but after the TEC install it's evident that
it wasn't building full boost. BIG improvment in both power and how
fast the turbo spins up. The boost comes on much faster now. The
next day the new Cat converter just fell off :-) and now it's just
running the muffler (just for testing purposes....) .
Again a big improvment, even though the cat is a brand new cat
and a "High Flow" model it restricts the exhaust more than you think.
After its removal the Turbo spun up even faster and it has a little
louder exhaust note. You can hear the whine of the turbo a little
more than the stock turbo, not enought to bother you but you
notice it's there, I kinda like it.

Hopefully the TEC kit will serve a long and happy life in my truck,
I've driven it a couple days so far and it's worked great so far.
Thought I would post my thoughts on the kit, so far I'm very happy
with it :-)

Hodakaguy

dcg9381

Dyno! Dyno! Dyno!

Bill

I second that: DYNO!!!

thus far, do you figure it's worth the $1500 price tag? I'm rebuilding my 22RTE, and I'm really debating going with the TEC kit, or with building one with a different intake(to add an intercooler).

95RunnerSR5

x3