well its time to change my ko3 turbo so thinkin bout doing it myself and saving money. is it really difficult? has anybody done it? should i change anything else with the turbo? looks like to me u gotta drain the turbo from the botttom and just bolting off the turbo is really harder then that? and what should i look out for? and my car has 133k on it would it kill my engine to go ko4 or should i just replace stock?

 

Its really not that hard. Pretty much:

drain oil and coolent
remove intake and tip along with the ic piping off the turbo
vac lines (mark these so they go back to the right places)
unbolt exhuast
unbolt manifold
removeoil/coolent lines from the turbo
then reverse process.

Im sure there is a diy somewhere. If your car is in good shape and im assuming you have a 00 or older car due to the miles soa ko4 upgrade is fine if your car runs good otherwise. A compression test is the best way to find this out.

 

You dont need to unbolt the manifold or exhaust for longitudinal engines. Just the 3 bolts on topthat hold the turbo to the manifold, and the 3 bolts holding the turbo to the cat. There is also a brace on the bottom of the turbo that is a pita to unbolt. You need an allen wrench and itsat an odd angle to get a lot of leverage on. Its very doable though.
The 2 hardest parts will probably be fishing the oil return hose out/in (since its almost impossible to disconnect from the bottom of the turbo, and that brace. Everything else is pretty much straight forward.
You can go K04, but you wont notice much of a difference without proper tuning and other supporting mods.

 

when i said ubolt the exhaust, i just meant from the turbo, which in this case would be the cat. I know its almost impossible to undo the oil feed line with the manifoldin place on a transverse car, didnt remember if its the same on a longitude car. Plus the manifold is only like 12 bolts and not hard to remove and makes life easier in the long run.

 

Thats what I thought you meant, but I just wanted to see what youd say [8D]

 

yep, drop the catback, should clear up tons of room in the engine bay... come on, you know better.

 

agreed, its not to hard to do but it does take some patience. Your hands will suffer but that is the joys of working on cars. Everything that onepoint8tee said is true, you might want to try feeding the oil line to the pan while its bolted on the new turbo, if i rember correctly its a bit hard to get on with the turbo mounted. But if it makes you feel any better, i did it when i was 17, so i think just have some determination, and its deff some money you can save.

 

Drop the cat back??? There is plenty of room to move the turbo forward and out with the tip pipe and airbox ducting out after everything is disconnected.

 

i was being humorous. guess the rolling eyes didnt give it away.

 

Sorry Im in dense mode. Need to get my brain scanned for the fault codes...