I finally received my 38R that was in the mail for over 5 weeks! I purchased a van turbo a while back but got in on the 38R's, so now I am going to swap the exhaust housing so I have the 1.15 on the 38R and I was going to put the 1.0 onto the van turbo and then sell it. I tried putting the 1.0 on the van turbo today and it doesn't fit! The exhaust wheel is about 0.10" bigger at the "outside" of the wheel than what is on the 38R. When putting the housing on it hits the edge and there it sits. Luckily I didn't take a hammer to it to make it fit!
Anybody ever run into or hear of this?? I guess it looks like I'll be keeping the van turbo on the shelf. Unless someone want's a van turbo (late '99+) with a 1.0 exhaust housing that doesn't fit, and a early '99 turbo with a .84 housing that would fit??

I'll be letting ya'll know how the new turbo works, it WILL be going in this week!!!

 

The exhaust wheel on the van turbo is different than the exhaust wheel on the truck turbo and 38R.

You can interchange housings from the truck turbo to the 38R, but not the turbine housings from the van turbo.

Of course, then you have the whole early 99 thing to deal with too. It gets confusing very quickly. Took me forever to figure it out.

 

Glad you got it, USPS blows wind..Enjoy the turbo.

 

So you tried to put the 38r (1.0 housing?) on the van turbo and it wouldn't fit? I looked at mine and couldn't tell a difference, but I guess I wouldn't have noticed a 0.1" difference without trying to swap housings. So I guess that means if someone tried to put the stock .84 truck housing on a van turbo wheel it wouldn't fit either, right?

 

Well, I did put the 1.15 van housing on the 38R, and as far as I can tell it fit. I didn't actually bolt it up, but it was fit on there tight and the wheels spun like they should.


I've got a little bit of work ahead of me, but I'm looking forward to it. I should have everything I need to upgrade to the later model setup, and in the mean time the engine will get a cleaning and a good going through.

I don't know if the stock .84 housing would fit or not, I could try it and let you know. But from what I have seen, it probably wouldn't fit since the exhaust turbine is different than what's on the 38R, which I'm assuming is the same as the truck turbo.

Is there any other advantage to the van turbo besides the larger exhaust housing? that someone would want the rest of it if they have a housing for it?

 

That's because the exhaust wheel on the 38R is smaller than the van turbo. So although the turbine housing from the van turbo will bolt on, it's not quite a proper fit, since it's actually sized for a slightly larger turbine wheel.

 

Dang. I should've done a little more tinkering with the two when I had them both off my truck. But thanks for the confirmation on this. I had heard that the van turbo exh wheel was a little bigger, but when I had mine apart, they looked the same. I didn't measure them though, and didn't compare them side-by-side (didn't want to get parts mixed up between the two). Certainly something to file away in the gray matter for later!!

 

Good luck Adam, just glad it arrived. I heard of the differences of the exhaust housings because it was mentioned before in earlier post, subscribing to the differences. Throw some pics up of the install and such, we love pics...

 

That tiny size difference is the reason they can charge so much for the 1.15 A/R for the Ball Bearing. It stinks

 

Since it's not as tight of a fit, am I expected to loose any amount of efficiency compared to the 1.0 housing, or is it negligible that I wouldn't notice?

I'll have to re-measure, but I thought that the "inside" of the wheel on the 38R was actually a bit bigger than the van wheel, but the "outside" of the van wheel was bigger than the 38R.

I'm planning on using the 1.15 housing since it fit, I like lower EGTs!
I've got to get some high temp primer paint and hopefully start painting stuff tonight.

 

You might notice a drop in performance. If there's too much of a gap, then you have exhaust gas bypassing the turbine wheel fins.

That would be cool if you could measure and post. It's hard to find exact information on the differences. Might be handy for future reference.

That will depend on your mods. What injectors are you running? If you are running say stock injectors, you probably won't notice a difference between the 1.0 housing that comes standard on the 38R, and the 1.15 upgrade. And of course, if you are using the van housing, then you might see a decrease in peformance, and higher EGT's (assuming the fit is poor enough to cause problems).

 

I agree with Curtis. Stick with the 1.0, unless you're going BIG in the injector holes.

And I too would like to know the exact sizes of the two wheels... Can you measure both inducers & exducers, please?

 

Right now I've got stage 1 SS. But they are smoking like a banchee and I know I have a leak in my up-pipe, so my egt's are probably higher than they should be and my boost is lower than it should be. I can probably see in the distance future moving up to hybrids, but not anytime soon.

Ok, here are the measurements I took.

38R inside: 3.013"
38R outside: 2.665"

van inside: 3.004"
van outside: 2.750"

Since the 38R is actually bigger on the inside, I should be good to go with the 1.15 housing since it'll be a tighter fit. Someone correct me if I'm looking at it wrong.
I'm in the process of painting the housing, but I'll bolt it up and give the wheel a spin to double check it.

I threw in some pics to show the difference between the two wheels and how I measured. The first one is the 38R and then how I measured it, the last one is the van turbo.