The turbo on my 06 Baja went south and basically took the entire motor with it by virtue of spreading metal particles into every orifice. I'd like to replace the toasted engine with a non-turbo 2.5 SOHC. Anybody have any experience or comments with a plan like this? Thanks.

do you mean you want to ditch the turbo entirely or make a franken-motor so you can use the cheaper NA engines?

 

my turbo experience is very limited but i'll base some things on non-turbo experience and some things i know that would be "possible", though maybe problematic for some reason or another.

 

if you mean ditch the turbo and just go with NA - if, as i suspect, the turbo's have associated sensors so that will lead to a check engine light without some workarounds.

 

if there's a way to keep boost down to really low levels like 3 or 5 psi you could possibly run an NA engine with the existing turbo set up.  that's probably the option i'd look into.  find a smaller turbo or way to mitigate the boost levels.

 

bolt the turbo heads (if they're good) to the NA block and use a thicker headgasket to loose some compression - cometic makes varying thickness headgaskets and would certainly know if this is possible or not...certainly, i think. lol.  probably still want to mitigate boost on a build like this too.

 

you might be able to even better yet use an EJ22 or some other block to lower compression in order to run the turbo still. 

 

or maybe your pistons are still good and can be installed in an NA block?

Edited April 25, 201411 yr by grossgary

To clarify, I want to ditch the turbo and drop in a 2.5 normally aspirated 2.5 SOHC. Any suggestions? Thanks!

To use the stock EJ25 you'll need to replace a bunch of wiring and the ECU as well.  This is not easy.