Building a 3.0L engine

Is it possible to fit A610 pistons and liners to a GTA turbo motor in order to increase the cc.
Would you also need to fit the A610 head gaskets.

I am looking to build up a new engine for my GTA,with adaptronic etc etc,and am just wondering which route to take without spending an absolute fortune!!!

Any ideas would be great.

Increasing the capacity is the last thing you need to consider, there are so many more important variables, such as turbo, exhaust system, ecu, CC etc...

Ok DG so what would you recommend for a fast ROAD engine!?

At present the engine is standard apart from the cc shortly to go on and the exhaust isn't standard,but don't ask me what it is as it was already on the car before i bought it.

I must admit i have been looking at the exhaust manifold/turbo setup which looks like a big restiction.
Are there any different manifolds available for the turbo??

Surely a standalone ecu won't make much difference on a standard motor!??

Blimey its like starting from scratch!! The Renault ECU is ancient crap that seriously limits the potential of the car. Get a bigger turbo (to go with your CC), bigger injectors, the ECU and if youve got the engine out then a pair of cams. If your exhaust has anything that looks like a silencer then its worth binning it too.......no restrictions work nicely on the turbo engine. Its expensive and hard work......but if you do all that you shopuld be looking at 260-300bhp (I made about 270bhp on a mid sized turbo and without the cams)

I was hoping not to change the turbo at this stage as the one on the car is near enough new,so wanted to get some life out of it.

Surely if the manifolds were better then this would give a similar effect??

The exhaust on the car looks like the race one that DG sells but it has some kind of sheild welded around it!?

Didn't realise the standard ecu was so bad,so a standalone would definately be a good buy.

The problem with manifolds is that you will have to get them custom made and as yet are untested. GT5 had some made up (and probably destroyed his turbo too!) but we dont know if they just increase the lag or give any kind of power boost yet.
If you have the standard turbo it wont cope with more than 260bhp so you are immediately putting limits on yourself......a limit that the standard manifolds dont put on you (and a replacement turbo will be less than having manifolds made up!)

Standard ECU is just of its time i.e. early 80s technology. Think how far your PC has come since '86 and you'll get the picture.

If you've got a standard turbo though it's a bit of a tiddler and definitely the first point before manifolds. You're basically flowing all the exhaust gas through a hole the size of your thumb and the impeller's a bit dinky too!

What are you measuring the GTA against by the way in terms of what you want? A healthy but standard GTA Turbo is still pretty damn quick by todays standards so just curious.

I think the GTA is ok on performance but it just isn't as quick as i expected.
The main problem i have with it is that it just doesn't rev! I know its a V6 but i just expected it to pull strong all through the rev range.
My engine at the moment is strong and healthy,but i want a spare engine incase i get a problem. So over time when i build this engine i just want to do all i can,that is why i was going to increase the cc's.
I had a ride in an RS4 the other day and that pulled like a train all the way through,i know that is twin turbo but it would be nice to get that type of performance!!

As far as I'm aware nobody has ever fitted the 3 litre pistons to a 2.5 turbo lump, I did enquire many years ago whether this was feasible but could never get a definitive answer. As mentioned above there are many shortcomings with the engine - and as you rightly say they don't rev very well. Renault always build their road cars with the smallest possible turbo required to attain the power they wanted to make the car nice and driveable - not leaving too much in the way of tuning potential. I've been modifying my GTA longer than anybody else in the country and have tried most things. For value for money get the boost limit removed from your standard ECU get a bleed valve and set the boost to 1.1 bar, stick a performance air filter in the standard box and a straight through exhaust (no silencer). For about £500 you'll net yourself about 30 bhp and improved torque plus improved throttle response. In my experience the next stage doesn't really net you that much more power (hybrid turbo, uprated fuel pressure reg, uprated intercooling) around another £1100 -£1200 fitted and set -up and you'll now be seeing 250-260bhp but the power lasts further up the rev range. The aftermarket ECU will allow you to run bigger injectors and therefore more boost to get you up in the high 200's somewhere. If you go to 3 litre like I have you can expect a bit more on top but we've pretty much established that the standard exhaust manifolds top out at about 300 bhp anyway. I only have to run a bar to make 300 bhp though. Dave G and myself both have twin turbo cars on the way.

So i take it you got hold of an A610 engine for your GTA then Tony??

I have receipts to show that my ecu has had the boost limit removed but i don't have the bleed valve to match as yet.
From some reveiws i have read this engine doesn't respond that well to more boost?

Do you think it is worth going down the exhaust manifold route rather than turbo? I know that air flow will ultimately be restricted by the turbo but do you think better manifolds would help with driveability ie torque?

You should start at the beginning and work from there! The manifold route as has already been mentioned is untried. The whole layout of the system is poor...the turbo sits away from the airflow and has a restrictvie siamesed inlet. There are so many ways of improving what youve got without doing the manifolds......remember youre going to have to get someone to custom make manifolds (with some built in flexibility as the turbo is fixed) and its an untried mod. GT5 has done it and it may be good......we just dont know yet. It may just create a whole load of lag.
If your car is standard youve got a long way to go before the manifolds will effect you (as I pointed out last time!!).
If you want the car to rev better, then the straight through exhaust will help a bit. Junk your whole intake system too.......its heavy and restrictive. DG sells a nice version.....or make one from flexible hose and a cone filter from E-bay (mine works a treat!). More boost works well enough, but the standard ECU wont let you safely run much more than 1 bar as the fuelling isnt adjustable to keep up......hence the aftermarket ECU.
If you have loads of money to burn, skip the whole single turbo thing and go straight to twin turbos. As Tony said, DG is working on a set up now....I'm sure a wad of cash would hurry along the development!!

Depends how much money you need to burn!!!

I take it by going the twin turbo route you could use standard T3's, and keep to 2.5litres???

I must admit i have been looking at the intake that DG sells,but surely this would only give a minimal gain?

It would be good to hear from GT5 to see how the manifolds worked - are you out there?

Ok......in really simple terms
GT5 has fitted the manifolds but has not had the car working properly since (due to his turbo ingesting something...probably the swarf from the welding of the manifolds).
I'm sure he will be on the site soon......and getting something else on his car chromed too

I'm not sure what turbos DG is planning to use, but I'm only running a T3 (with larger housings) and apart from having a blown engine at the minute my car made 209bhp @ the flywheel and 300lbs of torque before it self destructed! (I now have higher lift cams and a bigger turbo....but still no working engine....although I may be close! )
The other thing to mention (you really need to search the site there are endless threads on this kind of thing!) is that getting power from a GTA on a RR isnt easy due to the engine location, excessive heat and vast amount of transmission loss (normally 50-60bhp).

Neil - you said in one of your old posts that the boost gauge was only showing ~50% when boosting in 3rd. Are you definitely getting full boost?

The gauge isn't amazingly accurate but it's not bad, and if you were only getting about half boost then you'd lose a lot of performance.
I had a split hose from the plenum years ago and was probably only getting about 5-6 psi and the difference was very noticable. It's a low compression engine and relies on boost to make it work properly.

End the day concerning the turbo, the standard one is only good for 230bhp max, and we know the manifolds restrict to around 280, so sticking manifolds (that could in theory handle say 400bhp) on a turbo that still only does 230 is futile..

http://www.renaultalpineownersclub.com/ ... ht=biturbo

Im not using T3's on the biturbo conversion, simply because I wouldnt use second hand turbos as you can't be sure both units are matched, equal flowing, so Id either have to have them both rebuilt (which isnt that cost effective) considering you can buy two new GT28s as I have, which are quite cost effective these days (due to the japanese scene) and good for 300bhp each, and have quicker spool than the T3s. They are also a bit more compact.

As I always say, before you do any tuning, I would get a RR run done first, and a diagnostic check just to make sure the car is running even at standard spec. I have driven many standard GTA's and some of them are running right, and fast, and some of them are slow, not because they are fooked, but weak fuel pumps, or overfueling, or sensors out, or sloppy boost control etc....