Highly accomplished tuner Jamie Miller is constantly looking for new ways to make a racecar go faster and will try anything, no matter how unconventional it is, to gain an advantage. Miller handles the tuning duties for Tommy Youmans’ twin-turbo GTO and is using the Pontiac as a testbed for an unconventional turbo mounting method. So far, the results are showing promise, and Miller is ready to see what this turbo placement change will do.

The idea came to Miller during a test session to move the driver’s side Hart’s turbo to the very front of the car, while leaving the passenger side turbo close to the firewall. The GTO had about 100-pounds of weight on the nose of the car for ballast. Miller and Youmans were trying to come up with ways to remove weight on the car, and were coming up with ideas for what parts could be moved around to make that happen. That session is what put the turbo repositioning project in motion.

“I was looking at the car and started to think about moving one of the turbos from the firewall to the front of the car on the driver’s side. That would let us remove some of the weight from the front of the car. If you have both turbos on the front of the car, it makes the chassis very sensitive in hot conditions. Now, if we only moved one turbo up front that’s just 62-pounds, and it would let us totally eliminate some front end weight. We believe this change will really open up our tuning options,” Miller says.

Miller had been wanting to try this for a while, and Youmans was the first car owner that was willing to move just one turbo to the front of the car. Youmans moved the turbo and the team went back out testing again. The results were very interesting, so Miller decided to leave the turbo there and see how far they could push the performance.

The exhaust bullhorn placement with the turbo change provided some interesting and positive results that Miller wasn’t expecting to see.

“When you put the turbo that far forward the bullhorn angle has more leverage to help keep the nose down. That allows us to tune the front end by just laying the bullhorn back, or move it forward if the car is wanting to wheelie. It gives us a whole new tuning aid with the car to change the downforce. We can make a fine-tuning adjustment right before a run with the bullhorn. If the track has gotten really good we can stand the bullhorn up to keep the nose down. Now, if the track isn’t super good, we can lay the bullhorn down to help transfer weight to the rear of the car during a run,” Miller explains.

Youmans was able to remove a total of 90-pounds from the GTO after the turbo was moved and the turbo system was adjusted. This weight reduction was important since the car was overweight for Pro 275. Miller also noted that the new layout for the turbo system didn’t change anything on the tuning side of things. The Pro Line Racing engine still spools the same as it did before and really didn’t require any big change with the tune.

“We tried to really think outside the box on this project so we can advance the turbo technology. We’re still trying to see if this will produce the total results we’re looking for. So far, things are looking very promising and it will be interesting to see what the car does as we push forward with the new setup,” Miller states.

Every new idea seems a little crazy until it starts to work. Miller and Youmans are thinking differently in an attempt to find any advantage they can in the highly competitive Pro 275 class. The GTO did make its quickest pass ever when it laid down a 3.827 at 210.57 MPH, so clearing Miller is on to something with this unconventional turbo setup. It will be interesting if this turbo placement strategy is adopted by other teams as Miller and Youmans continue to perfect this new setup.