Drain Lines
When you build everything yourself from the ground up you’re going to run into issues over time. It’s bound to happen and it never fails. One of the biggest things that drives me nuts is leaks. Being the clean freak that I am, I seem to always have some random leak that seems to form out of nowhere. One of the worst ones I seem to always be fighting are the stock turbo drain lines. Maybe it’s just me but I can never get them to be leak free. I’ve gone the route of using stock expensive gaskets, to coating everything in RTV and the damn things still leaked. I also hated the whole design of the pipes in general and I think this compounded the issues. It was always a pain to get them to mount flat on the pan and bolt them on without smearing the RTV over half the damn pan on the side.
My solution was to update to AN lines and fittings. I saw this as a win/win situation as it I ever needed to take the turbo’s off I only needed to undo the AN fitting, not the flange attached to the turbo which means those flanges always stay attached and I’m not burning through new gaskets each time I take a turbo off. Those flanges were easily mounted to the bottoms of the turbo’s and to the pan as you’re not trying to fight the whole pipe into place.
I ended up going with the Kinugawa -10an drain kit. It included all of the lines, fittings and gaskets I would need for a good price. The kit runs about $60 plus whatever shipping charges run you.
Link to their product page here -> http://shopping.kinugawaturbo.com/turbooildrainreturnlinekit3000gtstealth6g72ttwinstocktd04.aspx
I got the kit quite fast and went on to getting them installed. First removing the turbo’s and the old OEM lines. Cleaned up the surfaces and went to attaching the 10an flanges to both the turbo’s and the oil pan. Make sure they are dry and oil free! For paper gaskets I moved up from RTV to using a gasket shellac. You skim a little on both the gasket and the metal surface, let it tack up and then apply. It’s like contact cement for gaskets but once it dries it’s a water tight bond but no permanent. Unlike RTV it’s also easily cleanable if you do have to take it apart in the future.
With the flanges now installed and dried I got the turbo’s mounted back into place and went on to connect the new drain lines. For the rear you pretty much need to attach it before you install the turbo as you can’t access the fitting once installed. Fish the other end of the drain back to where it needs to go when you re-install the turbo. Once under the car It took a bit to get the fitting to screw onto the flange. AN fittings need to be pretty much parallel in order to get them to thread and the rear line was angled just a tad. So you have to bend the line up to get it parallel and it will screw on.
For the front turbo the flange on the turbo side is different in order to clear the front motor mount. You can access both ends of the drain hose after the turbo is installed. Once I got the turbo side screwed on I found a problem. The front hose was way too short, and I mean like 1” – 1 ½”. I got a hold of Kinugawa and let them know the issue. They sent me out a new hose after letting them know the problem and ensuring them that this was a stock build, which it was.
Once I got the new hose and went to install it I found that it was long enough, but a hair too long this time. Everything went together but since the shoe was a tad too long it caused the center flexible section on the shoe to buckle upwards creating a hump in the hose. That hump meant the drain angle was no longer downward and I was concerned it may cause oil to back up into the turbo which is bad. The turbo’s drain via gravity so if the angle is not right the oil will back up in the turbo and seep out the rings and now you’re blowing smoke…
My solution was to use the old shorter hose and get a 45 degree fitting added in to make up for the hose being short. I had to find the right size 45 fitting though as everyone makes theirs different and they have different male/female lengths. I ordered about 4 different fittings before I found one that worked perfectly. I returned the others since I didn’t need them “Amazon for the win!”. This allowed me to keep the drain angle as it should have been. So it was a little bit of a headache getting it all installed and working as it should, I had to spend a little extra cash for that 45 degree fitting but in the end aftermarket parts are like this and you need to know how to make things work. Would I do it again, yes. The drains are total worth the ease of installation/removal they added.
