I'd recomend a book called Turbochargers by Hugh Maclinnes. IMHO it was better than Maximum Boost and had more practical application type stuff in it that directly pertained to our applications.
As for figureing out what A/R housing on the turbine side to run it's kind of trial and error. I think once you do a lot of work on turbos you'll kind of get a feel for it and narrow it down better without a lot of buying parts and testing but there is no map or anything to tell you what to run.
http://www.turbobygarrett.com/turbo...bo_kit_pdfs/new_pdfs/Powerstroke_Comp_map.pdf
If you check out that turbo map you will see the numbers going up the left side are the pressure ratio. To figure the pressure ratio take PSIG (Pounds per Square Inch Gauge) and add ambiant pressure (usually 14.7 at sea level) then divide by ambiant. The numbers across the bottom are the air volume or sometimes it will be in air mass. By figureing out how much air your engine will consume and at what pressure ratio it will be consumeing it at you can plot a spot on the map. You'd basicly take the displacement of the engine and figure what it's volumetric efficiency is and at what rpm to get the volume reading to plot on the map.
Where this spot is on the map will tell you how efficient the turbo is. The circular lines in the middle are the turbo's efficiency. The closer to the middle the better the efficiency and the less the turbo will heat the air as it compresses it.
The line starting at the lower left and going toward the upper right is the stall line. This is where the wheel stalls in the air. This is what's happening when the turbo starts surging. It's trying to run to much pressure ratio and not enough volume and it goes over that line. When it stalls the turbo wheel basicly burns out in the air. Once the pressure ratio drops back down into the map the wheel catches the air again. This repeating very rapidly is what gives the surging noise.
The lines starting at the surge line and curving to the right and down shows the rpms in which the turbo is spinning to achieve that point in the map.
That's the general run down on the map. There is nothing on the map that has to do with the turbine side though. Basicly you just have to try it and see if it puts you where you want it. If the turbo comes on to late or early in the engine's rpm range you just have to change housings accordingly. I guss you could think of the turbine side as gearing. If it comes in to late put a smaller gear or housing on it. If it comes in to early but a bigger gear or housing on it.
