Thanks man, I'm really glad that you are doing so mush research for yourself and willing to try so much on your own. You are doing everything right in my books. So let me give you some stuff to think about. (Oh yah.. I told him I was doing this ^_^)
THE WORD (so maybe it is an abreviation)
CFM is going to come up more than anything else. Simply, it means cubic feet per minute; a measurement of flow. Other things that will show up are velocity and density. CFMs have a near direct relation to volume and an indirect relation to velocity. Things like intakes and port and polished heads I personally don't believe should be measured in CFMs alone because pretty much, the larger the volume, the higher the CFMS. You could strap a trashcan with a house air filter to your N/A throttle body and it will read higher CFMS than ANY intake on the market. You could port your head until a midget stripper could poll dance in the port on your valve stem and blow away even the most agressive race head on the CFM chart, but can that help to make INSANE power from a 1.3L geo motor? HELL NO! You have to put velocity in the equation if you are serious about making a lot of power.
Just as CFMs relate to volume, velocity relates directly to the level of obstruction. What is going to hurt the velocity is bends, abrupt walls and less than smooth surfaces. This plays serious rolls in intakes, heads and INTERCOOLERS.
Last is density. Density has a direct relation to both pressure and temperature. Pressurizing air does the exact same thing as chilling air does (that's right, turbos and nitrous bottles do the
same thing just by different means. Pressurizing air increases the temperature - the enemy with turbos. I will get more into that when I talk about intercoolers. The optimum engine would re running off high CFMs pressurized cold air at constant velocity. That is why an engine will never be 100% efficient. What you are going to need to do is find a median with all of those things to get peak efficiency out of your engine. A well though out set-up takes everything into factor in design and leaves ABSOLUTELY NO COMPROMISE in tuning. Why?
Efficiency means horsepower!
All that said... here is a run down of a turbo system from air in to exhaust out and some things you should think about:
Let me start at the very beginning of the system for you. The intake.... Of course less of a restriction is optimal. The easier the turbo can pull the oncoming air, the more it can flow. Most serious drag racers run an open turbo... nothing filters the air but a compressor wheel that could suck in small children. That is OK for them because the design gets the turbo away from heat and extreme short term use wont sacrifice reliability. What you want with your turbo intake is to get the best supply of air you can away from the hot exhaust manifold/turbine/downpipe. You also don't wanto to place it somewhere that it can pick up water in the rain. You can use a heat shield and place the intake over the turbo, route it around behind the battery, just place a cone on the turbo (try and relieve temperature elsewhere (heat-soak is the devil)) or any other way you can think of. The shorter the intake, the higher the CFMs, the more bends, the lower the velocity, the longer the tube (more exposure to the hot intake piping) the less dense the air (maybe miniscule compaired to the heat generated from compressing the air.) Ultimately, the turbo's efficiency is more important than that of the intake, so the optimal set-up is no set-up..... just suck in cold air. Unfortunately with a 2.4 you are going to have heat soak issues with that set-up(compressor gets hotter and hotter making the charged air hotter and hotter and decreasing performance.) A good median would would be a short intake placing the cone right behind the battery
Of course the next part of the set-up is the turbo, but there is sooo much to learn there and the information is readilly available. This is something you should research on your own as is it the most important part of your system. Don't hesitate to ask questions either
The charge pipes come out of the turbo to bring the newly pressurized air to the throttle body. That can be a long distance with a 2.4, especially when you route them to the front for an intercooler first. Work the most gentle bends you can to maintain velocity. The size of your charge pipes can make a difference. Smaller = more velocity = faster spool and larger = more CFMs = more potential horsepower. Some people use small (maybe 2.25" charge pipes leading to the intercooler and then larger charge pipes (maybe 2.5") coming out to carry the denser but slower air to the throttle body. This is a good median.
There will always be a pressure drop in the intercooler because of the lost velocity. Larger intercoolers are going to have less of a pressure drop and therefor flow more CFMs.. BUT!... they can badly decrease your spool time if you don't select an appropriate intercooler for your application. Bigger is not always better in this case unless you are building a total dyno queen for peak HP numbers and nothing else. Basically intercoolers increas your efficiency by densifying air (cooling it back down.) Remember that pressurizing air causes it to get hot. Heat is thr key ingrediant to detonation/preignition. You don't want that. You want to lower your cylinder temperatures as much as possible fo reliability but do it as efficient as you can to keep that nice hp/tq curve. There are also three types of intercoolers to choose from. The first one is a water to air intercooler. This type circulates coolant around the air core. liquids have greater heat discipation properties than the air does but can only cool the air to close to the temperature of the coolant at its best. These are used in drag cars because of their ability to cool down HIGH (30-40psi) boost levels quickly to lower temperatures than an air to air intercooler can. You will be most likel using air to air.
I did say two more types, they are both air to air. One is a bar and plate and the other is tube and fin. Tube and fin designs are not very efficient and should be avoided where possible/practical because of the additional unnescessary preasure drop. bar and plate designs flow much better and cool roughly the same. Chose an intercooler taking spooling, flow, reliability, SPACE and your charge pipe diameters into consideration.
Your throttle body is very important because it is often the lowest flowing part of a system. The throttle body is all about maintaining velocity. Everything else just happens. Bigger is pretty much better in this case (up to a point of course.) The best case scenario would be if the throttle bore started at the same inner diameter of teh charge pipes and got larger going to the throttle plate (to keep the velocity even with the throttle plate in the middle as it is open. That is a best case..... Anything better that stock will do really. Just got bigger. I love seeing custom set-ups like the LS1 throttle body on a flange welded to an H/O intake manifold.
One thing I have never seen done but would be awesome is a roller barrel throttle body. This is a throttle body where instead of a butterfly plate on a axis in the middle of the bore, you have an entire cylinder on that same axis. The cylinder would have a copy of the bore machine through it. Close, that bore would point straight up, at WOT, you have a perfect path from the charge pipes to the intake manifold with NO plates or obstructions of any kind. THIS MEANS KILLER VELOCITY!
Usually this type of throttle body is used on ncreadibly expensive race engines like those built by cosworth for rally cars (2.0L 900hp twin turbo V8s running ONLY 5 PSI!!!!) It is expensive. That is why you only see the most advanced race cars running them. They also usually only came as individual throttle body (a separate TB for each intake manifold runner) ser ups where boost is controlled by a throttle plate at the entrance to the intake manifold instead of wastegates.
Intake manifolds for these engines are designed for optimal flow. Velocity stacks are used at each port before the throttle body to channel air to each cylinder. Lucky for you..... you just want to improve over stock. Chevy isn't paying you millions of dollars to optimize their engines (yet.) A good improvement over your stock manifold is the H/O manifold and you can bring the 56mm throttle body with it. There isn't much to talk about here unless you want to build a custom intake manifold. In thate case, Straight runners to hold velcity, velocity stacks at the end of each and a collection chamber at the end should do you well. The shape of the combustion chamber and location of your throttle body is arguable. I don't have time for dyno testing but if you want to do the bench work that would be awesome! Other changed in intake manifolds like runner length are more for naturally asperated cars.
Heads are tricky. Port it of course, match the ports to the intake manifold. Polish each of the ports unless you believe leaving them rough will help fuel to atomize more efficiently. That is another thing which is arguable. The twin cam head is simple. There are no radical bend or curves to worry about. Where the port splits into two to go into each valve, sharpen that edge so there is minimal turbulance. Also, a mutli-angle valve job would be in good order to assist in sealing and increase air velocity.
I'm going to keep cams simple and relevant to boost. Turbocharged... you need less lift on the intake because air is being forced in. Durration is good because you get to take advantage of all of tha velocity we've been fighting for. The exhaust side is the same way but lift is a little more helpful since you have more back-pressure than you ever would supercharged or N/A. Overlap is when the intake and exhaust valve is open at the same time. This is completely dependant on cam durration. The theory is that with N/A car you can pass some fresh unburnt air/fuel out the exhaust to help clear out the cylinder. Remember, the piston on goes up so high before the exhaust valve closes, you can't compeltely whipe exhaust out of the cylinder. This topic is exremely open for discussion in my books. Although it may be helpful to clean out the cylinder more you have maybe 1/100th of the mixture having been already burnt from the last cycle (10-15psi coming in.) I don't think it is worth that small amount of lost boost.
To be easy on you and cost effective, use the secret cams. Mike Karas used them if I recall correctly. They should do you great.
If you want to rev higher than stock, think about upgading you valves (great chance to over-size them,) lower crank sprocket (this is a recent developement in the J-body community,) springs, retainers, keapers, and your ignition system. There is so much to say here. I'll leave that for if you decide to in the future.
Your turbo manifold doesn't have a whole lot of options. You have a few brands or you could make you own equal length header. There are no companies right now that there are any quarrels with besides for maybe exploited racing if brian is willing to make a manifold. Let me tell you though, he is a good friend of mine is the quality in his products is out of this world. He is making my equal length header for my sunbird.
Since you are building the engine, you may wish to acquire an equal length header. They have more potential for power because of the harmony of velocity in teh system. Exhaust PULSES out of the head one cylinder at a time and this design helps harvest that principal in order to constantly keep exhaust flowing at the turbine. Log manifold spool faster simply because of temperature differential between the head and the exhaust. Equal length manifold allow EGTs to fall before it hits the turbine which again is great for high rpm POWER but can slow your spool otherwise.
Exhaust.... As much as people want to make it that way, this is not arguable. The best exhaust after a turbo is no exhaust. The least back pressure means a greater difference in pressure meaning faster spool and easier transfer of gas (yep.. that means CFM flow capabilities. Less back pressure means faster spooling and more peak power.
There are a few things I am taking out of order for simplicity of explanation:
Compression
You are running 9.5:1 compression from the factory. People are safely running upwards of 10psi on stock botoms ends. That means that 10psi is in teh cylinder and then compressing 9.5x over. A low compression engine has a lot less to compress an therefor revs easier. The engine is translating chemical energy (fuel/air) into kinetic energy (pressure.) The biproducts are exhaust and crank/flywheel momentum/power. With efficincy a primer goal, you are using ALREADY SPENT exhaust gasses (essentially free potential energy) and using them to create more power. Sounds nice doesn't it? Lowering the compression further allows you to harvest more of this "free energy" to make the same "perfect world" (100% efficient engine) horsepower but with much less loss of engine efficiency. If that doesn't make sense I can clear it up more for you.
A good median here would be to run maybe 8.5:1 compression and 15-20lbs of boost pressure.
Oiling... I just wanted to seriously recommend that since machine work is being done to the engine to install new forged pistons, you might as well have the machine in the 2.3 oil pump. The 2.3 oil pump is twice as large and the 2.4 pump (which makes up for its difference by spinning twice as fast.) It is MUCH more reliable and that is exactly what you want with such an investment. You also get the added bonus of rotating mass weight being loss with will give the engine the ability to rev that much fast.
THERE IS WAY MORE THAN THIS BUT I HAVE BEEN TYPING FOR HOURS AND I AM TIRED.
Too long to even proof read......
Cardomain|
Myspace
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Thanks a ton silver lightning. 
(never ends lol, and ive only just begun) 
Secondly, HUGE thanks to MINION for being so helpful everyday, having so much friggin patience, and always being my #1 go-to guy! This board is lucky to have you 
