Day 1 | Index | Day 3

1996 Camry 5S-FE Turbo Install

Day 2


Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5

 

Today, day 2, was a day of issues... First task was to replace the cylinder head. The timing marks on the cam shafts are absolutely horrible! There were multiple marks and the shop manual did not make it clear which marks should be used. The process of getting the timing correct took a good 11/2 to 2 hours. Once that was done (and rechecked the compression on each of the cylinders) we moved on. We got the intake manifold installed and closed up the front of the engine (from changing the timing belt & water pump). We tried to test fit the turbo and manifold and had a few surprises waiting for us!

Problems:

  1. As shown in figure Picture 1 above, the oil filter cannot be removed after turbo down pipe is installed. Also the oil dipstick cannot be accessed with the turbo in place.
  2. Depicted in Pictures 1 and 2 is the large variance between the turbo exhaust port and the exhaust pipe going to the next catalytic converter. Attached to the supplied down pipe would need to be almost an "S" shaped pipe to mate the two.
  3. Picture 3 shows the intake pipe of the turbo is almost butted up against the cruise control. This allows virtually no room for the 90° elbow. Also shown is the problem with the automatic transmission dipstick/filler tube. The dipstick needed to be bent back quite a bit to create space for the turbo intake pipe.
  4. Picture 4 shows again the tight fit between the exhaust port of the turbo and the oil filter. Also, the turbo does not allow access to the oil dipstick.
  5. Picture 5 illustrates how the flange for the down pipe does not clear the oil filter and therefore cannot be installed without modifying the oil filter position.

To successfully install the turbo charger on the 1996 Camry LE 5S-FE equipped car, the following is a list of requirements:

  1. The oil cooler located below the oil filter must be removed. The relief valve tube that the oil filter gets threaded onto must be replaced with a shorter one. Removing the cooler allows the oil filter to drop roughly 2.5". This will create the needed clearance to allow changing the filter. If necessary, a secondary air-cooled oil cooler can be installed.
  2. The included down pipe cannot be used unless it can be bent further to clear the air condition lines and the front engine mount.
  3. The intake pipe must be cut shorter to create the necessary clearance to avoid the cruise control unit.
  4. The oil dipstick tube must be reoriented to allow removal and insertion. Otherwise the turbo blocks access to it.
  5. The oil pressure sensor is mounted on the included T. This T has NPT threads on it and the head has metric threads. It was recommended to 'dress' or file down the threads to provide the necessary clearance. A better idea would be to either provide an adapter that provides the needed conversion between metric and NPT threads, or to braze a metric fitting onto the T (the latter is what we landed up doing).
  6. There are multiple electrical connectors that needed to be relocated due to space requirements of the turbo and pipes.
  7. Support brackets should be included with the kit or fabricated to support the intermediate pipe.
  8. As a general suggestion, the oil return line should be installed toward the rear of the oil pan, closer to where the drain is on the turbo. Currently, there is a long horizontal piece to connect the turbo drain to the oil pan tube that will cause some oil puddling. We chose to install a right-angle elbow to turn the oil drain fitting on the turbo to direct the oil return tube toward the front of the engine where the oil pan's return tube is.