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Just spoke to AVO, they can do a complete install of the GT25 turbo in my NB for $6k…including labour and parts. Any comments ?

What I want is simplicity and security so having the one source in Melbourne doing everything is a bonus. My only surprise is that the warranty is only 6 mths.

Anyone interested in a group install to bring the price down ?

Is it Vicroads legal?

this is Lee's (AVO) response:

Hi,



Thank you for your enquiry.



The early kits are ADR approved but the 99 model is not. Most of our customers do not have them and never have any problems. I think the reason for this is the age demographic, car looks standard on the outside and the fact that it could be said it is a factory SP turbo model.



The price is cheaper already than the normal retail on our website. The price on the website is $4620.00 including GST. I could probably do it for $3740.00 including GST.



Let me know.



Best Regards,



Lee

AVO

AVO do good work and have fair to good products , however - and don't anyone start the "you get what you pay for' bullshit - they don't miss you at the bank .

I'm supprised they give over 28 days warranty .

It's everyones individual choice and right to do wtf they want with thier own cars but I wonder about a turbo set up on an MX5 and whether the car realy should be blown ?

For me if I want a blown car I'll get another Rex or a Skyline or whatever I've had them all , I bought the MX5 because it wasn't blown and to me anyway closer to the origional driving centre of motoring.

Just thinking out loud

AVO has been turbocharging MX5s since the dawn of time, so I'd trust their product. That is cheap though! Enough to consider driving down to Melbourne to get it done!

Does that price include any kind of ECU or something?

Generally that's the expensive part of turboing an NB

Go drive a nice spooling 200rwhp mx5. Its bliss, 200rwhp is really the magic number for a street dríven mx5.

6k all fitted and tuned, by god go for it.

Dann

According to Lee at AVO, the kits for NB are of Australian Standard quality but not Australian Standard Compliant. Only kits for NA are Aust Compliant. I am not 100% sure the implication for insurance but I think we are in a grey area here. That is if someone T bones you then you are covered but if you hit someone under boost then you are not covered according to Shannons.

The price of $5750 is fully installed with 6 mths warranty. I am yet to establish if this includeds tuning. One would assume so as the install cost is $2000 while the kit is only $3750. Lee said it is a smaller turbo and so will have less lag and valve release sound especially on low PSI. I would imagine that it would really improve driveability especially on an NA. When I had the NA, I always had the rev up to 4500 revs just to keep up with traffic. I found in really fatiquing after awhile. With my NB, I am finding that I can live with the power delivery quite a bit more as there seems to be more pulling power down low.

miatalim wrote:I am not 100% sure the implication for insurance but I think we are in a grey area here. That is if someone T bones you then you are covered but if you hit someone under boost then you are not covered according to Shannons.

Don't know where you're getting that from but it's not grey at all. Insurance is incredibly black and white; if it's illegal, your insurance is void. No further questions asked.

miatalim wrote:According to Lee at AVO, the kits for NB are of Australian Standard quality but not Australian Standard Compliant. Only kits for NA are Aust Compliant. I am not 100% sure the implication for insurance but I think we are in a grey area here. That is if someone T bones you then you are covered but if you hit someone under boost then you are not covered according to Shannons.

The price of $5750 is fully installed with 6 mths warranty. I am yet to establish if this includeds tuning. One would assume so as the install cost is $2000 while the kit is only $3750. Lee said it is a smaller turbo and so will have less lag and valve release sound especially on low PSI. I would imagine that it would really improve driveability especially on an NA. When I had the NA, I always had the rev up to 4500 revs just to keep up with traffic. I found in really fatiquing after awhile. With my NB, I am finding that I can live with the power delivery quite a bit more as there seems to be more pulling power down low.

I would get that in writing from Shannons.. Did you speak with them about this?

I can't see how they would be willing to insure a defectable (not street-legal) car when they aren't willing to give us reasonable cover for track-days (considering it is a sports car and Shannons sponsor various 'motoring enthusiast' events but apparently not club events).. Particularly the bit about being 'on-boost' ...

I'd love it if they would, but I just can't see an insurance company offering all this conditional coverage.

$6k? Not too far away from a good price, if it includes an ECU and tuning.

If it only includes a rising rate regulator or crappy band-aid piggyback engine management, I wouldn't be so impressed.

Having installed one, I can say that a decent spanner person could install a BEGi kit in a day, maybe a day and a half of working. Say 12 hours of labour maximum. Add to that the $3K landed cost of the Garrett kit (much less for the Shanghai systems), and another $1200-$1500 for ECU and tune, and you are in the $5,500-odd range.

You should probably add an exhaust to this too...

hamx5ter wrote:
Shannons sponsor various 'motoring enthusiast' events but apparently not club events)..

Yes they do, you only have to ask them!

Jeo is spot on, if it is not engineered it is not legal and you are not insured. It does not matter who is at fault in the accident, your car is illegally modified so it is not insured. The only way I could see any insurance company paying out is if your car was stolen and never recovered and they did not know about the illegal mods.

The kit is not ADR compliant, so if you get pulled over by the police or EPA or a Vicroads testing station, you get a green defect notice ( same as a canary but you guessed it, green). The car is unroadworthy and can not be sold with the turbo kit on it. If it has a green defect issued it can not be re registered until it is returned to stock or you prove adr compliance. You can also get fines totaling over $2000 for mods affecting vehicle emissions.
To prove ADR compliance costs at a minimum $4000 to get the test done in an environmental chamber plus a suitable tune in your car to pass in the first place. If you fail the first time you get to pay $4000 to have the test done again after you pay your tuner to retune the car so it passes.

How do I know this, I am the guy whose ~170rwkw NA8 was put off the road with a green defect notice about 4 years ago. As such I have almost finished a SR20det MX5 conversion as I find MX5's at standard power levels quite boring.

And before you ask, my NA8 had an AVO kit on it with a few tweaks. I retuned my ecu so it passed the requirements of the initial EPA tests (noise and emissions) but because the turbo setup was not a factory install they put me off the road.

Apart from blowing gearboxes to bits fairly often I was happy with my NA8 turbo, now I haven't been able to drive the car for 4 years.

And yes I am still not happy about it, because when I bought the car from Queensland I was told numerous times by Vicroads that the mod plate issued in Queensland made the car legal in Vic.

Tony wrote:

hamx5ter wrote:
Shannons sponsor various 'motoring enthusiast' events but apparently not club events)..

Yes they do, you only have to ask them!

sorry I wrote that quite badly...

I meant, they don't provide insurance for our cars on the track, even though they are themselves sponsors of motorsport events, and are ostensibly "insurance for the motoring enthusiasts"... I've spoken to them about it, and they don't have a particularly good reason why club-level events could not be covered by insurance; just that they are not able to offer it.

I would happily switch to a provider that would cover track incidents, even at a higher cost... but don't know of any.

Sorry about the confusing post... I mentioned Shannons in the context that if they weren't able to address the club-level track-event insurance issue, they would hardly be interested in providing insurance for a non-street-legal car, on or off boost.. which is why, if miatalim has spoken to Shannons about it, I would be very keen to get the specific cover in writing..

Damn...idea shot down again.

Thanks for the openess and willingness to share. You have saved a lot of forum members a lot of time, pain and money.I guess our market is just too small to justify a company getting a turbo ADR compliant.

I was told by avo and dean motorsports essential that their turbo kit for na is compliant?

If insurance is not backing me up then I ain't going to take any chances.