This vehicle had an older thread here that details what i wanted to do with it before i realized how far gone it was cosmetically: http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/sh...ic-1990-Carava
I've had a 1990 SWB Caravan for about 10 years now. It was my first 1st gen van and the one that got me in to them (i now have a nice 89 with an SRT4 engine as well). It started as a 5spd tbi van, but i converted it to turbo in '09 using the original 230k+ mile TBI bottom end. I've been involved with the K-car online community since Allpar was a mailing list, or in other words since BEFORE forums became a thing, and in that time i'd heard a lot about how anyone turbocharging a non-turbo car should upgrade to the turbo bottom end. I figured I was in a good position to prove that wrong, or at least vastly oversimplified.
After 09 I never put any more real street use on the van as i kept buying other projects, but i never let the idea of testing out the TBI bottom end go, either. Eventually i had it up to 16psi on the street during testing and took it to the track, but my clutch let go on the first launch (slicks) and i drove it back home slipping. Then i let it sit over a winter with straight water in the cooling system and cracked the block. It sat around a long time more but i still had a hard time letting go of wanting to prove that the TBI bottom end wasn't worthless.
Now, my theory all along has been that the TBI pistons aren't bad or weak, and that the lightweight rods are hardly ever a problem for anyone, AS LONG AS YOURE NOT DETONATING ON THEM. All of the 'non turbo pistons are bad' stuff is based on unfounded or untested assumptions, or on the experience of people who would have broken the stock turbo bottom end parts in the same situations anyway. It seems the main problem we have with creating fast cars in this community is getting what is already there to work correctly. Bottom end parts are hardly ever the thing holding a TM back.
And speaking of things that are hardly ever holding anyone back, what about turbos? We seem to have a habit in this community of upgrading turbos even though we were nowhere near the capabilities of the last one and end up with paper tigers that look mean on a sig line but are slower than what a maxed out stock turbo is capable of. People seem to go into denial about what the stock turbos are capable of so that they can happily just spend money and bolt on shiny stuff rather than do the legwork of debugging the actual problems holding them back.
And speaking of people letting themselves off the hook, I think the whole 'vans are hard to go fast in' thing is overblown. They're not that big, they're not that heavy, they're not that DIFFERENT from a regular k-car. Looking at my van vs what the fastest mitsu-turbo vans and mitsu-turbo vehicles in general have done, i don't see anything that sticks out. The fastest mitsu-turbo passes i know of are Shelgame's 100mph Daytona, Terry Ryan's 99mph Sundance, and then Terry Ryan's 13.9@97 in his van back when it was a stock classer, and Gus Mahon's 13.9@96-97 in Mean Mini and now this 96.77 mph pass in my van. We're talking 2mph and change off a svelte coupe's trap speed with the same turbo (daytona or sundance, take your pick). My van gained 19.5 mph from 1/8th to 1/4 mile. I really don't see what is so hard about this van body style at these relatively low speeds. Sure, maybe it becomes a much bigger issue when you're trying to trap 115, but almost noone is or ever has. The problem has always been people with low-power vans like mine not running anywhere near what they should.
So anyway, if you want to run 13s in a van, here's your basic recipe: Take a stock 2.5T1 Caravan with stock bottom end, stock head, stock cam, stock 1pc intake, stock exhaust mani, stock mitsu turbo, stock downpipe (open or cutout like mine), stock injectors, stock ecu, and add the following modifications:
- Add a cut-out raiser
- Add an intercooler
- Add a stronger clutch (hint: If you don't need this you don't need to upgrade anything else on the setup either because it isn't running correctly anyway)
- Finally, add slicks and hopefully the ability to do a better burnout than me.
That's it! You don't need 'mods' so much as you need to make the thing work correctly with what it already has. Although i have shown that if you want to downgrade the bottom end to non-turbo parts, you may do so if you wish.