G'day folks,
My name is Steve and I'm from Australia,
Long time lurker and figured it about time I post up.
So this will be a build thread so I hope I don't overload you guys with my boring long process of where I'm at today, but I'll try my best to make it enjoyable and offer you guys a different aspect on the turbo Buick scene from down under.
So this is my VN V6 n/a LN3 or L27 converted to turbo,
over here in aus we call it Buick series 1/2.
This was my first car and I had many years of enjoyment out of the n/a setup, i put a baby cam 208/210, also a 2800rpm converter with 3.9gears driven by a kitted up turbo700.
Was an awesome little combo,
I ran the car multiple times over the course when it was n/a starting from 15.5 down the quarter standard to best ET of 14.8 @ 92mph
This is when I decided either to persist with a v6 as its something different or be a sheep and join the LS conversion that everyone seems to be doing these days.
So my build started I got the car sent away to get the manifolds and exhaust made up. Everything was custom 1 off as there is not a big enough market for these kind of setups.
So I decided to use a Garrett GT35/40 with a 1.06 rear housing internally gated, pulled my heads off my current engine got the ports cleaned up skimmed the heads for some cometic head gaskets with some arp head studs and also had the inlet match ported.
My budget was tight as I was only 20 at the time so saving every penny I earned and putting it into parts and bits for the car.
I started working on my fuel system once I got the car back from fabricating the manifolds, I wanted to run e85 so I went -8 Teflon line with 2x 044 Bosch external pumps and a 4l undercar surge tank.
I was now ready to get it tuned, I purchased a haltech ecu so later on I could learn how to tune the car myself as I couldn't justify always having to spend $800 for a tune when I installed new parts and so on.
So I had it tuned for 10psi and I made 210rwkw but I was never happy with so little power I had it tuned 3 months later and I made 359rwhp at 15psi on a still safe tune.
I then run the car down the local drag strip and best et i got was a 11.68 @ 119mph the car is around 3100 pounds
My car was taken off the road shortly after due to police grounding my car and the modifications done to my car had not been engineered or approved by our RTA, a year later I had the car all engineered and able to pass emissions to the standards needed.
The day I passed the engineering certificate driving home a ignition lead popped off and I hydraulicd the engine with a hole in the block lucky it was under soft load or I could done some more damage to the car.
Then the long process to build another engine and combo to be reliable to handle some serious boost started.
Over the course of a year I had my engine bay painted and begin hiding the wiring in my engine bay.
I also wired up another ecu I bought which is a haltech PS2000 the reason i went to this was for full sequential injection and coil on plug tuning.
In that time I found a cheap standard rebuilt engine which needed to be assembled and I bought it with my father and I building it again to another standard Internal motor with headgaskets and head studs.
I learned the software to tune it myself and have since tuned this current combo all by myself learning from my father what to play around with and my general knowledge of it.
Haven't had my current combo on the dyno as I been street tuning but I'm up at 17psi and I have my timing at 15 degrees.
So I feel I'm still safe also being 11.0wot afr on e85
This is where I'm at today I have a new engine I'm building which I'll post in the next post and all details if you guys can assist my new build and let me know what will work with what I wanna achieve.
For now I'll let this be hope I haven't tired you guys out.
Cheers Steve
My name is Steve and I'm from Australia,
Long time lurker and figured it about time I post up.
So this will be a build thread so I hope I don't overload you guys with my boring long process of where I'm at today, but I'll try my best to make it enjoyable and offer you guys a different aspect on the turbo Buick scene from down under.
So this is my VN V6 n/a LN3 or L27 converted to turbo,
over here in aus we call it Buick series 1/2.


This was my first car and I had many years of enjoyment out of the n/a setup, i put a baby cam 208/210, also a 2800rpm converter with 3.9gears driven by a kitted up turbo700.
Was an awesome little combo,
I ran the car multiple times over the course when it was n/a starting from 15.5 down the quarter standard to best ET of 14.8 @ 92mph
This is when I decided either to persist with a v6 as its something different or be a sheep and join the LS conversion that everyone seems to be doing these days.
So my build started I got the car sent away to get the manifolds and exhaust made up. Everything was custom 1 off as there is not a big enough market for these kind of setups.
So I decided to use a Garrett GT35/40 with a 1.06 rear housing internally gated, pulled my heads off my current engine got the ports cleaned up skimmed the heads for some cometic head gaskets with some arp head studs and also had the inlet match ported.


My budget was tight as I was only 20 at the time so saving every penny I earned and putting it into parts and bits for the car.
I started working on my fuel system once I got the car back from fabricating the manifolds, I wanted to run e85 so I went -8 Teflon line with 2x 044 Bosch external pumps and a 4l undercar surge tank.
I was now ready to get it tuned, I purchased a haltech ecu so later on I could learn how to tune the car myself as I couldn't justify always having to spend $800 for a tune when I installed new parts and so on.
So I had it tuned for 10psi and I made 210rwkw but I was never happy with so little power I had it tuned 3 months later and I made 359rwhp at 15psi on a still safe tune.


I then run the car down the local drag strip and best et i got was a 11.68 @ 119mph the car is around 3100 pounds

My car was taken off the road shortly after due to police grounding my car and the modifications done to my car had not been engineered or approved by our RTA, a year later I had the car all engineered and able to pass emissions to the standards needed.
The day I passed the engineering certificate driving home a ignition lead popped off and I hydraulicd the engine with a hole in the block lucky it was under soft load or I could done some more damage to the car.
Then the long process to build another engine and combo to be reliable to handle some serious boost started.
Over the course of a year I had my engine bay painted and begin hiding the wiring in my engine bay.
I also wired up another ecu I bought which is a haltech PS2000 the reason i went to this was for full sequential injection and coil on plug tuning.


In that time I found a cheap standard rebuilt engine which needed to be assembled and I bought it with my father and I building it again to another standard Internal motor with headgaskets and head studs.
I learned the software to tune it myself and have since tuned this current combo all by myself learning from my father what to play around with and my general knowledge of it.
Haven't had my current combo on the dyno as I been street tuning but I'm up at 17psi and I have my timing at 15 degrees.
So I feel I'm still safe also being 11.0wot afr on e85
This is where I'm at today I have a new engine I'm building which I'll post in the next post and all details if you guys can assist my new build and let me know what will work with what I wanna achieve.
For now I'll let this be hope I haven't tired you guys out.
Cheers Steve
