i was making 420 at the wheels with 6psi and have severe boost drop that i still cant figure out,dont know if it is the kit,or somthing else but its been 9 months trying to figure it out

 

If 9 out of 10 are happy then you need some help with math.

 

Personally, I am with Brians01WS6...

I bought Rob's old 404ci ARE motor that was supposed to be perfect and hardly run. I switched oil pans with my old motor because I already had the fitting for my Incon oil return setup in it and tossed the pan that was on the motor when it got there.

I pulled the driver's side valvecover because I was replacing it with another passenger side cover (dual breathers). Guess what I found...lash caps laying all over the place. It was bad enough that I though that the motor was going to have rockers and pushrods that weren't there (which really wasn't a huge issue for me)...but when I saw the lash caps I wanted to puke. I found all 8 on the driver's side, but only 7 of the ones on the passenger side.

Since I had already tossed the pan there was no way to know if it ended up there or not. I ended up pulling off the passenger side head looking for the missing lash cap and still couldn't find it. I called Rob the next morning and he said that he didn't know that the motor even had lash caps on it and told me that it had probably fallen through to the oil pan. When I was back at the shop the next morning the mechanic brought me over to the motor and showed me the back two cylinders on the passenger side. Guess what, they were really badly scored. Something that I must have missed at 4:00am in the morning when I was pulling the head looking for the damn missing lash cap.

I tried getting in touch with Rob many many times to tell him about the damage, but he never got back in touch with me and I always got the run around when I called QMP. I ended up giving ARE (the original builders) a call and they are doing a lot to help me out.

From my point of view Rob should be covering the parts, machining, shipping, and labor. The grooves were so bad that the block had to go 40 over, so I needed new pistons. Since I had to get new pistons the rotating assembly needed to be rebalanced before reassembly. Not exactly what I expected for a $10k motor that was supposedly never run hard and only broken in for 50 miles.

The motor is still at ARE and they have been great to work with and have helped me out a lot...but Rob really left me out to dry. He hasn't responded back to any of my emails, calls, or PMs.

I would tell anyone that would listen to stay away from Rob Raymer and QMP.

 

make that 3 while we are counting.

 

I still don't understand why people continue to buy log manifolds and kits like the STS. Sure it will make some power with enough boost to blow the buttons off your dickies or using enough alcohol injection to convince budweiser to visit rehab, but you could make alot more, alot more efficiently with a well thought out setup. Oh well...guess I must be in left field. The way I look at it is, a polished turd is still a turd.

As for Rob, never dealt with him in buying any kits, so I'm not here to attack his credibility.

Jose

 

Well up untill recently we didn't have much choice. The only kits that were avalible were the TTI and QMP kits. The TTi race kit that was recently released uses tubular manifolds but you lose your A/C.

 

That guy hasn't been working for him for at least since the beginning of the year. Your opinion may be your experience but I know the man can tune a stock PCM just fine. Look what he did with his own formula.


Are you reaching peak boost? Runnig boost controller? What size wg spring? leaks? Is there a topic thread about this, maybe I guess at something for ya.


From what I understand, Rob had made several trips to ARE's shop to get that motor done right. Guess they never did. I'm sure he was only relaying what ARE told him. Rob told me a good deal about his experience with ARE.


Because there's no room in the f-body engine bay when you want to keep your A/C, power steering, etc.


My car has been 660 miles away from me for nearly 3 months now. I have faith Rob will give my car a good tune because I've treated him with respect in every situation I've dealt with Rob. He's 7 weeks behind schedule on my car due to a piston mixup, engine work, piston coating, etc. I've missed most of the events I wanted to attend with the hawk. Am I a jerk about it? No. I believe Rob, and have faith he is doing everything he can to take care of me and get the car done and done right. He is hard to get a hold of now-a-days because he's busy finishing my damn car. He's booked!

I will let you all know how things go when I pickup the car on the 25th!! Woo!

 

Jose I agree with you 100% on that as well as something you said in another post.... "right now the only availible kit worth getting is the TTi race kit".

And Scott, sorry about your dealings with the 404ci. I am glad ARE is helping you out.... they sure pulled through for MM.

 

I did it.... nothing to it really... and if i had half the tools i needed and more skill, I could have made one heck of a kit. There is room in there, you just have to make it.
Just got the spal fans (1630cfm each)... works like a champ!.. Thanks Chris for the suggestion!

Check for cracks around the front two primaries on the log and around the turbo flange on the log as well.... and also move your wastegate to right after the passenger side manifold, vented to atmosphere. Are you running the T63?

 

Well once again I will bump up the list, as 9 out of 10 customers are probably pissed, not happy. I haven't said much on the topic lately but I felt the need to answer and I really don't care about what people have to say any longer if I can help out. Take my experiences for what you want.

1\ Scott98Z's motor. Bullshit, Rob advertised the motor as new and sold it that way, this was his second motor and he said had only a couple of dyno pulls, yeah right. I saw the motor it looked like expected, very worn and heavy signs of backpressure blowback in the cylinders the top of each hole was burned from excessive heat buildup. The motor had to be honed, new pistons, rings and bearing damage, the exhaust valves (Manley Stainless extreme duty) were burned and rockers were a joke. This motor showed extreme wear from abuse not build quality, my motor and MM's had identical damage from excessive backpressure and reverberation back into the motor from the turbo.

Very typical, blame someone else.

2\ Transdamit, here are a few things to look at. First inspect the drivers manifold for cracks, I had 10 that had to be re-welded and repaired for Kaos who bought my kit. This is one of the design flaws in the kit, the turbo free floats off the head end of the manifold (Turbo wieghs about 35 Lbs) and is extended freely about 12-16 in. in front of the manifold (you do the physics of leverage) with heat and cooling and constant flexing that manifold cracks like glass and you will never cure it. Do yourself a favour and fab up a bracket off the old alternator location to mount the turbo off the motor not the exhaust and prevent flexing, it's not hard to do. Make sure the crossover pipe into the drivers manifold fits properly, once again I kept blowing this off and finally wrapped it with header wrap and clamped over it to hold it, I even added a tack weld to keep it from moving. This was a constant source of boost leaks for me. A huge problem that I finally figured out was a big boost leak came from the wastegate itself. If you look at it and the plumbing the wastegate is directly in line with the flow of exhaust gases even more so than the turbo itself, at 10 psi on the dyno I was forcing the gate open and bleeding off boost, I never go around to fixing that problem but redirecting the wastegate will probably fix that issue.

3\ If you have the car on a lift, there is lots of room to place full length forward facing headers on the car. I know this for a fact because that's what's on my car, oh and BTW I still have AC. The trick is a little patience and lots of fitting. Thanks to ChrisARE360 we even figured out how to run a dual cat on my single turbo car. Thanks Chris.

4\ Here's one hint that causes damage to most high pressure motors from the QMP kit and the reason so many have identical damage. Look at the drivers manifold, the runners off the exhaust are 90 deg into the log, as pressure builds from the passenger side crossover it cause an eddy effect in the log and disrupts even flow, since the runners are straight out and pressurized, those eddy's force air back up the runners and into the engine and that's why the bore tops always look burned. This reverberation shakes the pistons, forces open the valves and shocks the motor. I'll bet every QMP car running any kind of boost will show the effect within a short period of time. The fix is simple, angle the runners forward and the pressure from the passenger side won't allow exhaust to force its way into the drivers side.

 

Nice info Warbird. Thanks

 

Was that fixed on KAOS's kit? Thanks man.

 

No doubt thanks alot warbird!

 

Well we'll certainly find out if your theory holds water on a non-ARE motor. I'll let you know when it's time to do heads on mine. I should have plenty of miles on the motor by then.

 

No problem, I'm assuming your running decent boost. When you check the motor I'll direct you to another vendor and 3 other non-ARE motors with the same problem. 2 of those motors came out in many pieces.

Cannibal: The manifold is pretty much as I recieved it from QMP, however it has been repaired and I did promise Daniel a mounting bracket from my new kit to hold his turbo as mine new one is. My kit has the same location for the turbo. I did have the runners into the manifold molded and de-burred to clean up some issues. It turns out that the manifold was put together as a straight pipe with holes cut in and the runners simply welded over the hole. In my case there was a 3/16" burr that I shaved of so it will flow more smoothly.

The cracks have been repaired and the kit cleaned up. The wastegate is re-directed and was able to hold 14 psi on my kit with only a 2 psi drop-off, more than sufficient for his needs. Overall you will see some differences in Daniel's kit, the cross-over was re-bent and will fit better, I gave him my scavenging pump and you will find the crossover is now flanged with mounting bolts to keep it in place.

I'm more than happy to provide any assistance when you start to work on it. If you have any issues with the kit as you guys recieve it, let me know and I'll get it fixed for you. BTW, I am sending you all the clamps and fittings that I used to make the job a little easier.

 

Ya I need help w/ my math. If these 4 or 5 guys arent happy, out of a 50+ other customers of QMP. Then what does that make it? Right, help me out again smartass .

 

Even the best shops have there critics.

 

hehe no problem glad I could help

I have thought about that type of setup before in a space restricted environment when you still want to get 1000cfm flow out of cats

 

The same problems that warbird is talking about has happened well before with the LT1 cars running the TTI system. Same design, and it was a nightmare, headers crancking, heads lifting, backpressure #'s that were 4:1....etc. Many of the folks that had the kit have already ditched the system for either the PTK or custom.

Jose

 

Yep, here we go again . Funny how all of this bashing on me gets let go again and again and again. PSJ, I thought this is why you said you "hired" so many more Moderators???? If I make one post questioning anything, it gets edited or locked within literally minutes. But as long as I'm on the receiving end of the bashing, it always gets let go (as it has now gone two pages long). Can you explain that please?? (I'm sure you can't, but try)

Okay, Scott. First of all, I sold you the motor you bought and advertised it EXACTLY as you purchased. I CLEARLY stated that it "DOES NOT INCLUDE VALVETRAIN, i.e. rockers and pushrods". If you can't remember that, use the search feature on this site and find the original Ad when I posted it for sale. But don't blame your poor memory on me. Perhaps you couldn't remember since you didn't check the motor out until nearly a year AFTER you received it?

Also Scott, you told me that you called ARE BEFORE you bought my motor and asked them about it in detail. You said that they told you the motor was exactly as I had stated, and that it was a "DEAL" at that price. You also told me that you had ARE do an engine before for you, but you had "really bad luck with them" because you were "charged for parts that weren't in your motor and would never buy from them again". I still have a copy of that email you sent me with those references. Good for you I guess that you changed your mind about them and were able to get them to "help you out" now.

Lastly, why would you be mad at me because the motor had lashcaps? I didn't build the motor, ARE did! They used lashcaps, not me! How would I have known they were on there??? The engine barely had any miles on it at all. ARE built it, AND installed it! Then you called me pissed off because YOU dropped the lashcap in the motor while installing the rockers! Telling me how you'd have to pull the motor to get it out...blah, blah, blah. What did you expect me to do, fly out to Cali and do it for you since I sold you the motor???
Once again, this is ridiculous.

Put down the funny cigarettes WB. Maybe your used to telling your GF that 4 inches is "12-16 inches". And unless your using a T88 (which won't fit), the turbo only weighs 19lbs. But in your world of lies, I guess 19lbs and 35lbs are almost the same thing...

Yea...of course that's a problem. I've only made 792rwhp and ran as much as 28lbs of boost with the exact same wastegate and piping.

Wow...sounds like somebody read the Corky Bell book! Oh wait....maybe not...you're a genius. Okay...EXHALE!

Brian, I didn't tune your car...Ed Wright did. Remember?? You were supposed to have brought me your laptop with LS1Edit so I could tune it. Unfortunately, I spent about 3 hours at the dyno trying to get LS1Edit on your laptop to work, and then when I called you, you said, "oh yea...I forgot that my buddy who was using it said he couldn't get it to work either". So then what did you do??? You told me to send your PCM to Ed Wright and have him do a remote tune. Which I did at YOUR REQUEST, against my judgement. I CLEARLY explained to you the possible damage from a remote tune with a turbo car, and you wanted it done. It took Ed two re-flashes to get the tuning right...on the first tune he had AF at 12.8-13.2:1 (yes, too lean, which is why I made only ONE PARTIAL pull on the dyno with it). And on Ed's 2nd attempt, I believe the AF was about 12:1, which was also a little lean especially for a stock engine, but YOU SAID you "would run race gas until you could get it re-tuned." Did you not???
So then you picked it up and drove it home nearly 300 miles. Went out street racing all weekend (just repeating what you told me), and blew it up 2 days after you picked it up.
You then called me and asked what I would do for you. And what did I do?? I offered to sell you any part you needed for you car at DEAD COST. I didn't hear back from you for several weeks, and then you called Jonathan and left a message that "unless I wanted this all over the internet, I had better pay for your motor". At that point, you are right...I had nothing more to speak with you about. I won't be threatened.
And FWIW, if I can't tune, then maybe you should ask TwinTrboCE who did his tuning? His car runs 9.8's and I believe he's #3 on the FI Fastest List. Care to guess who tuned it? Hint: His name starts with an R and ends with an R....hmmm.....

Finally, if our kit sucks so bad, why has nobody else with a turbo beaten my time yet? Nobody has even outran the 9.86 I went nearly 2 years ago with the Z28!! There are numerous turbo kits out there and you are telling me that in over 2 years, none of them can beat me? Not even with our "crappy log-style single turbo kit"????

Why doesn't ATI or Vortech get this kind of bashing? After all, I haven't seen anyone just throw on one of those kits on and lay down a number. Hell, PSJ's car made one semi-impressive "unlocked 400 turbo" number, and we've never heard anything else about it. We're over half way through the race season and it STILL hasn't made a pass!
And where's Harlan?? That car was "finished" last year, has the best of everything, tubular twin turbo headers, GM tuning ability, etc, etc,. and it's only been to the track once that I know of! And we still haven't seen his dyno graph posted. Why hasn't he outran my time if our kit is so bad???

Answer: Because it's not as easy as eveyone thinks.

Okay...clock's ticking...let's see how long this thread stays open and un-edited now that's I've responded? Tick, tock, tick, tock.......