LITTCO Hybrid Options

navindralr said:

The L430 isn't balanced? Also, is there any info on your is38x offering? Can you also provide some information on the clipped turbine. I've been doing some research on "clipping" and have read a lot of opinions and many for and many against clipping. I'm curious what your take is on it regarding these turbo applications that you offer such as spool, effeciency, how aerodynamic flow is affected etc. Also which offerings have upgraded shafts? I see you mentioned that you can run stock and upgraded shafts with your offerings which have the upgraded shafts or is it a paid upgrade? Thank you.

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Oversight, Yes every single turbo, including the L430 is VSR balanced. Wouldn't dream of selling any unit not VSR balanced.

IS38x is a stock turbo with upgraded bearings and the clipped turbine. The clipped turbine, helps with the top end power by reducing back pressures and lowering EGTS. There is a little bit of extra lag, but hardly noticeable.

My opinion? the L430 is ideal for someone with a blown IS38 that wants to ditch the inserted compressor cover, a bit more power but not looking for going the whole hog or buying a whole turbo.

L450, although an entry level complete turbo, really is brutal, it makes power and spool unlike any other turbo on the market due to having a OE profiled mixed flow turbine but larger. It has a big torque area and also capable of holding power to the redline. It's not the highest BHP unit, obviously and never going to set 1/4mile times alight but has a fun factor of 10 simply by its overall performance.

L500, is on par with a lot of other 500bhp units around, we tried to maintain spool by not clipping the turbine wheel and also run a good sized compressor wheel. Whilst we only state 500bhp on these, I do know they are capable of more. When you run a turbo of this size, you have to consider that fuelling and pressures sensor are going to need to be upgraded to get the most out of it and above 500bhp it can get expensive.

L5656. We will keep you updated, It's a new designed wheel, with a proven compressor wheel and hopefully be able to knock out some decent numbers.

The upgraded shafts are on the 2 larger turbine wheels, the 54mm L500 and 56mm L5656 wheel. The L450 wheel is a stock shafted wheel. We have ensured that during our development of the thrust bearing upgrades that the shafts, bearings and bearing housings are all modular, so we can standardise the units and not have to use a different bearing housing for the larger shafted turbos.

Our biggest achievement has definitely been to incorporate a thrust bearing as durable as say the TD06 , which is proven to work well, into the IHI bearing housing in order to maintain the stock appearance and fitment of the turbo. We really took the IHI IS38 back to basics and tried to rebuild the cores up from scratch, taking the best parts of the original and incorporating them with new better parts whilst offering a wide range of turbo's.

Can you provide both dimensions of the comp/turbine?

Similar to the Garrett tables.

littco said:

The upgraded shafts are on the 2 larger turbine wheels, the 54mm L500 and 56mm L5656 wheel. The L450 wheel is a stock shafted wheel. We have ensured that during our development of the thrust bearing upgrades that the shafts, bearings and bearing housings are all modular, so we can standardise the units and not have to use a different bearing housing for the larger shafted turbos.

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Thanks for the reply. Question regarding the above statement though. Since the L430 and L450 use the stock shaft, have you had any issues with these? My understanding was that the stock shaft and thrust bearings were the main issue with the is38. Apparently you have solved the bearing issues, but what about the stock shafts snapping? Or was that related to thrust bearings going bad and producing torque on the shaft?

Great info, thanks Dan.

Bit of constructive criticism, please update the first post with the IS38x, balancing info on the L430, etc.

I have a feeling this thread is going to get quite long over time, and ultimately it will save you time by not having to answer the same questions repeatedly.

navindralr said:

Thanks for the reply. Question regarding the above statement though. Since the L430 and L450 use the stock shaft, have you had any issues with these? My understanding was that the stock shaft and thrust bearings were the main issue with the is38. Apparently you have solved the bearing issues, but what about the stock shafts snapping? Or was that related to thrust bearings going bad and producing torque on the shaft?

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Good question.

So, there's 2 reasons for keeping the stock shaft and hopefully I can explain.
1) Shafts in the majority of cases snap when the forces on 1 side v the other are vastly different. The torque differential on say the compressor v the turbine has to be such that the shaft physically is under stress from twisting for it to break, you can see this in small turbo's where the DV has failed and the pressure on the compressor spikes as the turbine continues to turn. In the case if the IS38 it was very evident that the compressor wheel catching on the insert, the lower thrust bearing wearing and potentially throttle closures from ECU torque limitation all could put the turbo in a situation where enough torque was applied for the shafts to snap. By removing or profiling the insert, changing the thrust bearings and improvements in mapping the risk of snapping a shaft now is very very minimal. Pretty much every snapped shaft turbo I've seen has at least one of the failures as well as the snapped shaft. I've only had 1 shaft snap since last year and I can assure you it wasn't the turbos fault and that's out of over 100 stock shafted turbines sold.

2) We wouldn't have been able to keep the same sized compressor wheels if we had used the larger shaft on the smaller turbos. To fit the larger shaft the bore on the compressor wheel needs to increased, and this would mean the nose of the wheel would have to increased to ensure the strength of the wheel, this would have a decreased performance effect and on the stock IS38 just wouldn't have been acceptable.

You have to bare in mind also many many other turbos over the years have run turbines with shafts of similar size to the IS38 with no issues, even upto the same power levels most IS38 hybrids are seeing so the reality that the shaft is just too small isn't really a factor assuming all the other issues are resolved.

Dan,

You mention housings. Are the housings whether cold or hot side manufactured to the exact same internal dimensions as a factory IS38 or did you change the internal dimensions at all?

SugarMouth said:

Dan,

You mention housings. Are the housings whether cold or hot side manufactured to the exact same internal dimensions as a factory IS38 or did you change the internal dimensions at all?

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Exact size. Only thing we've done is make the dual entry ports on the turbine housing slightly bigger. Everything else, other than wheel sizes is stock. Simple reason, we offer alot of variations not just 1 spec so it's not a case of bigger is better. L450 with a larger housing wouldn't work as well as the L450 we have now.

littco said:

Exact size. Only thing we've done is make the dual entry ports on the turbine housing slightly bigger. Everything else, other than wheel sizes is stock. Simple reason, we offer alot of variations not just 1 spec so it's not a case of bigger is better. L450 with a larger housing wouldn't work as well as the L450 we have now.

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Ok, got it. So ever so slightly larger here:

Just like to give a big thanks to Dan at Littco.

I will soon be part of the Littco Hybrid family (with the cost and simple option IS38X)

Big thanks to SugarMouth (Mark) for also helping me out!

marc5800 said:

Just like to give a big thanks to Dan at Littco.

I will soon be part of the Littco Hybrid family (with the cost and simple option IS38X)

Big thanks to SugarMouth (Mark) for also helping me out!

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Are you running a GTI? Curious if so how this will be compared to their 430. I have a lease GTI right now and can't decided if I want to buy a R when it's up or buy a used GTI and save a bunch of money. Then I could mod it.

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tytus1994 said:

Are you running a GTI? Curious if so how this will be compared to their 430. I have a lease GTI right now and can't decided if I want to buy a R when it's up or buy a used GTI and save a bunch of money. Then I could mod it.

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Yes - see my sig
2016 GTI

Well it’s going to make less power than the 430. The turbine / wheels aren’t changed. Only a few reliability components are changed and it’s VSR balanced. It’s basically a more reliable IS38.


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marc5800 said:

Yes - see my sig
2016 GTI

Well it’s going to make less power than the 430. The turbine / wheels aren’t changed. Only a few reliability components are changed and it’s VSR balanced. It’s basically a more reliable IS38.


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What do you think would be better for the street? Also are you doing anything else to help with traction?

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tytus1994 said:

What do you think would be better for the street? Also are you doing anything else to help with traction?

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Depends what you want. I have a GTI so the Golf R turbo upgrade should be quite the difference. If you already have an R, the L430 would be a good upgrade.

Traction and GTI don't go together lol. I have drag radial tires to help with traction.

Also it depends a lot on how comfortable you feel with your intended tuner for said turbo....I have a GTI as well and am about to pull the trigger on the EQT because it's a great value and Ed is one of the only tuners that I have seen that tunes AP and puts his customers first....though if I felt more comfortable with Littcos tuning options that is also a great option

Guess my L470x got discontinued . Either way it's still running strong.