Master Power Turbos ?

[GROWLY CUSTOM CNC]

Has anyone used or have any info on the Brazilian made Master power turbos. Obviously they are no substitute for a Garrett. They seem to have a reasonable reputation in the states especially among the twin turbo mustang guys, considering their budget nature.

Edited August 11, 2009 by GROWLY CUSTOM CNC

[paulr33]

please check the ebay parts thread in the howto section - they are junk - stay away

[zebra]

they are a fair whack differnent to ebay turbos Paul,

Plenty of guys running 10s or less with them in the states

[paulr33]

sorry i retract that, i am thinking of the Monsta T70 turbochargers

my bad

[GROWLY CUSTOM CNC]

I'm no turbo expert. It seems strange that race teams in the US are building big hp engines with top dollar internals and then bolting on what seems like a cheaper budget turbo. Some of these are making 1200hp, running big boost, pulling 8 second quarters and are happy with the performance and reliability of the Master Power turbos.

Supposedly several years ago a Chinese company sold a batch of cheaper knock offs and it has tarnished the genuine products name. This makes it hard to find reliable feed back as a majority of people in the US are extremely happy with the turbos. Some have done 30, 000 - 50, 000 miles and over 50 full passes on the strip with no issues miles while others won't touch them maybe because of the knock offs bad reputation.

It is reported that Master Power has been making turbos since 1966 and have one of the most modern manufacturing facilities available (video of factory below). It would be great to hear from anyone in Australia who has run the genuine turbo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfQks3Yu6Gk

[zebra]

There is one guy I have seen on here, has a 34 Gt-t I think...cant remeber his name though

[Cjmartz2k]

I'm no turbo expert. It seems strange that race teams in the US are building big hp engines with top dollar internals and then bolting on what seems like a cheaper budget turbo. Some of these are making 1200hp, running big boost, pulling 8 second quarters and are happy with the performance and reliability of the Master Power turbos.

If by "cheaper" you mean not over priced, then yes. People need to get out of the mindset Garrett (including 3x as expensive re badged HKS crap) is the only good turbo out there. I'm not knocking garrett. GT series are great turbo's. There are turbo's that perform just as well if not better with the same reliability and probably better, that are a lot cheaper to buy/rebuild. I would love a GT40, but I wouldn't pay for one.

[Lithium]

Its worth looking into the Garrett non-ball bearing turbos too - they are rebuildable quite cheaply and probably competitive with the Masterpower turbos If I were looking at saving dollars I'd go a Holset.

[Ultimategtr]

Nothing wrong with the geniune Master power turbos. I know of 2 gtrs running 10s and high 11s on them, and have been for some time.

[zebra]

I dont think the problem is quality with the master power turbos,

Its the Shit house, Housing / Wheel Combos that they use, I would consider buying one if they didnt look like they were going to be LLLLAAAAAAAGGGG monsters

[bozodos]

wouldn't ease of fitment to an RB motor also be a compelling factor? I mean the Holset's especially sound great, but when you look at the amount of stuffing around to fit one compared to say a Garrett...

[Cjmartz2k]

That's a definite draw back to holsets. The are BIG. If you are already top mount or planning on gonig that way, problem solved (unless your planning a HX52 like I've been considering).

[zebra]

What stuffing around? might take a bit of home work to find out what thread sizes are needed or the dump flange.

For Eg, I have a kkk K27 turbo off a 930 Porsche, the oil feed is identical to a plain bearing old school T3 Garrett, the oil drain is off the stock Rb25 turbo and the dump flange is a slightly modified GT30 4-bolt thing.

And you dont have to worry about making up water lines.

Just block the water feed from the block with a 14mm sump plug and block the feed from the back of the intake manifold, (or in my case i didnt have to do that due to using a Grdddy copy plenum)

[zebra]

That's a definite draw back to holsets. The are BIG. If you are already top mount or planning on gonig that way, problem solved (unless your planning a HX52 like I've been considering).

Yeah, I wouldnt even consider trying to use a Holset / KKK / Master Power turbo on the stock manifold, AFAIK all the master power ones are Ext gate anyhow

[bozodos]

In the thread about fitting a Holset turbo (I think it was a HX40 into a Cefiro or something), the guy doing it had to fab up bits here there and everywhere to get it to mount on the standard manifold, which kind of negates the low price of the turbo in the first place.

[zebra]

yeah I know the one you are talking about, like I said I wouldnt try and fit one to a standard manifold, Top-mount is easy, because unless you buy a complete kit it all has to be done.

my setup cost 1200-1300 bucks, I did the work myself which saves a lot, I think if it had a shop do it the costs would be similar to a "normal" Garrett high mount option.

[Cjmartz2k]

Completely agree zebra. If you are high mounting, everything would be the same except for the price of the turbo, so if it costs you $4k for get a GT35r top mounted and installed with all the parts and bits included in the price, it would probably be $3k to do the same with a holset (just a rough example). If you are trying to low mount and you aren't handy with a welder, I think the holset idea looses a lot of it's luster. Nobody uses the stock manifold for anything other than bolt on type of turbo's here, so I never really consider that as a viable option for holsets when I talk about how cheap they are. Now if you just popped your top mounted GT30r/GT35r and are looking for an upgrade/cheaper option, a holset would be ideal.

[Will_s15]

Has anyone used or have any info on the Brazilian made Master power turbos. Obviously they are no substitute for a Garrett. They seem to have a reasonable reputation in the states especially among the twin turbo mustang guys, considering their budget nature.

I'm actually the sole Australian Distributor for Master Power turbos.

They're great turbos for the money and we've got some fantastic results. Pulled 550rwhp out of a 700hp rated turbo on a RB25/30 in a VL turbo. It ended up running a 10 second quarter first run in full street trim including tyres and then got kicked off for not having a cage or parachute. This car is having some major work done to it at the moment and should be out on the track in the next few months. We've also got a few drift guys running them now with great results (Robby Mountfield - RB25 and Eugine Arendsen - RB25/30 setups). They've also given them a good thrashing running high boost and high rpm and hasn't missed a beat.

I've got my current stock advertised http://www.calaisturbo.com.au/showthread.php?t=174992 and our website will be updated in the next few days with our latest stock which arrived last week http://www.expressparts.com.au/master_power.asp

As for the "they're chinese crap" etc this is NOT the case. They seemed to have been branded with the chinese ones a few years ago when a few different chinese turbos came out such as XS Power, Monsta Turbos etc etc. They're made in Brazil and the company was established in 1966. They also have ISO 9001:2000 certification which is for their quality assurance systems and procedures in their manufacturing. Master Power back their turbos with a 12 month manufacturers warranty.

I saw one of the posts commenting about the thread sizes etc. All studs on the Master Powers are M8 x 1.25mm, the oil feed is M10 x 1.0mm (on all turbos except the GT45 frames), oil drain is same as Garrett and all of which I keep in stock. They don't use waterlines so you just block them off on the block.

I'm working with Master Power at the moment to develop turbos which are internal gated that bolt straight onto SR20 and RBs. These are probably a good few months down the track by the time MP develop everything in house and then we test them on a few cars. They do currently produce a few internal gated turbos but I don't bring in......hopefully that will change shortly though!

With their wheel sizes, their new designed turbos are good. On Robby's RB25 the T60 was making 18psi at 4300rpm and made 400rwhp with a very usable rev range.

Any questions feel free to email me [email protected] because I don't get on here too often.

Cheers

Will

[Lithium]

I remember there being some conversation about these things years ago and they seemed like a viable option from their international reputation etc, but not that many people in our (NZ/Oz) neck of the woods really wanted to be guinea cops so results are quite thin on the ground.  I never recommended them as the range at the time of this thread was ultimately based off replicating Garrett T-series wheel designs which guarantees results representative of an obsolete design.

Anyway, over the last few years Master Power have started designing their own wheels - complete with flow benching them and supplying compressor maps etc, a couple race cars which I tune have been using their 59mm billet "R595" turbos but with moderate tunes which aren't going to do them much justice so we've treated them as an affordable reliable thing that "just works", though one of the guys did some changes and wants to hit the strip at some point to shoot for a solid 10 so I was instructed to "wind it up" so did just that and was pleasantly surprised - so figured it was time for a thread bump

The performance related stuff is a stock (aside from head studs, rod bolts and head gasket) R33 RB25DET, FReddy intake manifold, Sinco exhaust manifold, Master Power R595 with .63a/r T3 exhaust housing, and a 600x300x100 Fenix intercooler -  it's running on E85.

Here are the details for the turbo in question:

Here is a compressor map and details for this particular unit:

Compressor: 59 inducer, 84mm exducer, 49Trim Forged CNC Aluminium
Turbine: 59mm exducer, 70mm inducer, 71Trim 12 blade
Core: MP350 360 Thrust, LI journals, Water cooled

And the NZ supplier we've used so far: http://www.frantik.co.nz/MasterPower-Turbos.html

 

And the result - I kept winding it up until I started encountering hints of any restriction coming into play and it was at about 23psi where it started getting a bit "over it" so this is getting near "all in" for that exact combination.

 

On 1bar the thing opens its gate in the low 3000rpm, its opening here at around 23psi before 4000rpm - it's the best power delivery I've seen on an RB25 making this kind of power on this dyno, and it's quite up there in general I think.

Thought this may be interesting, so far they've seemed reliable enough etc though I've not really had too much exposure other than these two guys and a made running a slightly smaller one on his Honda.  They've all "just worked" so far, and we've been pretty impressed with the response for a cheap (~$1000NZD) turbo but getting an indication of the power they can deliver has made me think they maybe shouldn't be completely overlooked.  
 

Edited February 21, 2017 by Lithium

[Lithium]

Since the tune this car has done 2 hillclimb events, the first one it came second overall - the second one it won outright.

Here's a clip from it's first timed run at the first hillclimb, he's able to cover large parts of it just using 3rd gear... at times getting quite low in the rev range and still being able to pull quite briskly out of corners which I thought was decent for a reasonable flowing journal bearing turbo.