Advice on Buying a turbo tacoma

It's a manual 2001 tacoma v6 with 250,000 miles. The turbo is a cxracing kit also "bigger injectors and fuel pump." Turbo put on 6k ago (No info about ecu or tune) been researching the kit some, having trouble deciding if the kit is ok or Chinese junk. There asking 8500$ would it be worth risking or pass on it. How much hp would you guess it has? The kit uses a t4 flange right so could you swap the turbo fairly easy if I wanted to make more power?

 

Dear Crab Cake,

I love CrabCakes. If you are ever in Seattle, you can cook me crab cakes all day long.

If the rig has a turbo on it, I would assume it probably has been driven harder than you would like. A turbo kit with modest injection will probably give you about 10-15% percent more power than stock. This will happen at the upper end of the power band.

Good Luck,
Paul

 

Depends on the turbo sizing, ask more info about it and reply back also check out the Turbo BS thread and ask there if you want the more informed turbo Tacoma people on the entire internet to give you some insight

 

I gotta ask was the engine redone when the Turbo kit was installed ??

When was the last timing belt done??

Where does the truck live??Frame??

Any pictures of the engine bay ?

 

I wouldn't buy someone else's former project, esp with DIY engine mods.

 

I'd run. Don't trust work like that people have done. I want to buy a nice card for stock truck.

 

It has a gt35 turbo. The kit he used https://www.cxracing.com/turbo-kit/...lexus-truck-hilux-tacoma/TRB-KIT-5VZFE-IC-KIT
The engine was rebuilt by previous owner, no paperwork. Engine bay pic attached

 

I'd be worried about losing oil pressure - looks like it'll end up all in the driver's side.

Clean looking setup. @Brice and @j0shu4 have turbo'd 3.4's. They may be able to help more than my pointless comment lol

 

I'd be cautious for sure. If you are willing to work a bit then I would suggest buying a cheaper truck and turbo'ing it. The problem is you may not know what to look for. The CX turbos are ok, they did sell me a used one but I rebuilt it and it's been fine since, and has about 5k on it since the rebuild I think, maybe more and I havent had any issues. I would also be concerned about how it was tuned. Standalone? Piggyback? FPR mod? No tune? It all depends, but if it has no tune then at that point I would be concerned with rings and cylinder bores from lean conditions.

Probably a good idea to get more info on it.
things like, what kind of tune? what kind of boost? what gas did they run in it? What fuel pump did they install? what injectors did they install? A test drive would also be good. And also feel out the owner and see if they seem fairly competent in what they have done. You want to make sure they aren't running from a problem child.

 

Do you feel lucky ??

If this turns out to be a garage queen is this money going to effect things in a real bad way??

Like the first time you romp on it you spin a rod bearing??

I can only speak for myself that sweet deal for $8,000.00 is now at $20,000.00 with just parts .

It comes down to why sell this truck

 

one year on my cx turbo so far. i dont have the kit though. i bought the headers and a bb turbo separate from everything else.

if you dont have experience with turbod vehicles or a local tuner i wouldn't buy.

 

Do you NEED the extra power the turbo makes compared to the reliably of a supercharger? Is it going to be driven alot or parked most the time

Supercharger puts out less power but is soooo reliable and you will get 100,000- 150,000 miles with few if any repairs. Not sure there are turbos with those numbers.
If its a daily driver I would pass, if it’s a weekend warrior truck maybe so

 

Does it have an afr gauge in the dash?

That turbo is too big and will need replaced but will work fine. A stock Tacoma is slow as shit. These turbos make it not slow lol.

 

I guess it is all what you want my stock 3.4 has quite enough Power.

Then seldom do I drive over 50 mph

 

Buying an custom turbo'd anything can be tricky. If it is done correctly, it can run fine and reliably with little to no issues. If not done correctly, you will be hating the truck very quickly. Troubleshooting a turbo set up that you're not familiar with is tough to do...especially with limited forced induction experience. Like Devin mentioned, if you're not experienced with turbo vehicles, buying one that's already done can be a rabbit hole of trouble shooting that will leave you wondering what you got yourself into. Unturbo'ing a vehicle can be quite a task as well if you decide to remove everything in the event that it doesn't work out well for you.

 

a quality turbo setup should last a long time like any oem turbo setup. your gona have to pay for quality components though.

 

Dear CrabCake,

Turbo charging and supercharging work in two different ways to give an engine additional power. John (1997TacomaV6) has already chimed in to your thread to give his take on this subject, and he is very knowledgeable on this subject. He lives in Denver, Colorado, which, obviously, is a high elevation city so he has explored what can be done to a normally aspirated Toyota 5VZ-FE engine to make additional horsepower. His normally aspirated Tacoma before supercharging was probably hurting for power because of the high elevation of the city of Denver. Oxygen levels are reduced as you climb in altitude.

The stock Toyota 5VZ-FE probably makes anywhere between 130 to 150 horsepower at the rear wheels depending how high above sea level the motor is. Obviously, a normally aspirated Toyota 5VZ-FE 3.4 measured at sea level is going to put more horsepower to the rear wheels than one measured in the city of Denver. The thing to remember is that you have to ask yourself what you are going to be using your Tacoma for before exploring tweaking the motor through super charging or turbo charging.

The Toyota 5VZ-FE has a compression ratio of 9.6 to 1, which is on the upper end of a normal compression ratio. This motor is by no means a high compression ratio engine as far as a hot rodder is concerned, but it is still fairly high. The old rule of thumb when turbo charging or super charging was to lower the compression ratio of the motor before tweaking it. I hope the owner of this potential Tacoma you are looking at has given some thought to the engineering that has to be done before they went ahead and turbo charged it.

Good Luck,
Paul

 

And this is why a good tune is crucial. When running mid to high boost on an appropriately sized turbo, anything less than 91-93 octane can and will be an issue. My main concern here is it has no tune and ran the stock wastegate pressure...Hopefully it has some sort of tune for boost. Heck even a rising rate fuel pressure regulator would be good'nuff to keep it from taking damage.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm still waiting for a high pressure line so I can sell my truck back to a previous owner so I got a little bit to decide. I'd like to have the money before talking to the tacoma owner more. I'd love to have the truck but it sounding like a bad idea for me, a big reason I'm selling my current truck is to escape the money pit while everything works. I don't have any experience with turbos and don't have experience working on engine internals. This would be my 2nd truck and I do need a reliable truck once I graduate high school . I'll still see about it in case its 100%

 

Hey we're not all as OLD as you!!