Horse Sense: Aftermarket manufacturers have been making turbocharger kits for the fuelie 5.0 Mustang since 1986. Today, Pro Turbo Kits and others lead the way if you just have to have a turbocharger on your 5.0 or modular Mustang.
We love to see cars such as Jeremy Hedlund's homebuilt, twin-turbocharged '89 GT. It's fun to see what folks can build on a budget without spending a fortune on every trick-of-the-week part that comes out for Mustangs. Let's face it, most of us can't afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a project car that only comes out once in a while. Jeremy faced just this challenge-build a killer, street-crushing Mustang without forfeiting his monthly house payments.
For Jeremy, a fast Mustang wasn't something that ran in the 12-second zone. Nope, he was determined to get his GT to the 10-second party in completely streetable trim. That meant no nitrous bottle to run dry, no short belt swaps at the track, no icing the engine down for two hours. You get the picture-Jeremy wanted it all.
The best pass on this classic...
The best pass on this classic red GT has been a breathtaking 10.92 e.t. at more than 123 mph with a 1.66-second short time on BFGoodrich drag radials. The best part is that the car is as quiet as a stocker with mufflers, until it comes up on boost. Then it's good night to all but the most serious of late-night speed contestants with whom you may have a social encounter. The stock red paint of Jeremy's '89 GT still shows off the muscular lines some 14 years after production. The addition of an ABC Mach 1 hood is the only giveaway (or bait) that this is something special. Even the ubiquitous Weld Draglites don't hint at the 10-second potential. Jeremy has added Lakewood struts/shocks and Southside Lift Bars to help the BFGoodrich Drag Radials get some grip. A six-point bar keeps things legal during track-testing sessions.
After studying dozens of different combinations, he began to realize that turbocharged Mustangs had the best of both worlds. They were getting outrageous performance numbers with mostly stock parts. The only thing Jeremy wasn't crazy about was the $3,000-$5,500 price tag it takes to get into a nice aftermarket turbo system. So, he did what any capable speed nut would do-he got down to business and built his own turbo system. Once he began digging up information, he decided that if he was going to get one turbocharger under the hood, he might as well go to the trouble of adding a second. After a month of research, fabrication, and trial and error, Jeremy ended up with a homebuilt twin-turbo system that he figures cost him less than $1,000 for the whole deal-that includes everything except the injectors and the dyno tune.
"My car ran 11.70s at 115 mph for the past two years on an NOS dry-kit, 150hp shot," Jeremy says. "After two years, the 11.70s started to feel slow, and that's when I decided to go with the turbo. My turbo kit was designed after seeing Mike Sitar's Web site [www.toohighpsi.com]. I found two junkyard Turbo Coupe turbos, and I added MAC short-tube headers, a couple T-3 exhaust flanges, oil feed lines, drain lines, and several feet of exhaust tubing. I think anyone can duplicate this with a little patience and fabrication know-how."
For all you aspiring turbo engineers out there, Jeremy adds this: "The one tricky thing I found is you will have to cut the exhaust elbow on the passenger side, rotate it 180 degrees, and weld it back together. It is cast iron, which is kind of tricky to weld. Also, most of these turbos are water cooled, but mounting the turbos in the front of the engine keeps them cool enough without the water. The hardest part of building something like this is the ability to cut the metal pieces that you need. At a minimum, I don't think someone should take something like this on without a good selection of tools to do that. I probably used a drill press, an angle grinder, a die grinder, a jigsaw, and a Sawzall. But in a perfect world I'd have a band saw, a chop saw, a cutting torch, and a plasma cutter. Or, just find a good exhaust shop willing to help out. An intercooler is also something that should be considered, I didn't use one, but it would be nice. The only downfall I found to doing this setup is you have to modify (hack) the inner fenders to fit the turbos in there. The result outweighs the trimming of the inner fenders-turbo boost!"