yea it wasn’t hard. Just make sure you have a way for the air to escape past the hat.

It gained me about 2psi with a very weak 4psi spring

Today I ordered a four port boost solenoid. Hopefully it will allow me to boost a litttle more than 9 psi while keeping my low boost in first gear. If I can do that, this will make for a pretty quick street car without having drag tires on it all the time. I can ramp boost in any way I like and I’ll dial it in to ramp it just to the point of spinning in second and back it down a little.

Well as you guys know, we always want more. So I’ve decided a few things could be upgraded to increase power and efficiency. First thing is I picked up a billet 7875 from VS racing. I can’t say enough good things about VS. Viren always answered all my questions very quickly. Even late one Sunday night. I can’t say the same about on3. I was going to go with an on3 but I decided not to spend that much money and his sparse replies helped to reinforce my decision. So, I ordered the turbo on Monday morning, it was sitting on my doorstep on Wednesday. Wow!





Next is the airfilter and the down pipe. As pictured in the previous posts, I had to smash my 3” downpipe to get it to fit past the frame. Not ideal, but it works. In an effort to make more power, I order some 3.5” oval tube from cx racing. I should have done that from the get go but my budget was blown at that point. I chose 3.5” because it’ll give me room to grow and it’ll fit and probably flow better than a 3” oval pipe. I have a buddy who has a professional exhaust bending and swerving machine so I’ll get him to swedge pipe for me to match the 3.5 and 3” up together. The air filter was just too small too so I ordered a green filter that’s a bit bigger for more flow.

o and I'm adding a cutout. I hear they work wonders on turbo cars.

bigger hole don’t mean jack if the tubes in the IC are the restriction which is usually the case. Basically the core is more of a restriction than the pipe ID otherise the 2.5 or 3” pipe (if it was a restriction would by itself net a pressure drop) but it’s the core that’s always a restriction bc it sorta needs to be to give the air enough contact/time to disperse the heat.

I understand. I ran a AEM fail safe gauge which was a flow gauge with built in controller to control a relay or a solenoid etc. datalogs flow and if it doesn’t see any it cuts boost. either waya it’s going to cost u money so I get it. But most of the time it’s a non issue. You shouldn’t be “ depended” on the meth. The water is a safety factor which I use in the case of bad gas as an extra precaution. My setup isn’t aggressive in that I run more timing than you like 16*-18* at 10psi but I have a stock. low compression stock 5.3.

Thanks fellas.

I might as well update. My flex bellows on my crossover pipe broke. I noticed I wasnt getting but 7.5psi instead of 9.5-10 like normal. I think it happened slowly because the car started getting louder but didn’t sound like a leak. What alarmed me is twice going through a drive through I had to kill the car because they couldn’t hear me. I was thinking that was really weird. Then I took a coworker for a joy ride and beat on it a bit. Then it got even louder. I thought maybe the manifold had cracked. Pulled the car up on the ramps and found the culprit.




So i took the opportunity to fix the pipe like I should. I had a warped v band flange on the crossover. I originally fixed it with a custom copper gasket but still knew the flange was warped. So I chopped that side off the pipe and redid it and put a new flange on and dodntbwarp it this time. Learned some new tricks on that. No bellows this time. I need complete reliability.

thx!!

Well a little update. I think I had mentioned that I was going to change to a billet wheel turbo. I had some extra time on Saturday and figured it should only take an hour or two. Ha. Lmao. Lol. Yea. Right. Never works that way for me, let me tell you. First problem was the oil drain. The way this turbo has tabs to secure the compressor. They get in the way and the billet compressor came with a billet flange that angles it so it doesn’t hit the compressor. I had a slip fit and this required a cutting of the hose and change to an -an fitting. Not a big deal, jack car up and take oil line off and make the changes. Then I had installed some studs in two of the holes for the turbo flange. No big deal if they would have been screwed in from the top, but I left part of the bolt on it so it had to go back out that way. Of course they didn’t just turn easily and come out....I mean with my luck, why would they? Tape everything off and cut some slots. Got em out. For illustration:






then I had to run to the parts store, because you think I have some bolts to fit? Nooooo. Of course not. Have about every other size but this one. Hour down the drain. Now it’s time to mount the turbo. I’m sure you can tell which is the billet one.




i ended up forgetting that it’s such a tight fit that I threaded two of the holes to get the bolts in easier and not use bolts with nuts. Why I picked such an oddball thread I have no idea. 12mm x 1.25....my tap just wasn’t cutting it either. Another 2 hours gone because I went by four auto parts stores and Home Depot. Nope. Damnit. So then I kept looking in my taps which are pretty organized and found another. Damn. Ok. I’m an idiot. Time to mock up the turbo and make sure it fits. Nope. Of course it don’t. See how my down pipe is in the above pic? It slides into the turbo housing. Thinking something is wrong, I try to fit a fresh piece of 3” pipe in and nope. Don’t fit either. What-tha -fuuuuu. Bout .015 too small. Seriously???? So I remove the turbine housing. I chuck it up in my lathe. I turn it on for a sec to see how it’s going to behave. NOPE. big mistake. It’s so off balance that my lathe was just about to flop over. Bad idea. So......two hours later and a sore arm, using a flap wheel, I got it to fit. Here’s the finished product...... and I do have some comparison pull videos if anyone is interested.....

Didn’t want to keep going and going in the last post. But I do want to give my assessment of it. Let me first say, I’ve read so much on the differences between a cast and a billet. So much conflicting info and opinions. I only found one Dyno test. And it seemed promising, it didn’t increase peak power but it did light off faster and increased the mid range power. My butt Dyno, videos and logs confirm this. People are going to say it makes no difference going from cast to billet, and I agree. To an extent. What you have to understand is the wheels are totally different designs. That’s what makes the difference. Not the material it’s made of. What I’ve found is on some 60-100mph runs, the billet turbo is about a 2-4mph gain. I have an overlaid video and the cast wheel one starts with about a 2mph advantage and the billet one pulls ahead by 1-2mph by 100mph. No other changes and boost wasn’t changed. It does seem to have more midrange boost which I think is the difference and it does pull harder noticeably in the 6000-7000 range. Tell me what you guys think. The overlay one, the billet turbo is on top. And I do like how the cast one sounded better, it whistles while the billet one is quiet. Bummer.

no, why?

The light icon icon lit up is for fog lights, if that’s what your talking about. When my high beams are on, the high beam icon is blue.

nah they weren’t. But I can relate. The highway by my house is filled with idiots. People who keep their brights on and it agitates me. I’ll give them a quick blink. They don’t cut them off, I just turn mine on and leave them till I pass them.

Lmao. I just have to share this. When I first installed the turbo a few months ago, on very low boost I wasn’t getting the blow off to open. I guess. I’m not sure what I was thinking, I pulled the stuff spring out and left the soft spring.....more about that in a minute. I’ve noticed that my boost has been slowly dropping from around 10 to a max of 8.5 and I think that was a spike when I shift gears. I’ve been thinking to myself what could be causing it? For some reason I had a wild hair and decided to take the blowoff valve off and leak test it. My buddy told me a while back that a lot of the cheap ones will leak because the seat on the head of the valve isn’t cut centered. Yea. He was correct. Plus the guide the valve goes in was really loose and worn. It was leaking badly. Doh. I have a spare tho. So I check it. Yep. It leaks too. Chucked the valve up in my lathe and cut the sealing edge so it centers. Now it seals perfectly.
So I think the combination of a weak spring, loose valve and a non squared up valve face was causing me a serious leak I didn’t know about. Under boost it had to be leaking because it would drop and that one little weak spring wasn’t holding it. I put the stiffer spring it it now, but I may need to just use both springs. It starts cracking open around 13-15 inches of vacuum. I need to test how much boost it’ll hold.

Anyways, I just wanted to share a good up. And yea, she pulls even harder now! No boost drop and it got 9.9lbs in third and that wasn’t during a shift. It never would get over 7.5 in second and now I see about 8.9. Yep. I’m excited now. Lol