Banks Twin Turbo

Hey, thanks for joining us in that never ending quest for power and performance. Turbo has become the way to go for countless gearheads. And today we're gonna show you how to boat some turbocharged horse power under the hood of your street machine.

Hey, but first, here's a hot look at how turbo is literally changing the world of high performance from the street to the drag strip.

They can turn a Honda into a 600 horsepower monster that easily runs a quarter mile in nine seconds.

They help Mustang racers run in the sevens without tearing the parts

and the turbo Charger converts are quickly coming on board

like Mike Moran who years ago was the first pro streeter to run in the Sixes at over 200 miles an hour on Nitrous in his Camaro named Casper.

Well, Casper's in semi retirement here in Moran's Taylor Michigan speed shop.

That's because his latest passion is this 99 twin turbo charge Monte Carlo

destined to be the fastest and quickest of its kind on the planet.

We live to do things that haven't been done or things that people say can't be done.

We set out with the chassis

bower and mine and Larry Larson, we had told him

that, uh, we wanted a car that would go over 230 mile an hour. And

when I first told him that he looked at me like, uh, you know, there's only been like two or three guys that's ever done that. And I'm like, well, I'll be the fourth or the fifth.

And, uh, you know, I told him we'd also like to run it in high fives

over 230 miles an hour with an et under six. Incredible but not impossible when you're a bunch of determined door slammer speed freaks like these guys. Now get this, Mike's getting 3000 horsepower out of this car's 542 big block

terminal technology has come a long way in the last 5 to 10 years. The precision turbos we use hardly have any lag time at all.

And uh they're, you know, designed specifically for what we're doing.

Inductions, some of the tricker stuff here. This is something that uh I drew up on paper and,

and uh one of those, you know,

brain thoughts in the middle of the night and you get up and you draw it and you're thinking, how can I make the air do what I want? And this was it

and obviously all the magic's inside of it, but it's something else that's unique about it. It's got two sets of injectors

over and under the fuel requirements are such that one set of injectors is not enough. I had Larry Larson,

uh who built the car, build us this exhaust. It's uh from Boeing. It's a titanium exhaust. It's a 25,000 stick and

it dropped like

26 pounds a side off the car. At

the end of the exhaust system, it's custom fabricated or set of flow master mufflers, set of outlaw mufflers

to make it street car, uh, compliant.

The cockpit of this Turbo street car is Mike's concept too, including the liberty transmission

first gear. You never have to take your hand off the shift or it's

forward, back, forward

back.

The fact that it's gear to gear instead of planetary makes it a very, very low drag. And I think that's, uh,

what's responsible for a lot of a mile an hour in this car.

We're already the first to go, the speed we did

and, uh, we got the world's fastest door slammer. And, uh, we'd like to have the world's quickest

like so,

yep, you got

it all. It needs a little driving skill and I could

pilot this thing. It's like you've done this before.

You might be making a lapse tomorrow. Then I don't think so.

Uh,

it would have been

next morning, the Moran crew preps the Monte Carlo for an important test session.

Mike drove this car 239 miles an hour back in the early spring when the air and altitude were perfect.

At least matching that number here in the heat of summer would mean real progress

but creating cool air is essential. So Eric Coleman will refill the inner cooler with ice before each and every run

time for the first pass and after heating up the tires,

cars got too much power and clutch for the track to handle.

So Mike has to get out of them.

Everything looks fine. It looks like we just got too greedy on the clutch.

The combination was near perfect this time as Mike nails another 239 miles an hour with an ET of 627.

That's fast.

Yeah, it was a good start for just a second pass considering the altitude here. It's, uh, that's a really, really good number, but I think we can do a little bit better than that.

We still got a little bit of gear left

t and we still got a little bit of different trans ratio to put in it and, uh, we probably got just a smidge more, little power left in it.

Yeah, the sun's coming out. It's gonna get a little bit worse.

The air did get worse but a gear change from a 427 to a 410 didn't help either.

On the third fast tire shake and Mike has to lift early

and even after clutch adjustments, the speed and ET will never come back in the next two runs. Finally another gear change back to the original 427 every single pass. We're, we're gathering data and learning more and more today is no exception. We, uh, we learned a lot today

right now though, in the heat of the summer day, the track goes away

but not hopes of another world record.

Every run is a learning experience in this world of turbo

charge drag racing.

And today's test brought this team a little closer to their ultimate goal.

Oh, we're gonna be there, we're gonna be there. It's gonna be uh maybe a little later in the air. When uh the better air comes in, we'll, we'll be there.

Hey, we're back in the shop. You know, it's easy to see how turbo charging has become one of the hottest new ways to make big horsepower.

Well, today we're gonna do our first ever turbo install here in the shop. That's right with some help from the man who spent over 40 years setting the standards of turbo charging in the world of high performance.

As a youngster, Gail Banks had a typical hot rodder's passion for power and speed.

Soon after opening his first speed shop, he began pioneering a little known power adder called turbo

charging.

Over the ensuing years, Banks would create the turbocharged power that would set world records on land

and on water

for starters. How about the world's fastest pickup truck

and the fastest piston engine automobile

for 10 years? Banks held the unbroken record for fastest passenger car. An 1800 horse twin turbo firebird that blistered the Boba

Salt Flats running 287 miles an hour.

Well, today Banks engineering is a 200 employees strong engineering and manufacturing complex in California

where the bank's legend lives on.

It's the premier maker of power enhancement products for gas and diesel powered trucks and motor homes. But the man who put turbo on the map has also been busy with innovations for hot rodders who want the ultimate in high tech high performance on the streets and strips of America.

And here is the turbo guru himself who just happened to bring along his new sidewinder crate engine. Get this twin Turbo Chevy small block man. This is gonna be cool and before I drool on it too much gay,

I thought it'd be a good idea just for the newcomers to give us a little turbo basics.

Well, a turbo charger

is a

compressor driven by a turbine.

So turbo charger

exhaust flows through the turbine in here in the rear

up to about 100,000 RPM. Shaft speed is produced sometimes well over that.

It drives a compressor

that's on the front of the turbocharger,

air flows in

is compressed and boost pressure runs in through this plenum through the throttle body

and into the engine.

This particular set up has direct port fuel injection.

Now

the turbo charger I found back when I started messing with him in the late fifties, early sixties

compared to blown engines. I was building at the time.

If the same boost, I'd have a horsepower advantage with a turbocharger.

It could be as much as 200 horsepower, same boost level, same engine, same, same fuel.

Well, the reason for that is that when you have a blower sitting up here,

it's parasitically draw drawn horsepower through a belt

off the crank shaft.

The turbo runs on wasted exhaust energy.

Yeah, it makes a little back pressure but it doesn't use as much shaft horsepower. So you get more out of the fly wheel with a turbo than with a blower.

There's some other advantages

with a turbocharger using the waist gate,

I can control the amount of exhaust flowing through the turbine and I can change the speed of the turbocharger relative to the speed of the engine,

which means I can make boost.

I can paint a torque curve

like

you could only imagine with a blower

as far as throttle response turbo

leg is gone. That's history. We have tire problems, we don't have power problems.

So

you can also vary the octane by changing the boost level with the waist gate.

This thing will run on 87

all the way up to 100

or more, but at 100 octane clear, no lead.

This thing makes 1115 horsepower.

So

there you go.

Why did you want to come up with this new concept of twin turbo for the small block Chevy. Well, this is when something gets old enough, it gets to be new again

back in the seventies and the early eighties, I built a lot of twin turbo 700 horse Firebirds and Camaros and Corvettes.

We had the first magazine tested over 200 miles an hour with a street machine.

Then I got into diesel and I've done a couple of decades of doing diesel. Of course, there's turbos on those too,

but

no one stepped up. No one came out with a bolt on ready to go 100,000 mile capable twin turbo setup.

So we, we built the engines as an example, the guy didn't have to buy the engine.

He just needs a turbo charging. There's millions of small block Chevys out there.

Well, it'll make that kind of horsepower gail you obviously had to make some changes to the inside of the engine, for example. Well, what you do with a, a supercharged engine or a turbocharged engine is you build a real rugged piece to start with

camshaft

that's specific to turbo charging

piston design for blown or supercharged or turbocharged engines has to be lower compression. This one that we build is a, the bank's blower piston

has a reverse deflector. It's down the hole

here where you'd normally have a pop up in a high compression

in quench area here and this helps you prevent detonation.

We also go over to the combustion chamber and we polish it out a bit to remove hot spots that could also lead to detonation.

Some of you might be thinking now, I already have a good healthy small block. What I need is some serious boost. And this looks like a serious twin turbo kit you got here gail. Is it everything a guy needs? It's everything you need. You don't have to own a hardware store to install this.

Uh Also you don't have to own a machine shop. Simple hand tools, gets the job done.

Uh

And we, the kit resolves it one big

aftermarket turbo issue and that's the exhaust manifolds

instead of a fabricated tubular manifold. What we've done is we've gone ahead and invested in

uh high silicon ductile iron manifolds left and right.

So you don't have the cracking,

the turbo sagging and the gaskets blowing that you, you encounter with a hand built tubular exhaust manifold

and the layout of the turbo sy system is such that it'll fit 55 up Chevys,

both cars and trucks.

Well, we have to take a short break but when we come back, Joe and I are gonna take that turbo kit, put it on this small block and even fire it up.

I know you don't want to miss that.

Well, it looks like we're ready to install the banks turbo kit. Now, one of the most important things is you wanna make sure you start off with a good electronic fuel injection system like the one we got from Excel DF I.

We bolt each manifold on with the heat shield between the manifold and the cylinder head

with the studs installed drop the gaskets and spacer over the manifold flange. Then install the turbo assembly to the manifold with the turbine outlet facing to the rear.

Each one of these turbos is capable of flowing enough air for 560 horsepower. That means that the turbine and compressor are gonna be spinning up to 100,000 RPM. S

so oil supply to the center section is critical. Now we get that handled by first installing this elbow fitting

and from there, a hard line that connects to a T fitting for both turbo chargers.

And for me, this braided line connects to the back of the block.

Since we have an oil feed line, we need an oil drain line too. Now the kit comes with these two bungs that get welded to the oil pan, but we already have that covered. So let's get started on the waste gate.

It controls the amount of boost delivered to the engine and installs just under the turbo here on the manifold.

Now we drop on this pressure chamber

inside it is this shuttle valve that opens when manifold vacuum rises. Now that also means that even when you're off the throttle, the boost has a place to go. The turbo stays spooled up and well, you got full boost when you hit that next year

with that chamber installed. Now, we need to get boost pressure from the turbos to the intake manifold. So we're installing these boost tubes from the compressor outlets to the inlets on the pressure chamber.

In order for the waist gates to operate, they need boost reference from the pressure chamber and that's what these hard lines are for.

Now, we need to prime the oiling system

to ensure that those turbos are properly. Lo

then after installing the heat shields and exhaust pipes, we can vote up this 02 sensor

along with the distributor and wiring harness for our fuel injection system.

Finally, we can bolt the radiator to the engine stand

and run our water hoses.

Well, believe it or not, we're about ready to fire up this turbocharged mouse. And most of you guys can install one of these bank sidewinder kits at home in about a day and you can vote it up to your stock small block if you're only shooting for about 600 horsepower. Now, if your goal is 1100 or more, well, you'll need to build your motor from scratch.

All right, Gayle, why don't you do us the honors?

That's the sweetest sound we've heard here in a long time. Of course, you will need a three inch exhaust for maximum power. But whether you boat on a kid or drop in a twin turbo crate engine. What a way to save parts while you make some amazing horsepower and torque.

Stay with us. We're coming right back.

We might be partial to American iron around here, but we love anything that runs and looks good enough to make a statement. This Acura RSX belongs to performance import trends. Uh hence the name pit car. Now, this thing's been decked out to the max with goodies that uh might give you some ideas

under the hood. It's got one of Pitt's cold air kits

billet spark plug cover

and that trick battery tie down

their brushed aluminum dash kit really sets off the interior along with those bright tread aluminum floor mats

outside, check out that carbon fiber wing

and blue undercar light kit.

Of course, it's got a load of other aftermarket goodies too like the Razzie body kit,

ad R 19 inch wheels and Yokohama tires.

There's only one thing missing from this sport compact. If your calipers are visible through the wheels like these, we're gonna show you how to make an eye catching statement.

Duple color has this new caliper paint kit with ceramic that has everything you need to add some catchy color behind most modern wheels. Now, the kit comes in several different colors we're using red on the Rsx.

After removing the wheels, just spray the caliper surfaces with the cleaner that comes in the kit

and scrub it with a toothbrush

before you wipe it dry,

then mass the areas you don't want painted.

And after mixing the paint, apply it to the calipers in thin even strokes.

If they're painted or powder coated, you may need two coats.

After 20 minutes of drying, you've got a durable finish on your newly colored calipers. That's kind of high.

If you're running a nitrous on your street machine and you wanna let everybody know about it, why not shed some light on the subject? This nitrous purge cloud illuminator kit from XX uses a focus beamed high intensity led light assembly.

Now, what does that mean?

Check this out?

That'll let them know you mean business.

Now, you can get the kitten red, green or blue and that's a lot of fun for just under 70 bucks.

Well, here's something that'll fill the bill next time you need to top off your street machine's radiator. It's press stones quick, fill a top off formula that's easy to use and requires no mixing.

It's half antifreeze, concentrate for protection against temperatures and corrosion

and half demineralized water for heat transfer.

It comes in an easy pour, no splash bottle that you can pick up at your local parts store.

Meanwhile, you know where to find us for more horsepower. We'll see you here next time. Time to play with our toy. Now.