Turbo oil feed/drain recommendations

There is a lot of misleading info out there on the Interwebz. Here is what I'm working on, its an ebay T3/T04E I'm fitting on my F2T MX-3. can someone point me in the right direction to a proper oil feed/return setup. Its a journal bearing turbo and I'm lost trying to figure out what I need honestly.. The oil feed is a 1/8" NPT. I'll post pics up when I walk over to garage.

What kind of feed line was on your last turbo? A hard line or a flexible braided hose?

Factory line with a 1/8" NPT adapter fitting on the end should be fine. If not, the factory line is two pieces, replace the piece that feeds stock turbo with a braided line with an adapter at the hardline end, and a 1/8" NPT fitting at turbo end.

As for drain, you may have to tap your pan, as that turbo might sit too low to use the factory drain port on the block. Nothing fancy there. Just use a big barb fitting. I usually use 1/2" at a minimum, usually shoot for 5/8", but really anything that's the size of the OEM port on your block will be fine.

No restrictor?

Journal bearing turbos don't need that fancy E36 M3.

I have to admit that I don't have lots of 1st hand experience installing turbos, however, I have talked with several engineers at Garrett, Borg Warner, etc, about this. It sounds like the big thing is making sure you have adequate, but not too much, oil pressure at the turbo. To accomplish this, the two things to consider are:
- Making sure there is minimal pressure drop through the return (use a very large diameter drain line, as Swank said)
- Making sure the oil feed delivers the appropriate pressure. This may required the use of an orifice, though if you use the OE feed line and that is relatively small diameter and fairly long, that will probably have enough internal pressure drop to get you where you need to be.

With an F2T, i don't think pressure drop is a problem. These things struggle to get to 40psi at full bore when hot.

And the pressure/restrictor thing is largely something to consider on ball bearing turbos. Not so much on journals.

Gotcha

We don't use restrictors in our oil feeds, just -4 AN lines. We make sure there's a good drain line - 5/8" with drop along the whole length. I don't have any F2T-specific recommendations.

Yeah, the drain side should be a much larger hose than the feed (think -8 or bigger), steeply sloped downward toward the sump, and entering the pan just above the normal oil level.

The turbo going in the Jensenator is a Hitachi HT18 (stock RX7) with journal bearings and it has a gigantic oil drain stock so I'm using 10AN stainless braided. Make sure the routing doesn't create a 'P trap' situation or it'll smoke like hell.

Curmudgeon wrote: The turbo going in the Jensenator is a Hitachi HT18 (stock RX7) with journal bearings and it has a gigantic oil drain stock so I'm using 10AN stainless braided. Make sure the routing doesn't create a 'P trap' situation or it'll smoke like hell.

You need a backup HT18 for any reason?

I have a -10 adapter for the oil pan, just want to be sure I'm no gonna ruin my new turbo with too much pressure. If I use the rear half of the factory line, and convert to -4 for he 2nd half I think would be fine. Second half of Factory line, this is what I'm possibly replacing. Wouldn't be such a big deal, but there are no supply stores in less than an hour that have fittings I'll need :-/ Should be able to fire it up in the next week or so.