i would be careful when u turbo that eco tech, they get really touchy when you do that, our freind has gone threw 3 eco tech motors in his sandrails they were all turboed, the first one was when he drove it down the street then it blew up when it hit boost

baja17 wrote:

i would be careful when u turbo that eco tech,

Thanks for the warning. I'll turbo it gently...
Actually, Saturn and Cobalts had a supercharger for this engine. That might be more manageable power. Anyone seen one of these used in an off-road or sandrail?

Good to see you back at it. You can turbo a 1.8 liter VW water cooled engines with few mods to 275 hp and get away with it. They are overbuilt. I suspect an ecotech NA and a Eco tech turbo engines have totally different parts and compression. If your not using feed back FI and a knock sensor with a turbo your living on borrowed time.

Finally some progress to report. I'm having some tubing work done at the moment. But first we had to mount a muffler to the Ecotec block. We used two shock boss' and welded a plate then two arms that extend near the inlet/outlet to clamp on. Should be plenty sturdy...

wow great job with everything! Can't wait to see it finished, that will be one sick Baja.

How hard is wiring on that ecotec? or have you not gotten that far yet? haha

I haven't gotten to the wiring yet. Fortunately I see that Bugzyla has done one of these Ecotecs recently on the Ernest Baja Build. I'm glad I'll have a resource to turn to. I'll post some pics of the progress on the front and rear bumpers here shortly.... Stay tuned, we have some pretty radical ideas on rear suspension that I think people will like...?

The front and rear bumpers are starting to come together. We used the standard double-tube bumpers, but modified and incorporated them into a beefier design. By the way, Bugzylla helped me out with a widened ball joint beam, which gives me plenty of room to mount everything, in addition to being...well....coooler...


It'll be nice to have a hitch mount for a small trailer. The rear of this cage has a simple motor mount you can kind of make out in the last photo.


The front ties into the cage with flanges at the firewall/cowl. I wanted to avoid cutting holes in the body.



It's starting to look like a car again...

Must of used a wide angle for the picture, The muffler looks bigger than the car!!!

SuburbanLegend wrote:

Finally some progress to report. I'm having some tubing work done at the moment. But first we had to mount a muffler to the Ecotec block. We used two shock boss' and welded a plate then two arms that extend near the inlet/outlet to clamp on. Should be plenty sturdy...

Hey that looks like a great project, i would love to see the updates!

My progress has been slow and painful lately. There's nothing exciting about pulling wires and routing fuel lines, and it takes FOREVER.

One interesting decision was to mount my computer and relay harness on the outside of the firewall. Since everything is marine grade, I figured it would be better to keep the car as sealed up as possible. I found two small black cutting boards on Ebay, and trimmed them up slightly, then mounted them on each side of the motor. The material works great to drill and mount stuff to. You can tap holes for threads and just screw directly into it. It's tough, waterproof, non-conductive..and did I mention it's dishwasher safe?...





Also, Here's my solution to mounting the oil pressure sender. The spot was too close to the intake manifold, so a 45 elbow works nicely to make room.

Lookin good man! I love cutting boards. I used one to make the chassis for my R/C rock crawler. Haha! It is lookin real clean! Can't wait to see her on and off the road when you get her finished up!

Very nice, very clean looking. Nice job!

Check out my hood. I had a friend (the kind of friend you have to pay) figure out how to mount the one-piece hood and allow it to swing open to expose my gas tank and spare tire. The lift cartridge on the side makes it easy and acts as a bump stop. (that was my idea ) With the wide supports toward the cowl, it's very sturdy.



The swing arm also acts as the front mounts for the gas tank and bolts right into the factory tank bolt holes. A nice design, don't you think?



Now I just need to mount the sides with dzus fasteners....
Oh and I mounted my steering wheel. (not easy.)

Some of you might make fun of me, but I made sure we could mount some sun visors on the roll cage. (the cage is in the way of the factory mount locations.) Check it out...I'll be able to ride off into the sunset....safely...

Like all the work so far very nice job.