I was flipping through an old Excellence from 1990 and came across this ad. Hard to believe that they sold zero kits. Anyone out there seen one?

The 'cheap' kit was $1495 in 1990, which when accounting for inflation would be $2500 today (according to The Internet®). Wonder what turbo it is....

Check with CB Performance. Click Here

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Bernie Bergman... Fifteen-twenty years ago there was a story about a guy pulling into parking lot behind Bernie's shop, seeing him out back "clearancing" a stroker motor on an engine stand by revving it up to 4000, back to 2000, up to 4000. It evidently had a slight knock on startup, case not ground quite enough for the crank swing.

Oh, sorry, what was the question again?

A guy on this site years ago was trying to get one running again.

You can't turbo a 914.

Took 4 posts, but Thank You

Felt pretty good.

Says who?.........

Any in car shots?

Funny, thats what I heard too. So i put 40k+ miles on this:
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Not yet... Soon I hope :-)

Yes you can.....

I spoke to Bernie about 10 or 15 years ago.
he told me he lost money on every turbo kit he sold because of all the bench racers and tire kickers. he had to spend countless hours answering phone calls and talking to potential cuistomers who never bought anything. In the end he threw it all in a dumpster and said good riddance.

And ferg's right, you can't turbo a 914.

Just to prove Rob's big ass turbo motor does fit in a stock engine bay...
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And since we're sharing turbo pics...
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MSDS turbo kit;

Just out of curiosity, why do you say you can't turbo a 914?

It's an old joke...don't remember how it started..probably an "expert"saying there was some mechanical or engineering limitation that prevented a type 4 from being turbocharged. Used to come up frequently. I never got to say it first until today!!!! (I'm slow)

There have been several REALLY nice Type 4 turbo cars BTW. The one that comes to mind is nein 14's.

There are various stories, but I remember Jake Raby saying it on the ShopTalkForms T4 board more than ten years ago. There was a contingent of Europeans who were turboing their engines and using 103 and 106 barrels, getting huge horsepower, but needing to five and six stud the heads to keep them sealed. Jake thought that practice was unacceptable so answered turbo questions with "you can't turbo a T4." How it got to 914's I'm not sure but Jake has a pretty strong personality so it became kind of a joke on STF to repeat that to any newby who asked turbo questions. The guys who repeated it most often were those Europeans who'd turboed their cars. They thought it was hilarious.

I think those turbo engines have been photoshop-ed.

:-)

gotta love the 2 techs in jeff's post. sandals!!! muttonchops are, were, groovy.

I wasn't the one who started it.. It was on the original "Club" site first then it was carried over the STF. We've built numerous Turbo T4 engines over the years and made over 400HP on pump gas, but those days are long gone.

Just figured I'd add that :-)

So could you tell the 'car guys' by their black toe nails from dropping stuff on their toes all the time??? Seems an odd choice of footwear for that environment!!! LOL

Wasn't it Jenny's brother who started it...?

I think so, but that was a long damn time ago.. Too many arguments since then to remember the details.

Ha, they are southern CA.

I have to keep reminding my nephew to wear real shoes in the shop

This is my recollection as well. But there are occasionally errors digging in the memory bits.... ;-)

--krk.

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COOL PHOTOS!!! This is my younger son's high school car with a Sweep the Floor turbo he put together:



It was only together a few weeks and he was still tuning it when a policeman followed him, evidently trying to figure out what all had gone on in that engine compartment. The motor shot a three foot flame out the exhaust and scared the shit out of the cop, who gave him a fix-it ticket for a modified exhaust. He was a poor college student so a whole new exhaust was out the question and that was the last of the turbo motor.... until the car got the Subaru. But that's a whole different story...


.

Cap'n started it.

Wait, we're not going to stop saying it are we?

Jeez, blame everything on the Cap'n. Good thing he gives as good as he takes.

Can too.

Does anyone sell an actual complete bolt on kit for the 914? Turbos seem to be popular for air cooled cars in North America (with Beetles mostly) but it has not really caught on here in Japan....the old air cooled guys still prefer a big bore motor with 48mm webers.

Anything that can get a rouse from Jake and Capn in the same thread is gold.

Jake can't turbo anything, and Capn cant fix shit. Lol. (If you don't know that's kidding, go back to Scotty's kindergarten class.)
Now if we could get them both on the same build, it would sell a million DVDs if there still was such a thing (monetize via Youtube? )

It was a tech Q&A letter to "european car" magazine. The "knowledgeable" editor responded pretty much with "you can't turbo a 914". This was at a time that SammyG had already built and sold a turbo 914 (single draw-through carb setup), Jenny's brother Jeff was in the middle of building up a D-jet turbo 914, and Evill Ed was I think also working on his CIS turbo 914. Lots of discussion on the Rennlist forum about that.

Someone wrote back to the mag, mentioning the above setups, and the response was fairly mocking. The carb setup was too simple and stupid, the others weren't done yet, blah blah blah blah.

It became a running joke, every time anyone mentioned turbocharging a 914...

--DD

Technically none of the motors were tre 914's. They have type 2 motors (or at least doghouses) or Subies,
so you can't turbo a 914

Type IV motors in 914s, not Type II.

--DD

Im in london and own brand new never used only run on a bench 2276 blow thru bernie bergmann turbo with dell orto carbs,,I bought from someone who imported it from california to use in his speedster that he planned to build but he never got round to it cause of other problems,,I now have it to go into a custom state of the art buggy,maybe put it into a speedster later..there is an exact same engine in a green speedster on youtube.

turbo

Maltese Falcon on the left Blu Kyle on the right, in my first shop in
Mar Vista.
Many type four kits sold/installed in those early days .
You can't turbo a 914, (surely not phrased by Greg Brown/Les Bidrawn) but our kits sure did put Msds on the map!
The pressurized Bergman kits were ok as long as the carb throttle shafts were o-ringed.
Sandals are still cool in So Cal !
Marty

Nope. It was Dave Darling who first told me you can't turbo a type 4 because it would run too hot and drop valve seats. IIRC that was on the renegade site.


That was a really long time ago and it got turbo'd and never got that hot or dropped a valve seat.

--DD

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The tech on the left would hook you up with one of these 911-Punisher kits , and the tech on the right would have it installed in a day. Or you could have one shipped as well. The beer can on the ignition coil was back from the day as well.
Marty

Fun thread.

"You can't turbo a 914" falls into the same category as "That's not a real Porsche"

The real 914 people just laugh and keep on enjoying our cars.

John

You also can't supercharge a 914