Turbo reliability on a daily

[DaveJenks95 3]

Hey,

I have always been contemplating the idea of adding a turbo to my gt86, but one thing concerns me slightly. 

 

The car car is my daily I do rack up a lot of miles on it. 1500-2000 miles a month!! I'm currently sat at just over 50k. 

My question is, does anyone have a turbo ( or even supercharged) 86, which gets a lot of mileage thrown on it. If so, have you had an issues etc or have any points that are worth highlighting ?

 

Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated 

[Lauren 2259]

The trouble is that not one owner that I can think of that has gone the forced induction route really does many miles. I guess the thing is that in daily driving (I'm about to tip over 100K miles in mine) the car doesn't get a hard time for the most part, so I don't see why it would be an issue, especially so if you keep it under the 300bhp mark. 

On the other side of the coin, an engine that produces more power will be under greater stress when it's doing so. 

[DaveJenks95 3]

12 minutes ago, Lauren said:

The trouble is that not one owner that I can think of that has gone the forced induction route really does many miles. I guess the thing is that in daily driving (I'm about to tip over 100K miles in mine) the car doesn't get a hard time for the most part, so I don't see why it would be an issue, especially so if you keep it under the 300bhp mark. 

On the other side of the coin, an engine that produces more power will be under greater stress when it's doing so. 

This is my concern. I don't want to throw a lot of money into something that might not work out so well ! I'll probably sit back and wait to see if any reviews come to the surface before taking the FI plunge 

[Deacon 1357]

37 minutes ago, DaveJenks95 said:

This is my concern. I don't want to throw a lot of money into something that might not work out so well ! I'll probably sit back and wait to see if any reviews come to the surface before taking the FI plunge 

You're probably better looking on the US forums - there's undoubtedly people there who've put decent miles on a turbo set up. Although it won't be quite the same as from a UK owner it'll probably be a decent indicator.

[Gary p 46]

I have mine turbo' d  running around 280bhp and runs great.if daily driving cant see it being a problem haven't done lots of miles since fitted, around 6000miles but can say runs lovely on long distances i.e.Motorway driving. Have it done at a well known tuner like FENSPORT or TUNING DEVELOPEMENT and you shouldn't have a problem. Can say Adrian at Fensport really knows his stuff when comes to mapping👌

[DaveJenks95 3]

7 hours ago, Gary p said:

I have mine turbo' d  running around 280bhp and runs great.if daily driving cant see it being a problem haven't done lots of miles since fitted, around 6000miles but can say runs lovely on long distances i.e.Motorway driving. Have it done at a well known tuner like FENSPORT or TUNING DEVELOPEMENT and you shouldn't have a problem. Can say Adrian at Fensport really knows his stuff when comes to mapping👌

Thanks for the info. I just know that In 2-3 years I'll be knocking on 100k and I just wonder whether a turbo will start to strain the engine more than it can tolerate etc. 

[thetyrant 30]

If built and looked after properley its more likely to be reliable on a daily/high mileage car than one that does low but lots of hard/track miles, only thing to watch for is cooling down a turbo before switching off engine if you have had spirited run out,  this just means sitting with it idling for a minute or two before switching off car if its just been used hard to allow turbo to cool and stop it cooking the oil, otherwise no issues and likewise no issue like that with a supercharger, although i tend to anyhows due to years of turbo cars and with my current cosworth charged 86 i try and do last few miles before getting to my destination very sedate to let all temps cool and then i can just switch it off.

Im doing nearly 1k miles a month in my car since buying in April and had no issues, previous owner did about 5k miles in 2 years i think but lots of that was track and never had an issue, a well built and well setup/mapped charged car should give no issues if treated/serviced accordingly.

 

Ian

 

[Tareim 343]

15 hours ago, DaveJenks95 said:

This is my concern. I don't want to throw a lot of money into something that might not work out so well ! I'll probably sit back and wait to see if any reviews come to the surface before taking the FI plunge 

I'm sure I've seen a post on the US forums where someone had done 40k on an avo turbo kit

[Mike@TD.co.uk 467]

With that sort of monthly mileage, just keep on top of your maintenance and there should be no issues with going boosted yet doing good mileage.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

[DaveJenks95 3]

15 minutes ago, Mike@TD.co.uk said:

With that sort of monthly mileage, just keep on top of your maintenance and there should be no issues with going boosted yet doing good mileage.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

Just regular oil checks/ changes etc I'm guessing mike ??

[Mike@TD.co.uk 467]

20 minutes ago, DaveJenks95 said:

Just regular oil checks/ changes etc I'm guessing mike ??

Correct. Keep on top of your servicing and look after it, and it'll look after you.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

[Nicebiscuit 655]

Reliability is one thing, but it is inevitably going to eat through consumables faster.

 

I have another foot in the Saab camp which for much of its recent history basically ran the same engine, boosted or not boosted in various states of tune. The highest strung variants run up the same epic mileages as their n/a brethren but tend to wear through clutches etc as you'd expect and you get more gearbox issues. Interestingly 270bhp seems to be the sensible limit for reliable daily driving on those too.

 

How you drive it is the biggest factor though. Some people just drive unsympathetically. Dumping all the torque through the transmission in lower gears as a matter of course and unleashing 270bhp through a cold engine is going to screw anything up.

 

My last Saab was a 15 year old £1500 tweaked 9-5 with 120k miles, 270bhp and a string of fastidious owners. Gave me a year of 100% reliable commuting then sold it for what I paid for it. Purred like a kitten.

 

FI holds no fear for me - just treat it nicely :-)

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[S18 RSG 429]

Maybe I'm not the best person to answer, because I recently sold my GT86 for this exact reason.

My daily commute rose from 5 miles to 75 miles of country roads and city traffic. The car became tiresome to drive every day for 2-3 hours of boring driving.

I had the turbo fitted in December 2016, and in the time between then and selling the car 3 weeks ago, I had done around 15-16k miles. In that time, I had the VVTi controller fail, both sets of coil packs fail, almost an entire set of brakes pads used, a set of rear tyres, and due to the increased mileage, I was changing the oil every 3-4 months (wanted to change it every 5-6k miles).

I sold up partly because of the effort required to drive the car daily, but also because the warranty expires in October, and I didn't feel confident that the car would behave itself outside of warranty.

That being said, nothing major went wrong on the car. Engine/gearbox/clutch etc. all held up perfectly. I would suggest the main consideration is that any issues the car would eventually display, would be accelerated. The coil packs, for example, are common faults, but mine both started failing within a few months of the turbo. Then as others have said, the consumables will expire quicker (brakes, tyres etc.).

On the up side, my fuel economy was really good. I was getting 35mpg+ on my daily commute, and I wasn't driving very economically. Lots of overtaking on the back roads to get around lorries and tractors etc.

Overall, it's as much of a gamble as anything else. You could be really lucky and have no issues whatsoever, there is plenty of evidence to support that. You could equally be super unlucky and start getting failures on the weakest parts, then the bills start ramping up. Really is a choice only you can make.

HTH, Ross

[Bfranklyn86 52]

I daily my Harrop supercharger 86. It's only a 5 mile commute though, and I'm pretty kind to it. With the supercharger you never need to get near 4K RPMs, and that's without any torque loading either.

It is reliable, quiet, comfy (....well, for an 86, stock suspension) and fast. Economy is still good but ever so slightly reduced.

I saw on the American forum someone had done over 100k dailying on his Jackson racing SC.

[Herbie86 5]

If you go for a turbo system focused on low down grunt and drive-ability you probability will be changing up earlier with associated longevity benefits. I have had two cars that came with turbos as standard (Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo 7 years and Nissan 200SX seventeen years).  The former was an all or nothing affair that gave a thrill when the turbo did its thing but a dog before that. The Nissan turbo setup was so well integrated that it always delivered linearly from zero and lag was a non-event.  I miss that even after 3.5 years with my '86.  Both the Nissan and '86 have the same power KW but the torque 50%? higher in the Nissan. 

Wear and tear on the oil may change significantly so oil analysis will guide you with that.