My .02 cents. I've been in your shoes. I've built and tuned a half dozen turbo cars over the years but I had a
Vortech fall in my lap when a buddy had to sell his.
I installed it on a 90 LX 5-speed car. It was setup for around 7psi. While the install couldn't be simpler, I hated the way the car drove. The fact that you had to spin the motor to 5K before the fun began was a major turn off. To make the car fun to drive I had to add 4.10 gears. Trade off was the 4.10's sucked when I wasn't driving like a raving maniac.
Now lets talk about heat. After a run down the strip we were seeing IAT's in the 225F range. Clearly you are not going to hot lap an old A Trim car and forget road racing it. Heat lead to detonation and that lead to blown head gaskets. Best pass with that setup was in the mid 12's.
And then there is the noise. Everyone that saw the car thought it had a dying bearing.
Eventually I yanked that setup off the car and built a homemade turbo kit using a set of flipped shorty headers and a small 66mm turbo and some old intercooler I had laying around. At the same 7psi the car was suddenly fun to drive again. The gears were swapped back to 3.55's so it was livable again and full boost was there under 3K rpm's. While I don't recall the exact number, I know that we were well into the 11's as the track officials sent me home more than once for going to fast without a cage.
The entire process of pulling off the Vortech and building the turbo setup from scratch took about a week (7of full days) time spread out over about 3 weeks.
The combo stayed together for about 5 years and about 25K miles before I sold it. I did have an oiling issue once that fried the bearings in the turbo but a quick drive to Precision in IN. and I had a rebuild in a couple of days. Other than that I don't recall having to do anything other than basic maintenance to the car.
If it's unclear where I stand at this point, Put the turbo kit on it and sell the Vortech to a museum.