Help!! Turbo manifold suggestions?

[tubov6cav]

Hey guys I have a 3rd Gen 3400 swapped cavalier. I'm currently working on a turbo swap. Now so there is no confusion, I am using 3500 heads on this engine. But I have been contiplating manifolds/ headers for weeks and can't figure out what to do. First and foremost it needs to be cheap, this is sort of a budget build. Secondly I want something that looks decent and isn't completly unsightly. Here is something I found a picture of and considered,

but I don't know what I should do to increase the size of the crossover pipe where the turbo will sit. So if you have any suggestions let me know.

And if anyone has a set of manifolds weather they are turbo are not, as long as I can make a turbo crossover pipe and they are relatively cheap. Let me know!

Thank you guys ahead of time!

[caffeine]

A fairly common method is to use the 3400 log front manifold with an early 3100 rear manifold and weld up the output flange. Then make a custom crossover or weld a turbo flange onto the stock crossover.

[tubov6cav]

I've considered and that's where my concern for the look..

[caffeine]

If you made your own crossover it probably wouldn't look bad because the rear manifold would be out of sight.

[tubov6cav]

I may do that.

[Guest]

The manifold shown in the first post probably is only marginally better than a stock manifold if it all. The transitions from one "primary" into the next will cause some turbulence and since they are not at an angle conducive to flow, this is what will might cause it to be worse than stock. This is one case where "anything is better than stock" is simply not true.

The better way to make that same manifold would be to have the front runner extend all the way back past the last exhaust port and have the remaining exhaust ports feed into it. This is a pretty common way to do it actually. This way if there is any mismatch of the primary tube to the, what we will call "collector tube" then it is only affecting that cylinder and not affecting the other cylinders farther upstream as well.

It's not really that difficult to make headers, they don't NEED to be all equal length primaries, and there are times when you might not actually want that any way. Just take it one primary at a time, look at pictures of other headers as inspiration as you do it.