Originally Posted by RooRnZ28

I ran my base STS kit for 2 years, no restrictor just the check valve and STS oil pump, and I would get an oily film inside the intake piping. This was with the upgraded Gt-67 turbo with .96 a/r.

I installed a .65 restrictor, and no more oily film.

Originally Posted by charlie c5

How long have you been running the restrictor, I ran with one for only a couple of thousand miles, and my turbo finaly just took a dump. But, Im also making 600 RWHP with my STS, but still, to restrict the flow of oil to the turbo, I dont want a oil film layer in my charge paping either, but I cant afford to keep rebuilding turbos..

Watch this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-nc24dOHmk

Originally Posted by HPF Chris

We've been very busy lately with a lot of things going on. I just wanted to post up an update since it's been awhile.

#1 Lessons Learned...

Injectors can clog over time, can flow less than others of the same type, can start out bad, can flow different than their rating (even when we get the rating sheet), and can have flow patterns that are too wide or too narrow. All of these things can and will cause our kits to not perform as designed.

Two great examples of this problem occurred on Raythomas's M3 and Kevin's M3. On Ray's M3, he had poor performing injectors right from the start even though we had the rating sheet on them. His car would knock, and would sometimes have a wandering idle. His car was also down on power. On Kevin's M3, once we installed stage 2.5, his car had a hunting idle. Both of these problems occurred from one ore more injectors not operating optimally. Both problems were fixed by simply replacing the injectors.

As we're shipping tons of kits around the world, we can't afford to have mistakes at the manufacturing level, and decided to bite the bullet and buy a fuel injector test machine. For those of you that know about these, they aren't cheap! The ASNU fuel injector test bench has amazing capabilities and we can now flow injectors, clean injectors, run them through rpm cycles, check spray patterns, etc. We are now testing every injector that leaves our facility. This machine is very expensive, but it is WAY more expensive to have customers with cars not operating optimally. I will produce a video of this machine shortly when I have some free time. There are pictures below.

#2 Lessons Learned

The smoky turbo lesson. We have been around and around and around with swapping turbos recently on the stage 2.5 cars. We've narrowed this problem down to the stage 2.5 M3's and have "finally" got a solution. Kevin's, Brian's and Scott's M3's now have turbos on them with clearances that are slightly tighter than many of the other M3 turbos which is why they don't smoke (but may occasionally). As the stage 2.5 cars run higher boost than the stage 1 and 2 cars, There's an amount of boost that literally goes from the turbo compressor housing down the shaft. We've verified this on several turbo's on Frank's M3. On a normal car where the turbo sits above the oil level this wouldn't be a problem as this excess pressure in the oil return line would just vent into the crankcase. It turns out that the boost in the oil return line after a pull when the throttle is closed = turbo boost pressure - 12psi when our oil scavenge pump is used. So for a car pulling 13psi, boost pressure in the oil return line with a Precision journal bearing turbo = 1psi with our oil scavenge pump which doesn't have any adverse effects. For a stage 2.5 car pulling 23psi, boost pressure in the oil return line with a Precision Journal bearing turbo = 11psi. This extra line pressure in the oil return line is air and cannot be easily pumped out with the scavenge pump. This extra line pressure forces oil out into the turbine housing of the turbo after the throttle plate is closed which results in blue smoke out the exhaust. We just devised a new system and are installing it on Frank's M3. His car was literally ready to leave, did several pulls and was fine, then right before we shipped it, it smoked during my final test drive. 3 turbo's and 2 oil pumps later we finally narrowed it down to a oil return line pressurization problem which we fixed with some new technology we implemented. I'll post up some pictures of that tomorrow.

#3 My Tran's Stage 3 -> 4 M3

My Tran's M3 is going "UP" from stage 3. He wants stage 4, and we're going to accomodate it "partially". His car is SMG, so we're not sure how much more our stage 2 clutch will hold, but we're going to get him some more power. We're going to do that with the new intake pipe, new air duct, much larger FMIC and more boost. Below are some pictures of his car with our first prototype FMIC on it. That FMIC is going to be installed on the HPF M3 for testing, and we're ordering our production shipment of FMIC's with a couple minor corrections. My Tran is also getting the Asuka widebody and HRE wheels. So Florida will be seeing a "seriously" fast M3 when the car is done.

#4 Kevin's M3 Stage 2 -> 2.5, Greg's Stage 2 - Traction Control M3

Kevin wanted some love while he's fighting for our Country in Afganistan. Thanks Kevin!! Here's a picture of your car waiting patiently for stage 2.5. Right next to his is Greg's M3 waiting to get some more mods done. Can't wait to see you join the stage 2.5 club. Greg will be the first Stage 2 with our traction control system.

#5 Roberts/Ardika's Stage 3 M3

Robert's (was Ardika's) M3 has the engine out and it is now back from the machine shop. This was another motor we replaced free of charge due to the poor machining done by the machine shop we used previously. This new motor was bored 0.020 over by a state of the art Sunnen machine, Torque Plated, with all taper removed. It also has our new 0.020 over pistons. This motor is going back into this car tomorrow.

#6 HPF M3

The HPF car is now back in the queue and getting ready for MFest. We plan on turning up the boost to try to make over 902rwhp (our previous best) with our new parts. We also might be installing the new OS Giken rear differential (if we can get it done in time).

#7 Built Motors for Shipping

We've also been ordering used engines so we can ship built motors to our dealers and customers world-wide. Our first built motor from a used core will be installed in the HPF M3. Below is another used engine and tranny that we bought.

Here is the fuel injector test bench. It can flow 8 injectors at a time.







Here's My Tran's Stage 3 M3 going for Stage 4

















Here's Jessie's Stage 2 M3 going for Stage 2.5





Here's Greg's M3 going for Traction Control on his Stage 2



Here's a used engine and tranny I bought for built motor stages. We're going to build this motor and have it in stock and ready to ship.



Here's JP and Chris K (not me) hard at work



Video of Turbo Return Line Pressure Testing. You can see when turbo boost pressures enter into the oil return line. Boost is varied from pull to pull and you can see the effects on the oil pressure. We swapped a turbo between some of the pulls and an oil pump between the others. It got considerably better after we swapped an oil pump but still not good enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lvFMTRMwc4

Video of future pulls except we now have another line that allows the excess pressure to be relieved while the pressure gauge is still in line. Some of the videos were done just free-revving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LmCSuDskhY

We now have a solution that simulates the open bypass which I'll post up pictures to shortly. This will allow allow the free escape of boost pressure from the oil return when turbos require it.

Chris.

Originally Posted by HPF Chris

Here's a video of our Turbo Return Line Pressure Testing. You can see when turbo boost pressures enter into the oil return line. Boost is varied from pull to pull and you can see the effects on the oil pressure in this return line. We swapped a turbo between some of the pulls and an oil pump between the others. It got considerably better after we swapped an oil pump but still not good enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lvFMTRMwc4

Video of the next pulls except we now have another line that allows the excess pressure to be relieved while the pressure gauge is still in line. Some of the videos were done just free-revving, some were done with the line pressure relieved and some with it closed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LmCSuDskhY

We now have a solution that simulates the open bypass which I'll post up pictures to shortly. This will allow allow the free escape of boost pressure from the oil return when turbos require it.



Oh yea you do. Your car is scary to drive even on pump gas!



We normally cut piping with it, but in this case we were cutting the front bumper supports on the HPF M3 and on My Tran's M3. Nobody noticed the massive stage 4 intercooler on the car in the above pictures.



Agreed. We have spent a "FORTUNE" developing these turbo kits. One could retire for life on what we've spent engineering these kits (as long as they could find a suitable investment). I'm glad you like the upgrade. Driving the four stage 2.5 cars we've done so far have convinced me that for daily driving there is no other car on the planet I would rather drive than a stage 2.5. Period! I'm glad you are enjoying yours.



I'll post up pics tomorrow. This system will work on any stage 1, 2, 2.5, 3 or 4 car. It isn't necessary unless the turbo is a bit loose and the car smokes between shifts. Some turbos are loose but then get tighter over time as the carbon builds up on the bearings. You want a slightly loose turbo so the shaft won't seize to the bearings but not so loose that a lot of boost pressure goes down the shaft. This system will work for both tight and loose bearings and we will probably include this in all of our kits shipped in about a month. Frank is getting our prototype, but now we have to fully engineer it for production.



Our stage 2.5 and stage 3 kits will be available for self install or dealer install once the shop has completed a stage 1 or 2 kit installation themselves. At that point we will authorize them for the stage 2.5 and 3 kit installs.

Take care,
Chris.

Originally Posted by HPF Chris

I posted up a thread a few weeks ago about our diagnosis of Boost pressures leaking from the compressor housing down the shaft and into the oil return line here http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=656007

For turbo kits whose turbo's are higher than the oil level and aren't using an oil pump this doesn't cause any issues because the extra pressure simply vacates into the crank-case. However, when an oil pump is required to pump the oil back into the crank-case the oil pump becomes a restriction to this excess air-flow. At boost pressures above 13psi, oil will leak out into the exhaust housing and will show up as white/blue smoke out the tailpipe. In order to vacate this extra boost pressure in the oil return line, we needed a very large opening into the oil pan. We also didn't want to have to require our customers to take their oil pans off and weld fittings onto the bottom of the oil pan. JP resolved both of these issues by taking advantage of an extremely large plug that exists on the oil pan of every S54 engine. He designed a fitting that replaces this plug that can be screwed into the oil pan with a socket. This fitting then has an internal threading that allows our -10 swivel to be screwed into it providing plenty of volume for the over pressurized oil to return. This is one small part of the overall oil return system, but I thought it was an ingenious idea on JP's part. This oil return system will come standard on all stage 2.5, 3 and 4 M3's where boost pressures exceed 13psi.