We Tested the Best & Worst 7.3 Turbos

The turbo shootout. We are going to swap them back to back on the dyno. We’ll do a max horsepower tune simulated towing test. Tony’s really going to love swapping all these turbos. Hey, I know you’re busy doing a turbo swap.

Could you do um like six more for me, please? Welcome back to the legendary 73 giveaway build. [Music] Today we’re doing exactly what you guys asked for. We got a plethora of turbos, as many as we could. You guys mentioned in the comments a bunch of turbos that you wanted to see compared back to back.

And today over the next couple of days, probably we are going to swap them back to back on the dyno.

Yeah. So, what we’re going to test is towing capabilities and max horsepower. Max horsepower is going to be pretty easy. We’re going to get the truck on the dyno.

We’re going to swap each turbo on one by one. And we’re going to go through and test them. We’ll do a max horsepower tune on a street tune. We’re not going to dial it all the way up, make it a little bit more fair. Street tune, and then we’re going to do a simulated towing test, which I’m super excited about.

I actually had someone recently ask me, Vince with IPR. He asked me, “How do you guys do towing tests?” And we literally do hook up trailers and take them up to the mountains. And we do, but we have a simulated towing test on the dyno. And what we do is we get in overdrive, run 65 mph, and then add all the load on the dyno.

If you don’t know what the load is, there’s an Eddie current brake that uses electricity to add resistance to the rollers. So, it bumps up boost.

It simulates towing a trailer or going up a big hill. We’re going to do that on the dyno and test to see what EGTs and boost do at that magical 65 mph, which most people try to tow at. So, we’re one by one going to swap them on the truck, do the test, and then swap the next one, do the test, swap the next one, do the test, swap the next one, do the test, swap the next one, do the test, and then swap the next one and do the test.

 

Hot swapping it. It’s my favorite. Tony’s going to love you. Tony’s really going to love swapping all these turbos over the next couple of days. Sorry, Tony.

So, we didn’t want to name any companies. I know initially we talked about reaching out and getting people to come out here. Just didn’t have time in this giveaway. So, don’t want to, you know, point any fingers to anyone, but we went out and found the most popular drop in turbos over the last 10, 15, 20 years that guys have been running.

And then essentially, we’re going to put them against all of the new Gen 3 300X and let’s see how it all stacks up.

From here on out, we’re not going to call any of these turbos by name. We’re really not the kind of guys that go and call out other companies. I don’t like the drama. I know some people do, but you’ll see in all of our videos that’s not what we’re about. So, we’ll call this turbo A, B, C, D, E, and F.

So, as we go through, it’s going to be kind of confusing. We can go over specs, information, and data, but we are not going to call out the names of the company in the video. Sorry. Yep. But if you think you can find out what these turbos are, go ahead, try, put in the comments below.

 

Let us know. Maybe you’re right. So, Charlie, Turbo A, what do we got here? This nice, beautiful blue guy. All right.

For reference, stock turbo is a 60 mm. Okay. This one is a 66 millimeter billet compressor wheel with a 4-in inlet. Okay. Everything else is basically stock.

Stock actuator, stock bearing housing, stock turbine housing, stock turbine wheel, stock outlet. The rest of it stock. This is sometimes known as a D66, B66. There’s a lot of 66 mm. This is basically what a lot of people have been making for 10 to 15 years.

 

We’re not going to call it any companies, but there are a couple of variations of it. They usually come with a 84 housing, but some variations of it had a 10 housing. You get the big one. Okay. Turbo B.
This one is a stock compressor cover, stock backing plate, stock actuator, stock bearing housing, stock turbine housing, stock outlet that looks like it’s maybe been modified. Modified outlet. It does have a slightly larger 63 mm compressor wheel. But other than wheel, turbo’s basically stock except whoever built it used like seven different colors of spray paint. This is a work of art.

I noticed that. Yeah. Yeah. The cover is painted. The backing plates painted.

The bearing housing is painted a different color. The turbine housing’s painted a different color. The stock old used actuators painted a different color. And that was that was something I want to touch on, too. This is a technically used turbo.

 

We had to send out a good core to get this one made. Yes. This one we had to send out a good used turbo for him to make it into his turbo. Yeah. Modified drop it, which you know, we’ll see how it does.

We’ll see if the spray paint stays on. You think it’s going to change colors? This gray paint’s probably going to flake off and change colors. It is also the only turbo that uses the smaller 3-in inlet boot, right? Yeah.

 

Most other turbo options and upgrades upgrades to the larger inlet. All of them, but this one. The larger inlet flows more air and it reduces surge by having the anti-surg. I mean, most modified turbos do that. This this one does not.

So, another benefit we didn’t tell you guys about these silicone boots that uh the other guys are using. We used to use them occasionally. H it’s too much work. So, Charlie, tell us what you did. You went out of your way to make something that works.

After years of people complaining about this boot, which we didn’t like either, but it’s kind of just what everybody used. We copied what came with of one of uh actually some of the guys on FTE worked with me and they gave me some design ideas.

So, we molded it a little more like OEM ribs for strength and for your pleasure. Looks kind of like an OEM boot. And the way that this is molded will fit perfect every time.

As opposed to this, there’s a little bit of variation in how it’s made. So, we’re pretty proud of this new boot. And we have E99 and OBS versions of these coming soon. On to Turbo C. Turbo C.

Turbo Charlie. This one is greatly changed. It is a different style cover and it’s a larger inlet. It is a dual ball bearing center cartridge. It’s a 1.

0 AR turbine housing. Different. It is a different wastegate actually. It looks very similar to stock, but the pressure, I believe, is slightly different. Okay.

Um, it is a 66 mm cast wheel. Okay. But still a stock turbine wheel, right? So, no upgrade on the turbine wheel. Okay.

So, yeah. So, it’s going to be very similar to this, just ball bearing with a bigger turbine housing.

Yeah. It’s almost like whoever designed this turbo originally just kind of copied this turbo with the 66 mm compressor wheel, but it’s in a journal bearing. So, the ball bearings typically do help a little bit with spool up.

This is typically gonna underperform a little bit because it’s kind of the same thing without balls. Without the benefits. Yeah. Right. Okay.

All right. All right. Now, let’s get to the fun stuff. The Casey Turbo stuff. Our stuff you can buy now on case.
com. First up, Charlie. What do we got? Turbo D. This is our new Gen 3 stage 1 turbo.

We’re going to go over specs. We don’t typically tell people specs. Let’s go generally over specs.

Not not too much. We try to keep our specs a little secret for multiple reasons.

one, we are very quick to get copied. Happens all the time. And then something like ours ends up on the internet and suddenly someone’s like, “Oh, you going to buy the same thing off Alibaba?” So, we try not to say specs, but I will say this one is a 62 mm compressor wheel. 612 62, you know, we won’t go to the exact size.

We’ll get you close. So, it is the smallest of all the turbos here.

Okay. Is it going to underperform, you think? We’ll see.

I don’t think so. We’ll see. I don’t think so either. Let’s go over our stage one. It is slightly more upgraded than some of these other options.

I will go over those briefly here. It is an upgraded compressor cover with 70 AR larger 4-in inlet with ported anti-s surge cover. A larger built compressor wheel. The backing plate is actually upgraded. It’s cast and integrated into the bearing housing.

It’s a larger upgraded bearing housing with larger bearings, 200% larger journal bearings, 200% larger thrust bearing, upgraded actuator with an internal spring that’s been upgraded. Upgraded turbine housing with upgraded voluuth in the turbine housing and a different AR custom made by us. Uh upgraded turbine wheel, thicker shaft larger shaft at the compressor wheel and at the bearings the Okay, the outlet flange just stopped.

So it’s just barely upgraded over stuff. Yeah, there’s like different.

It’s fine. Anyways, so this is our stage one, our stage two, and we got something else sitting over here that’s super special. It is not a stage three. Okay, what do we got? Something special prototype.

It is a new option we’re going to be offering next year. Uh we never stop innovating. We’re still going, still trying. So, we made a nineblade stage 2 turbo.

Now, I know a lot of people think the nine blade’s going to make a whistle.
It does not. The simple fact that it’s nine blades doesn’t make it whistle more, but it does flow more. So, we’re going to throw that in the mix. This may or may not be an option next year, but we’re going to throw it in here just to see what a simple change of a turbine wheel does. All right.

What are we starting off with? Uh, let’s start off with turbo A. We’ll just go right down the line. A, B, C, D, E, F. When we’re done, stay tuned to the end.

We’ll go over the towing results, EGTs, boost while towing, and then we’ll do max horsepower on the dyno with max boost on the dyno. We’ll lay out the dynographs, overlay them.

All right, Charlie. So, how are we going to rank or judge these turbos once? So, we shoot them all out.

We got all our data. How are we going to lay them out? There’s likely not going to be one clear winner in every category. So, we will kind of break down maybe like most power, best towing, but we will give pluses and minuses and our honest reaction to how each one did. That’s fair.

Let’s go run them on the dyno. Hey, Tony, could you put that on for me? I know you’re busy. All right. Well, [Music] [Music] thanks.

It’s a simulated towing test. So, this has an Eddie current brake on it and you can add a certain amount of load. You typically use that to load the turbo for when you’re doing a max horsepower dyno pull.

But you can get an overdrive at 65 mph and hit the load and it’s almost like simulating pulling a heavy trailer or going up a hill with no load. You know, we’re sitting at one lb of boost and 500 EGTs.

You know, that’s probably less than a truck going down the road. You’re probably higher than that just on the freeway at this speed. When you add the loads, you’ll see it brings the RPMs down and it it kind of like switches from driving an unloaded truck to pulling a trailer up a hill. So, I’m going to add the load, which you can see is set at 75%. 100 would just be too much for the truck.

All right, adding the [Music] load. Try to lug the motor down to where people typically try to tow at is like 65 miles an hour.

Those temps are creeping. Yeah, they’re creeping. That doesn’t sound great.

We’re already up over 1300, but we are maintaining now. Okay. Oh, 1360. There you go. We’re back.

Yeah, we we’ve hit the limit. This This setup would not be able to tow right here. Yeah. If you downshift, which is what people typically have to do, you know, the EGTs will cool back down. Yeah.

The general rule of thumb people like to say is 1250 to 1350. 1350 is pushing it. 1250 you can run all day every day as long as your oil doesn’t get too hot and your coolant gets too hot. The max horsepower test I do it a little differently. I don’t like to do an overdrive especially with bigger tires because you take it to red line and red line and overdrive is 120 140 mph depending on the truck.

 

150 for some trucks. I I don’t like to spin the trucks that fast. So, especially in this one, we’re going to do it in third gear, just under overdrive. And it’s kind of similar to the towing test. We’ll get it up to a sweet spot.

We’ll add the load and the RPMs will come down and we’ll try to let them come down as far as we can without downshifting. And then we’ll roll into the throttle. You don’t just floor it cuz the truck would downshift. And if it downshifts, the dyno doesn’t count. It’ll make this huge spike in the grass.

[Music] All right, one down. All right, that was pretty good. Five to go. That’s a lot. This is a lot of work.
They ask you how you are, you just have to say that you’re fine. So, in the interest of time, we’re going to fast forward through some of this cuz we got five turbo swaps to go. We’ve got five dinos to go, five towing tests to go.

We don’t want the city to be a couple hours. So, uh, and we don’t want to blow the truck up by heat soaking it.

Yeah, we got to cool it down in between runs. Let’s fast forward through some of this boring stuff. We’ll meet back up with you guys at the end when we got all the data and we’ll break it all down for [Music] [Applause] [Music] you. He’s not done either. He’s going to put this one in for me instead.

Hey Troy, I need you to put that in real quick. Okay. [Music] No, no, no, no, no, no. You talk to Tony. I I It’s This is all you.

But you’re the boss. Nope. Please. No, thank you. [Music] Maybe if I leave it there, he’ll just see it.

So, what are those for? Are they for um a prostate exam or a boost leaked? Jason’s 40th birthday present.

And I give him a colonoscopy. That’s 3 years from now.

And do a little boole check. So, we’ve been swapping all the turbos on. We do this every time. I’m doing this last one cuz Tony had to head back out of town. Communist homeland, California.

Disgusting. Yeah, I’m going to do boost leak check. We’re going to make sure this truck’s all good and then throw it on the dyno. See what we can get in the last turbo. Here we go.

Slide it on in. We definitely have a boost leak somewhere. We’re just at 5 psi right now.

Charlie, is there a boost leak? Uh, yeah.
There’s a pretty large one. Charlie’s like a blood hound when it comes to boost leaks. This little boot right here right from the top side. Oh yeah, it’s fine, bro. It’s totally fine.

But if you reach your little fingies around back, you can feel the boot actually just rolled up. Oh, not even when you went to tighten it. So, it’s not on the plenum. After you fix your boost leak, you come back over to your testino unit and then just see how slow it drops. Boost leaks can be kind of a huge hassle.

Like this one was. It was really annoying to fix it. It was the boot going from the spider to the plenum on the passenger side. But after we fixed it, no one boost. That’s not going anywhere.

That’s what I’m talking about.

[Music] All right, Charlie, that was a lot of information. Who are my winners? Reader Digest version of the test. Peak power winner, Turbo F.

Turbo F. Yeah. Max power at Red Line, Turbo F. Yeah, who’ thought? Most boosts and coolest EGTs on the race tune, Turbo F.

Turbo F again, man. Best towing would have been Turbo D. Okay, Turbo D made 18 lbs of boost and 1,091 on EGT. So you could tow like that all day, every day.

The truck would be very happy.

Purbo D was the smallest of all the turbos, right? In every way. And it got third for power. The clear winners to me, Turbo F, Turbo D, and in third place for me would be Turbo E. Last place would definitely be Turbo A.

All around. Second to last place for me would be Turbo B. uh least amount of power uh least power at red line. He hurt itself on the dyno hurt itself on the dyno testing. It did okay towing, but it’s it’s barely bigger than stock.

It it was a barely modified turbo. It just just just a slightly larger compressor wheel, stock turbine wheel, stock turbine housing, stock bearing housing, stock bearing, stock it was basically stock turbo with a slightly larger billet wheel.

So last place to me, turbo A and B. Yep. First place turbo F.

Second place turbo D. Yeah. Third place turbo E. And C was, you know, it was okay. It was incredibly loud.

I’ll say it one in the incredibly loud category. Yes. Sucky noise on the intake, not out the exhaust. Freeze frame the data. Study it yourself.

It’s color coordinated. Comment below if you have any questions that you want. Like gone into more in depth. If you want, I could do a 30 or 40 minute video breaking down all these dino graphs.

We could stack and compare.

But if you want to see that, comment below. We can go into more data on it, go into more details. Be a long, boring video, but I’m sure a few of you will watch it. But generally speaking, here’s the data. You can pause it, zoom up on it, see all the boost, EGTs, max horsepower, peak horsepower, you know, see the curve of the graph, and see for yourselves.

One special thing we’re adding is that the winner of this truck will be able to pick the turbo that you want. So, you just look at the data, you let us know which one you want, and it’ll come installed with the turbo that you prefer on the truck. Whether you want max towing abilities, which I’d go turbo D, or if you want best overall driving, peak power, max power, cool ZGTs at Redline, you go Turbo F. Or, you know, if you want one of the other garbage turbos, and you can pick one of the other ones, too. But we’ll install whatever turbo that you prefer on there.

Yeah, exactly.

Comment below if you guys want to see another test or if we missed anything. We’ll see you guys next time. See you.