What price a turbo conversion?

[MattPerformance]

Why do you need this as the PE kit reaches 195 bhp on stock ecu

I'll invite comments on that statement as I wasn't aware that it did.

I think it's the difference between (IMHO) a bodge (PE) vs a proper job .. But yes, the PE can be run with the stock ECU - fuelling is achieved by fitting a rising rate FPR (presumably 1:1) by modifying the fuel tank and fuel delivery system, and then disconnecting the knock sensor to prevent the stock ECU retarding the timing and killing all the power.. it's certainly not a solution I'd want to be providing a warranty on..

Aha, indeed I see that they have a FPR system as part of the kit.  The cost of the parts would be around £150 and fitting is not easy (and once again, not intrinsically reversible) so the S+F price for this addition would be easily £300+ in which case £600 for a proper solution is looking lke sensible value (and it's more futureproof for those wanting the option to go form more power down the line).  So that still leaves us at £3600 fitted or £3250 DIY installation, all inclusive.

[FGrob]

What about VAT Matt - I take it you are no longer registered?

[s12vea]

Thats a good price matt!!

[MattPerformance]

What about VAT Matt - I take it you are no longer registered?

That's right.  We are effectively discussing the possibility of me (effectively as a sole trader) supplying to customers on an ad-hoc basis.  've tweaked the price to remove VAT from labour, profit and the parts that come from non-VAT registered suppliers.  Obviously stuff like the turbo, ECU and intercooler come from large businesses so they still have VAT on them.

[JiMR2]

Based on a few changes to the existing package I can reduce the cost of the entry level package.  The changes are these:

Smaller (& cheaper) 400 cell cat in lieu of large 200 cell sports cat (which is obviously 235bhp capable)
Use stock injectors
6 month warranty on all parts
Full installation by me (allow two days) (£350 - can be deducted if doing DIY installation)
Plug and play map 190-200bhp

This would enable me to offer the kit at a TOTAL PRICE of £3600.00

To upgrade to 200 cell large sports cat would be a £150

*Assuming* that for £3,600 + £150 for cat, that also includes exhaust etc and basically everything that is needed to have the car turbo'd n done n dusted then I'd suggest that a price I'd consider.

I think the key thing, certainly for people like me, is that its a complete package with one price. I don't understand what cats/cells or either really the details on ECU's/maps (well not into this depth anyways) - and to be honest I've not really got the inclination to know (maybe i'd become more interested if i owned, who knows).  

If I knew that for £3,500 I could happily drop my car off as a 1.8 n/a on a Thurs morning and drive away on a Friday evening in a 1.8 Turbo with a warranty - happily conscious that it was done n dusted and i had nothing to worry about then that would tick all the boxes for me.

This would also raise it above a V6 i think for me simply due to the "re-sale" value of the Turbo - not that any money would be made back ofc. But.... you see what i mean.

[stargazer30]

Matt, thats a very good price for the low power kit   s:D s:D  

Oh guys don't even think about not using an aftermarket chip on the turbo kit.  Really, the mapping/ECU makes all the difference to the delivery.

[MattPerformance]

The stock exhaust (or any aftermarket one that you might have) will be good for 190-200bhp.  The cat pipe however has to be changed because of the exhaust configuration and I am therefore proposing using a 400 cell cat which will be fine up to 200bhp.  A 200 cell cat is less dense and therefore flows better and is more suited to higher bhp.  The £150 upgrade would therefore be to use a 200 cell cat in place of the 400 cell cat IF you were thinking of going for more power at some point down the road.  If not , there is no need for the cat upgrade.

So to answer your question, yes, for £3600 you could "happily drop my car off as a 1.8 n/a on a Thurs morning and drive away on a Friday evening in a 1.8 Turbo with a warranty - happily conscious that it was done n dusted and i had nothing to worry about"  :-) :-) :-)

[Goeman]

That's absolutely perfect pricing and kit as far as I'm concerned. I may very well be paying you a visit at some point next year.

[Mad Matt]

Sounds good value for money to me.

[andywood]

Has been interesting sitting back and watching this develop, but would have been more interesting if i hadn't already taken the plunge  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  

The obvious question (to me anyway!) is what happens to the price of the high output kit with the very attractive reduction in the low output kit?
The change in parts and warranty of the low output kit will only drive a slight increase in the differential that existed previously between the two kits surely?

I agree with all the above that the key to the market is making the low output kit more available (in terms of lower pricing), but you do need to ensure good transparency on the pricing as some kits on offer will be plug-and-play whereas others will require additional parts (and therefore additional cost) to get the desired end result.

Andy.

[ChrisGB]

Based on a few changes to the existing package I can reduce the cost of the entry level package.  The changes are these:

Smaller (& cheaper) 400 cell cat in lieu of large 200 cell sports cat (which is obviously 235bhp capable)
Use stock injectors
6 month warranty on all parts
Full installation by me (allow two days) (£350 - can be deducted if doing DIY installation)
Plug and play map 190-200bhp

This would enable me to offer the kit at a TOTAL PRICE of £3600.00

To upgrade to 200 cell large sports cat would be a £150 option to at least make it a little bit future proof (to buy the sports cat pipe after the event is £400).

What do people think?

I think that at that price, you render the DIY kit route virtually pointless for other kits with similar target outputs and give people an option to build in future tuning potential. Very good value for money. So good in fact that even though fitting a turbo was at the bottom of my wish list in the quest for more power, it now looks much more appealing.

Also, you turn this thread that was already a bit close to the wind just that little bit closer  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  

The obvious question (to me anyway!) is what happens to the price of the high output kit with the very attractive reduction in the low output kit?
The change in parts and warranty of the low output kit will only drive a slight increase in the differential that existed previously between the two kits surely?

Andy.

Good point, I was wondering the same. Correctly scaled, the pricing could make both the entry level and mid level products hugely attractive.

If I knew that for £3,500 I could happily drop my car off.....

Nice try  s:lol: :lol: s:lol:  

What about VAT Matt - I take it you are no longer registered?

That's right.  We are effectively discussing the possibility of me (effectively as a sole trader) supplying to customers on an ad-hoc basis.  've tweaked the price to remove VAT from labour, profit and the parts that come from non-VAT registered suppliers.  Obviously stuff like the turbo, ECU and intercooler come from large businesses so they still have VAT on them.

Sole trader or PLC makes little difference, with VAT, once your turnover reaches the threshold, you have to register. You then have to charge VAT on all turnover and can recover it from any VAT invoices into your business. Unless your accountant is very clever.

I think it's the difference between (IMHO) a bodge (PE) vs a proper job .. But yes, the PE can be run with the stock ECU - fuelling is achieved by fitting a rising rate FPR (presumably 1:1) by modifying the fuel tank and fuel delivery system, and then disconnecting the knock sensor to prevent the stock ECU retarding the timing and killing all the power.. it's certainly not a solution I'd want to be providing a warranty on..

The rising rate FPR is actually a good thing, especially if you are looking for big boost later. FPR and ECU is the optimum solution of course, and if I had to choose between the 2 at modest boost levels, I would opt for the ECU solution.

Food for thought indeed...

Chris

[aaronjb]

The rising rate FPR is actually a good thing, especially if you are looking for big boost later.

Sure - I'd love one, in fact. But relying on a RR FPR to fool the stock ECU into injecting 'roughly' the right amount of fuel on boost? You can't tell me that's anything but a bodge.

[ChrisGB]

The rising rate FPR is actually a good thing, especially if you are looking for big boost later.

Sure - I'd love one, in fact. But relying on a RR FPR to fool the stock ECU into injecting 'roughly' the right amount of fuel on boost? You can't tell me that's anything but a bodge.

As I said..

The rising rate FPR is actually a good thing, especially if you are looking for big boost later. FPR and ECU is the optimum solution of course, and if I had to choose between the 2 at modest boost levels, I would opt for the ECU solution.

FPR is nice in conjunction with an ECU mod, but as a method of controlling fuelling against boost in isolation, yep, most definitely a bodge  s:) s:)  

Chris

[MattPerformance]

Sole trader or PLC makes little difference, with VAT, once your turnover reaches the threshold, you have to register. You then have to charge VAT on all turnover and can recover it from any VAT invoices into your business. Unless your accountant is very clever.

Quite right. My point really is that I'm no longer operating as a business, these sales would be done as a side line and therefore my turnover would be below the VAT threshold.

As for the FPR discussion, FPRs are only really necessary when you're working with big boost (otherwise the pressure differential between the fuel rail and the inlet manifold is not high enough for good injection).  It is also a good way of working with smaller injectors (as we used to do with the original SP240 kit.  The problem is that a good quality regulator and all the parts add up to a tidy sum and the installation is fiddly and often problematic (have seen quite a lot of fuel leaks on this kind of set-up) so unless you need a FPR due to boost levels I wouldn't recommend it.  I think we're all agreed that the PE solution "works for them" but for a warranted solution and total piece of mind a proper ECU solution is needed.

[Chris]

An interesting thread and one thats close to my heart, or rather has been until recently...   s:cry: :cry: s:cry:  

There is no questioning the engineering expertise & integrity that went into the tte turbo kit - there just had to be for toyota to put their name to it and offer warranty on it in the first place.  This reliability was the major factor that led to me choosing the ttet route over 2 years ago, as I'm no expert grease monkey and have neither the time nor inclination to be dealing with any issues as they'd (almost?) inevitably occur with one of the other kits.

The points about the other mods needed/recommended are valid however I also agree with the view that the kind of person that would be fitting a turbo is likely to have already done or got the budget for other supporting mods already in place.  I was lucky in that a complete car with upgraded clutch and exhaust (whether strictly needed or not at the 190hp power level) became available at the time I was looking into the whole situation and so became the no brainer option, especially as I wanted to move away from the smt car at the same time.

The fact that the clutch & exhaust had already been done were a handy future proofing for the time down the road when you get used to the car again and the more power bug bites again, so I personally wouldn't want to restrict myself with hardware decisions taken at install time just to save £150-200 or so but I can understand some people might, so I guess it makes sense to offer it - as long as people understand the implications for future expansion plans.

From a personal point of view, I guess time will tell as to whether there is (still) a market for 2nd hand kits, so the buy back option could potentially be quite interesting...   s:) s:)

[aglassinthesink]

That revised pricing is excellent, very competitive and very tempting, so much so that a me-to-me birthday present for my 25th is already on the cards  s:wink: :wink: s:wink:  who needs a deposit for a house anyway?

The reason I bought the car in the first place was it's potential. I knew there were lots of options for both this and N/A routes for power gain and I had plans to explore both routes at some point. I always think in the same line matt said "do it properly" and was thinking around the £8,000 mark, so to get it done proper for less than half of that with the ease of just dropping the car off and picking it up with a warranty is very reasonable, I can see it being quite successful.

My only question was the buy back option. Would that be you buying them back from customers at a reduced rate?

[ChrisHumes]

Matt

sounds like a better price. When I enquired a few years back, i was looking for approx 3k all in but it was far more than that. What sort of price would you buy it back for, it that was included as a option, someone might do it just so the figures stack up.  ie £3500 - buyback of say £2000? - £1500 cost.?  you could then sell the 'used' kit for say 2500 fitted?

end of the day, when i sold my 2, it was worth say 5k, putting a turbo on would more or less double the car cost, for which i could get something with more power as standard, which in my eyes was a no-brainer. but a 3k 02 plate now, + 3k would make a nice little track and play car.

i bet the guys currently selling their turbos will be gutted this post has come out now!

good luck Matt, and keep trying to get the price down!

[markiii]

i think buy back will be hard

you can't really set a one size fits all price, how many miles does it have? just warranting againsta  anew turbo unit is several hundred quid

I suspect a better way is that each kit has a buy back offer based on its condition and then Matt resells that one as a refurbed kit.

[lemans]

[/quote]

Sole trader or PLC makes little difference, with VAT, once your turnover reaches the threshold, you have to register. You then have to charge VAT on all turnover and can recover it from any VAT invoices into your business. Unless your accountant is very clever.

[/quote]

I am sure Matt would be delighted to sell £70,000's worth of these kits in a rolling 12 month period!  s:bounce: :bounce: s:bounce:

[aglassinthesink]

i think buy back will be hard

you can't really set a one size fits all price, how many miles does it have? just warranting againsta  anew turbo unit is several hundred quid

I suspect a better way is that each kit has a buy back offer based on its condition and then Matt resells that one as a refurbed kit.

I was more thinking that eventually you'll get to a point of Market saturation. Every year cars are getting written off or no longer fit for use and every year more people buy turbos. So with less cars on the road and no one left to buy the kits, a buy back option isn't something that should be certain, it would be too costly. Some people would be buying the kit for the security of being able to sell it back (I know that would be something I would like) so maybe reserving the right not to buy it back or only buy the kit back as long as there is sufficient demand? you could have a waiting list for a cheaper refurb option and only buy the kit back if there is someone lined up to take it. Just my thoughts, I'm just finishing work now and am pretty bloody tired so I doubt this makes much sense lol

[MattPerformance]

i think buy back will be hard

you can't really set a one size fits all price, how many miles does it have? just warranting againsta  anew turbo unit is several hundred quid

I suspect a better way is that each kit has a buy back offer based on its condition and then Matt resells that one as a refurbed kit.

I was more thinking that eventually you'll get to a point of Market saturation. Every year cars are getting written off or no longer fit for use and every year more people buy turbos. So with less cars on the road and no one left to buy the kits, a buy back option isn't something that should be certain, it would be too costly. Some people would be buying the kit for the security of being able to sell it back (I know that would be something I would like) so maybe reserving the right not to buy it back or only buy the kit back as long as there is sufficient demand? you could have a waiting list for a cheaper refurb option and only buy the kit back if there is someone lined up to take it. Just my thoughts, I'm just finishing work now and am pretty bloody tired so I doubt this makes much sense lol

Makes perfect sense.  It all really depends on volume. Mark is right about condition/ mileage/ possible recon costs.  Part of the point of this thread (from my point of ivew) is to gauge how many people really want a turbo and then, at what price.  Whatever offer (however magical it might be) I could come up with, there would still only be a relatively low take up compared to the whole vehicle PARC, so saturation point could come quite quickly, but I suspect that would be several hundred kits down the line.  The bigger issue for me with a buy back (apart from the risks already identified by Markiii) is the amount of money required to buy back a kit (r several!) and the risk of how long it might take to sell, and indeed how much it would sell for in the future.  If my margins are trimmed to the bone (which at £3600 they are - unless there is suddenly a big volume jump in which case there are some more savings to find) then any buy back arrangement would have to have a certain amount of contingency in it, which would mean me offering a buy back price which would be derisory.

I think a scheme that could work is a resell deal, whereby when somebody wants to sell their kit on, I will take a look at it, agree a price to return for it, remove the kit FOC (to be fair this would be built into the amount that would be returned for the kit).  I could then give the kit a quick refresh (new bits of heatwrap, that sort of thing, so it's tip top for its new owner) and then I sell the kit on with an agreed profit at which point the previous owner receives their money.  The advantage of this scheme is that the turbo owner doesn't have to pay out upfront to remove the kit nor do they have to get involved in the sale (unless they want to).  The other advantage is that the new buyer of the SH kit would then get total piece of mind and a kit with a new (limited) warranty.

Wherever possible, it's always better to do a turbo transfer from one car to another (because there are a couple of hoses that need to be cut so it's that bit cleaner to do it that way).  And of course this scheme pre-supposes that all conversion customers keep all of the stock parts.

[pmr01]

While not wanting to hijack the thread, I would like to add my thoughts on the SP kit. I recently purchased the sp240 kit from stargazer and Matt fitted it. I was very impressed with the ease in which it made a customer of my type - uninterested in all of the hassle of fitting...just want a drive in and drive out - feel extremely happy with what I was spending my money on.

Unfortunately all I have really managed since I got home to Scotland was app 40 miles but the drive up the road (370 miles) was fantastic. The car is transformed with a fantastic power delivery...builds and builds and builds...sixth gear becomes usable and you can fend off modern turbo diesels on a motorway which can be an issue on the standard car  :-) :-) :-)

Incidentally, I haven't switched to 240hp yet for good reason - road conditions - but I was pretty much caught up in the hype and was convinced that the 200hp kit wasn't enough....I now realise I was doing the usual of just wanting more...with 200hp (or so) this car makes absolute sense.

One other thing, i was a little bit cynical about was the potential fuel consumption after having the turbo fitted...I had drove the 370 miles down at 75 - 80 and I got 42mpg and on the way up I did the same and got 45mpg....and that was with a few clear roads to clear the tubes and see what it can do. It certainly is no worse than standard.

One last thing is that the car now feels far more special than it did previously....hard to put a finger on it but that is how it feels.

Good job guys (Matt and David)

[VVT-i]

Well done on the purchase, I knew you were hooked when I took you out in mine, roll on the thaw eh! lol.

[pmr01]

exactly.... :-) :-) :-)  it took me a while though...call it a Christmas present.

[Chris]

Matt

i bet the guys currently selling their turbos will be gutted this post has come out now!

It's not the worlds best timing (  s:roll: :roll: s:roll:  ), but never mind - all publicity is good publicity as the saying goes, and it does at least prove that I wasn't too far off the mark in setting the price point in the first place..   s:) s:)  

Matt has since contacted me to offer to fit the kit (as another option from fitting at Markiii's) should that make it easier/more attractive for any potential purchaser and given the developments & comments in this thread, I have revised my FS thread in regard to the turbo..