APS 346 dyno 599/543
03-30-2009, 11:56 PM
#41
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03-31-2009, 10:30 AM
#43
There are several things some minor some more major.
Some guys have been running hot . Solution guys are putting in upgraded radiators..becool, ron davis, thicker lt1 rad. Also edelbrock sells high flow water pump and seen some high flow water pump on ebay but not sure how high quality that one is.
Other simple things to try are redline water wetter, make sure the fans come on at lower temperatures. I have not personally seen any overheating but didn't drive my car thru temps above 70 yet.Only had the car running with kit for last few weeks of october and early november. One possible reason for overheating might be accidentally leaving the intercooler packing cardboard in there between the rad and the intercooler. You can use this cardboard when installing the intercooler to protect things but might accidentally get left in there.Evans cooling system might be an option to try. Also important to make sure to use factory air dam underneath and do the cuts as per the manual to make sure air flows into there.
Front sway bar hits the intercooler pipes. More problem I think with bigger aftermarket sway bars. So far I have left off my hotchkis sway bar. Some guys are using spacers and shorterning endlinks. I think it might be possible to put silicone couplers where the sway bar hits.Will be looking into this problem this season.
Inlet tubes on the original kits suck shut . Guy on here stented them with think he said short sections of 3 inch oval exhaust pipe. Aps is selling upgraded inlets and would think they are including the upgraded inlets in the newest kits.
Some guys have dud turbos..Not exactly sure what the problem is here. Could be Aps unknowingly got some knock off turbos or could be problems with however is balancing them for Aps.Or they cut corners on parts. 20g turbos are usually super reliable. Don't seem to see hardly any GTO or Corvette c5 guys with bad turbos from checking on those boards but for some reason more f body kits guys seem to be having problems. I got a dud turbo which leaked coolant into my oilpan and talking massive leak could easily have cost me a new 10k engine but caught it within a few minutes of new engine and kit start up so hoping new engine is ok. So far seems ok but time will tell it might have damaged bearings ,etc. Ran my turbos with just the oil cooling for a few weeks.
I will be removing my dud turbo and talking to Aps about it. In the meantime so my car is not down got some replacement center sections from ebay and plan to run them. I may look at upgrading turbos to bigger ones thru aps or thru LG most likely .LG is offering several options for upgrades.
Something to keep in mind is turbos can be blamed for some problems that are not the turbos.Blowing oil out intake side or exhaust side is frequently not the turbo fault. Various other things can cause the symptom. Excessive crankcase pressure is one frequent cause. Inlets sucking shut could cause oil to come out a problem mentioned above. Also possile to forget to take off the shipping plug on the oil drains. Possible to maybe have the aps check valve in pcv line in backwards or not do the recomended pcv system modification.
Oil level might also be a possible reason for oil comng out turbo. Too high for sure could cause this and somene said too low also but can't see how too low could do it.
Also some guys had the coolant overflow hose fail. I replaced mine with high quality hose,the supplied part is pretty cheap.
System can be hard on plug wires. I went to pricey granatelli high temp wires.
I would get the exhaust manifolds ceramic coated and possibly still run the supplied heat shields if have the manifolds off again and not sure if have to to replace my dud turbo.
Think thats mostly it. Majority of the kit seems very high quality .Good welding on my kit and things seemed to fit pretty good, good instructions for install and every nut and bolt included. I wan't overly thrilled with my blow offs so replaced them with louder non vented ones. The supplied ones would have worked fine. I do wish now that did get the upgraded kit as with my 408 it would give me more power and not have to push the standard ones so hard which may be causing failures with them.
Overall even with the above problems I pretty happy with the kit. I lost 2000 bucks on a kit from GMR speed who was an old sponsor on this site. I am paranoid to deal with small companies after that. Aps shipped my kit ahead of schedule. So will deal with whatever problems come up. STS kits have had many of their problems. ATI especially the older setups had their share of problems. And many guys on here in the past have lost money ordering kits that they never recieved.
Some guys have been running hot . Solution guys are putting in upgraded radiators..becool, ron davis, thicker lt1 rad. Also edelbrock sells high flow water pump and seen some high flow water pump on ebay but not sure how high quality that one is.
Other simple things to try are redline water wetter, make sure the fans come on at lower temperatures. I have not personally seen any overheating but didn't drive my car thru temps above 70 yet.Only had the car running with kit for last few weeks of october and early november. One possible reason for overheating might be accidentally leaving the intercooler packing cardboard in there between the rad and the intercooler. You can use this cardboard when installing the intercooler to protect things but might accidentally get left in there.Evans cooling system might be an option to try. Also important to make sure to use factory air dam underneath and do the cuts as per the manual to make sure air flows into there.
Front sway bar hits the intercooler pipes. More problem I think with bigger aftermarket sway bars. So far I have left off my hotchkis sway bar. Some guys are using spacers and shorterning endlinks. I think it might be possible to put silicone couplers where the sway bar hits.Will be looking into this problem this season.
Inlet tubes on the original kits suck shut . Guy on here stented them with think he said short sections of 3 inch oval exhaust pipe. Aps is selling upgraded inlets and would think they are including the upgraded inlets in the newest kits.
Some guys have dud turbos..Not exactly sure what the problem is here. Could be Aps unknowingly got some knock off turbos or could be problems with however is balancing them for Aps.Or they cut corners on parts. 20g turbos are usually super reliable. Don't seem to see hardly any GTO or Corvette c5 guys with bad turbos from checking on those boards but for some reason more f body kits guys seem to be having problems. I got a dud turbo which leaked coolant into my oilpan and talking massive leak could easily have cost me a new 10k engine but caught it within a few minutes of new engine and kit start up so hoping new engine is ok. So far seems ok but time will tell it might have damaged bearings ,etc. Ran my turbos with just the oil cooling for a few weeks.
I will be removing my dud turbo and talking to Aps about it. In the meantime so my car is not down got some replacement center sections from ebay and plan to run them. I may look at upgrading turbos to bigger ones thru aps or thru LG most likely .LG is offering several options for upgrades.
Something to keep in mind is turbos can be blamed for some problems that are not the turbos.Blowing oil out intake side or exhaust side is frequently not the turbo fault. Various other things can cause the symptom. Excessive crankcase pressure is one frequent cause. Inlets sucking shut could cause oil to come out a problem mentioned above. Also possile to forget to take off the shipping plug on the oil drains. Possible to maybe have the aps check valve in pcv line in backwards or not do the recomended pcv system modification.
Oil level might also be a possible reason for oil comng out turbo. Too high for sure could cause this and somene said too low also but can't see how too low could do it.
Also some guys had the coolant overflow hose fail. I replaced mine with high quality hose,the supplied part is pretty cheap.
System can be hard on plug wires. I went to pricey granatelli high temp wires.
I would get the exhaust manifolds ceramic coated and possibly still run the supplied heat shields if have the manifolds off again and not sure if have to to replace my dud turbo.
Think thats mostly it. Majority of the kit seems very high quality .Good welding on my kit and things seemed to fit pretty good, good instructions for install and every nut and bolt included. I wan't overly thrilled with my blow offs so replaced them with louder non vented ones. The supplied ones would have worked fine. I do wish now that did get the upgraded kit as with my 408 it would give me more power and not have to push the standard ones so hard which may be causing failures with them.
Overall even with the above problems I pretty happy with the kit. I lost 2000 bucks on a kit from GMR speed who was an old sponsor on this site. I am paranoid to deal with small companies after that. Aps shipped my kit ahead of schedule. So will deal with whatever problems come up. STS kits have had many of their problems. ATI especially the older setups had their share of problems. And many guys on here in the past have lost money ordering kits that they never recieved.
Last edited by MY99TAWS6; 03-31-2009 at 01:43 PM.
03-31-2009, 01:10 PM
#44
Launching!
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my9taws6, i'm new to the turbo game and i've been reading about mostly the posts you put up. Everytime you post, you put plenty of knowledge on your topics and I (being turbo stupid) appreciate that. After reading this article, I must know, how many turbos have you been through? Must have been plenty. Hopefully I will be fortunate enough not to have half, if any, of those problems, but I do know, rarely anything we do with our cars go 100% smoothly. Simply put, thanks for the wealth of knowledge.
03-31-2009, 01:41 PM
#45
my9taws6, i'm new to the turbo game and i've been reading about mostly the posts you put up. Everytime you post, you put plenty of knowledge on your topics and I (being turbo stupid) appreciate that. After reading this article, I must know, how many turbos have you been through? Must have been plenty. Hopefully I will be fortunate enough not to have half, if any, of those problems, but I do know, rarely anything we do with our cars go 100% smoothly. Simply put, thanks for the wealth of knowledge.
I have only had the one dud aps turbo so far. I have had many turbo cars but mostly dsms.. I buy and sell the dsm cars but the two in my sig are my keepers.
03-31-2009, 04:53 PM
#46
Launching!
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Thanks for all the helpfull posts my99taws6, when it comes time to ordering the aps, Ill be messaging you to make sure what Im going to get is going to last. If you run a different intercooler would it still bump up against the sway bar?
03-31-2009, 05:22 PM
#47
The kit comes with an awesome intercooler, nice piping etc. So don't think you want to be changing the intercooler. As said there are various solutions for the sway bar interference. spacers, shortened enlinks ,possibly silicone couplers. Barnat did something with the intercooler pipes.. fatter sway bar would be more of a problem. I have a big hotchkis one. Run none until happy with solution to the problem.
Some people get mad when kits need to be tweaked here and there. As an old hotrodder take things in stride. After you have dropped v8 engines into little 4 banger cars and stuff like that its not the end of the world to have to reengineer a few things. I have seen some pretty awful kits and the aps is generally a very nice very well thought out kit. I will just tweak it till am 100% happy with it.
Some people get mad when kits need to be tweaked here and there. As an old hotrodder take things in stride. After you have dropped v8 engines into little 4 banger cars and stuff like that its not the end of the world to have to reengineer a few things. I have seen some pretty awful kits and the aps is generally a very nice very well thought out kit. I will just tweak it till am 100% happy with it.
03-31-2009, 06:33 PM
#48
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The kit comes with an awesome intercooler, nice piping etc. So don't think you want to be changing the intercooler. As said there are various solutions for the sway bar interference. spacers, shortened enlinks ,possibly silicone couplers. Barnat did something with the intercooler pipes.. fatter sway bar would be more of a problem. I have a big hotchkis one. Run none until happy with solution to the problem.
Some people get mad when kits need to be tweaked here and there. As an old hotrodder take things in stride. After you have dropped v8 engines into little 4 banger cars and stuff like that its not the end of the world to have to reengineer a few things. I have seen some pretty awful kits and the aps is generally a very nice very well thought out kit. I will just tweak it till am 100% happy with it.
Some people get mad when kits need to be tweaked here and there. As an old hotrodder take things in stride. After you have dropped v8 engines into little 4 banger cars and stuff like that its not the end of the world to have to reengineer a few things. I have seen some pretty awful kits and the aps is generally a very nice very well thought out kit. I will just tweak it till am 100% happy with it.
