88turboranger
Member
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2009
- Messages
- 15
- Vehicle Year
- 1988
- Transmission
- Manual
Hey everyone, popping my posting cherry
but here is my situation: I recently bought an 88 xlt ranger from a guy i work with. He swapped an 85 xr4ti turbo motor into it back in 1992 i believe. The engine runs great, has about 85000mi on it, he installed the merkur computer when doing the swap, upgraded the injectors to 42#, but kept the stock ranger fuel lines because of space issues if i recall, and installed the svo "high performance" ,as he puts, it fuel pump. It also has a high flow cat, flowmaster muffler and these nifty dual tail pipes that have resonators built into them. The exuast was installed in 92-94 i believe. Now the problem: At wot the engine will only go to about 3000rpm and then it seems like it has hit top end. When I first bought the truck it would hesitate really bad when getting into the 3k range, so i replaced the ignition wires and this took away the hesitation. Now it will not wind out much past 3k unless i gradually get into the throttle and work my way past it so to speak. I have also done some research and found that these motors should put out around 15psi of boost in a manual application from the factory. Mine however only puts out 10psi. This was satisfying for about 2 months, then i decided to bypass the bcs and run the hose directly from compression side into the recirculate side which resulted in a fairly adequate gain of 6psi bringing the total boost to 16psi.
After doing this the engine will hit about 3200 now before it feels like its "all out" but the turbo will not start spooling till around 2700rpm now, whereas with the bcs, it would spool around 2300rpm. Possible causes: I have a suspicion that the cat could be plugged, but would it really cause the motor to react the way it is? Perhaps the exhaust system could be too restrictive with a muffler and the two resonators in the tailpipes? Another possibility is that maybe the 42# injectors are a little too much, or maybe the stock ranger fuel lines cant keep up? Any suggestions would be great, I'm really open to trying anything! 



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