I am brand new to this forum so you have to excuse my lack of knowledge on these cars. My wife has an 03 tiburon v6 and we want to put a turbo on it. A friend of mine owns one of the leading Subaru performance shops on the east coast and would be redoing the motor to make sure it handles the boost. Here is my issue...she drives an automatic and REFUSES to drive a stick. I have done hours of research trying to find out what the stock auto trans is capable of handling as far as HP is concerned before it blows up. I can't find anything. Do you think the trans will be ok with say 300hp? We would want to get it rebuilt to handle the HP but I don't know where to find the hardened parts or anyone that sells upgraded tranies. The other option was to buy the new genesis 2.0t and just build that up a bit. She loves her tib though and doesn't want to get rid of it. Any help you guys can give would be GREATLY appreciated.

p.s. I race a 1500RWHP turbo mustang so I'm not new to this hobby, just new to the import stuff smile.gif

 

I would say no.

First, anyone who wants performance from a Tiburon first converts to manual transmission because the auto transmission provides such a loss of power from spinning the torque converter that it is almost worthless for any type of power application. The MOST effective power modification to any Tiburon would be to replace the auto transmission with a manual transmission.

Second, the V6s are known for blowing out water jackets so filling the water jackets would be the way to go. This will reduce the efficiency of the cooling system.

Most GK tiburon owners go with the 4 cylindar beta engine for any sort of a power adding platform. Betas rock. Go to NewTiburon.com for in depth information on how to properly tune a V6 engine.


I would say go with a i4 2.0T genesis @ 240hp, add a manual boost controller and it will out perform the 306hp 6cyl

 

The auto trans can handle the turbo. But just adding a turbo will not give you 300hp.

 

The fastest GK Tiburons are almost all automatics.

While inefficient, the GK's automatic is pretty strong. The weak point is the torque converter. Some people have upgraded the torque converter, but I have no details on how it was done.

Turbo + automatic = good. You don't have to close the throttle plate to shift so you keep making full boost for the whole pull.

On an otherwise stock turbo'd GK automatic a guy I know made 284whp and 349lb/ft.
Here's the video I took of his dyno run:
[youtube]IC31PorR7yo[/youtube]

I would check out NGM for parts to do your build.

 

I did not know that the V6 auto tranny was that strong. the 4 cyl tends to spin bearings. Maybe it would be possible.

 

Yeah you cant kill those things.