When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
EBC hooked back up and things looking normal Looks like even before boost duty drops it's blowing the wastegate open, mabye? Boost curve goes soft just before going into boost control Definitetely gonna have to add some boost duty and fuel. Not sure why it's going so lean but oof.
DW450s are hitting 90%dc at ~11psi so gonna upgrade to EV14s. I'm considering switching to e85 now that I have a bigger van (2006 Sprinter high top) and should have room to bring plenty of fuel jugs so might need the overhead anyways.
Trimmed the hood and installed hood pins last night. 2" piping didn't require dropping the radiator at all, so that's nice. Just trying to knock out projects steadily day by day. Now that the car is running again and can rip around in boost have a lot more motivation to finish it up and start tidying things up (like finishing glassing the roof scoop and finishing the livery and I dunno, maybe washing it)
Well this isn't going how I expected and I'm now thinking I may have done it all wrong (besides the obvious of putting the turbo in the wrong place). Even with 2psi more boost the GBC20-300 seems to be on the struggle bus compared to T3 50 trim. All runs same stretch of road (I-10 across Mobile Bay; so it's flat, but subject to wind and so I do runs in both directions as such). Run 1 is T3 50 trim at 6.5-7psi Run 2/3 are GBC at 9psi. Run 3 was already getting into pulling timing, only about 1 degree, but would account for the slight loss. Yeah, AFR's are rich, but timing map is the same and (I think) pretty conservative for both. Unless my data is just completed borked (on MS3Pro now since MS3 Basic got fried) it seems the GBC torque/hp just stalls early and then starts falling off a cliff. Leak down on the "new" motor looked good previously, but thinking about getting it warmed up and retesting tomorrow. Also thinking about getting 3" vband adapter for T3 chinacharger just to see what it does for sanity check. Also thinking about just shooting the money cannon at a pulsar g25-550 since I only really need to operate at 4500+ rpm and the tiny lil GBC isn't really spooling any faster anyways b/c butt turbo. Also thinking it's about time to give up on this silly project and put the turbo where it's supposed to go. I'm sure some more Two Hearted Ale will guide me in the right direction...
In car it feels like it's pulling pretty good, but who knows easy to get wrapped up in the awesome spooly jet noises. Even with FMIC, which can bring things down to ambient pretty quick between runs, this turbo seems to generate a shitload of heat per pull. Data is data and if it a 3rd gear pull from 2900rpm to 7000rpm take longer than another one then here's your sign.
A 4th gear pull from 2500rpm for posterity. 9psi at ~3900rpm, F's in the chat.
Haven't really had time to fix fuel yet. VE table needs changes after switching ECUs and first I just wanted to make WOT safe, but it's way too rich in many places which certinaly isn't helping.
EDIT: aaaaand disregard Was looking at wrong spring chart. Green is 4.35lbs (where I started and was in use in T3 log below), Red is 5.8lbs so this checks out.
So last night last thing I did was take inventory of wastegate springs and quickly realized I couldn't be on the 7.2lbs combo (red + green), becuase green was sitting in the drawer. Popped the EWG hat off and only red (4.35lbs) was in there. So I was wrongly assuming that hitting ~5.5lbs was pressure drop across intake/intercooler, when in reality it's overboosting on wastegate only, apparently. The T3 never went over spring pressure when running wastegate only. Only difference between the setups, besides turbo themselves, is 2.5" vs 3" exhaust post-turbo (which is a very short run, would be surprised if it makes much of a difference in this setup.
Potentially making progress. Went out for a drive/tuning session yesterday and blew a hotside intake pipe out of a coupler at only 9psi. May have had boost leak(s) this whole time that weren't enough to not hit target psi, but maybe had turbo working too hard out of efficiency? Is that a thing? Have since double checked and re-tightened everything. Took the valve cover off today and checked timing belt for sanity check, was about as perfectly aligned as perfectly aligned can get after manually checking TDC against crank/timing cover mark. Also went ahead and re-gapped plugs down to 0.28 for **** n gigles since that's where I had them previously for T3, but only gapped more recent set to .32 or so. Doubt that made a difference, but who knows. Have only had a chance to do a 2nd gear pull, but it's a very flat and repeatable section of road and all previous results were showing the same hp/torque fall off a cliff whereas the pull I did just a second ago kept making more power all the way to 7k.
A few 2nd gear pulls, red is most recent after everything above.
May have had boost leak(s) this whole time that weren't enough to not hit target psi, but maybe had turbo working too hard out of efficiency? Is that a thing?
Absolutely. For turbos that have a speed sensor provision, it's always recommended to install and log the turbine speed for this exact reason. The turbo will make the same PSI with a minor leak, but will work much harder to get there.
Absolutely. For turbos that have a speed sensor provision, it's always recommended to install and log the turbine speed for this exact reason. The turbo will make the same PSI with a minor leak, but will work much harder to get there.
In my quest to diagnose definitely thought of speed sensor, might have to consider it just for another data point. Comparing the two ~9psi runs logs from above, the weaker one is calling for more boost duty just to hit less boost, so I think that's a pretty good indication it was boost leak. Might need to add a boost leak tester to the arsenal just so I don't have to chase my tail on something smiple. The blue run also gained 21f MAT by 7000rpm, red run 14f, but not the same weather.
Finally managed to find and resolve the primary (and only remaining) boost leak, egr block off plate. Once couplers and stuff were sorted out the EGR block off was passing so much air it was a nice lil breeze. Not sure how the plate got janked up, but straightened it out with a combination of vice/BFH, stole the EGR gasket off the MSM intake manifold, and all was well. Went out to tune and things were going well at 9psi needing less boost duty to maintain, was actually overshooting slightly at lower boost duty. Great! Loaded up a log for VirtualDyno, graph looked good except for the once again falling on its face up top so decided to throw 11psi at it and see what happens. All was well doing some brake boosting and partial pulls until I did a 3rd gear pull. Hit 11psi then immediately started bleeding boost off. Bah! Did some partial pulls and couldn't make more than 3-5psi so pulled off and checked couplers, couldn't see anything obviously wrong and called it a night.
Starting to look more and more like I chose the wrong turbo (duh), surpring how well the T3 50 trim seems to have worked for this application.
GBC20 red / T3 blue
11psi run that had currently unknown issue, guessing more boost leak things.
Got a boost gauge for sanity check, gotta fix the issue from last night before I can test in boost, but even at idle/vacuum seeing different results (and more within expectation for motor that idles super smooth/pulls strong) than what map sensor reports.
The findings start comin' and they don't stop comin'. So I got the bright idea to check for a log from back in September, which was the first outing for MS3 Pro, BUT everything else being the same at that point. Sure enough had my couple of track sessions in there before losing the water pump pulley and wrecking the old motor, but at least had a good outlap third gear pull to use. NOLA is flat so at least somewhat reliable and the results are a bit of a sigh of relieft while also being frustrating as hell. Been chasing my tail wondering why the car isn't making power, but now it's really making sense. Looks like there's AT LEAST a 1.5psi delta between what the MAP sensor is seeing and what the manifold is actually seeing (just trying to rough extrapolate whp loss from run to run taking into account timing being pulled from incorrect readings).
Anyways. Red is MS3 Basic T3 - Green is MS3 Pro T3 - Blue MS3 Pro GBC20
Yelling into the void may finally have come to a close. The actual final piece of the puzzle *knocks on wood* was the IWG flapper likely leaking this whole time until last night the tack welds got sent to the shadow realm. That's why I lost almost all boost. Slapped the IWG back on tonight with no boost reference and not only was boost back, but back with that spool that was expected from this turbo. Very happy with how it's performing now although VirtualDyno still showing up real low. It feels like it's pulling like a truck so I dunno, some combination of the ECU and wing/splitter must be throwing things off.
Log unrelated to the VD pull, just romping it in prolly 3rd gear enjoying making all the noises.
Installed Race Louvers RX extreme side hood vents and Singular fender vents today. The flat surface of the hood proved to be really easy install, but good warm up for fender vents. Running on crap sleep and accidently installed the fender vents on top instead of flush from underneath, but think I'm just gonna leave it. Too many other things to do! 😆
Loving the updates…tremendous amount of work chasing the issues.
I’m fatigued just reading about it…
cats!
Thanks! I'm sure I could made it less fatiguing without my chaos approach to troubleshooting/posting, but the motivation was high last week and my brain was in full problem solving mode hah. Solving for multiple problems at the same time it would be smarter to back up to a more high level view, but oh well grinding through it got it done and was even a little bit fun.
Took a break from working on the car yesterday and simply cleaned the garage. First time tools have been put away in probably 6 months, clean floor, a close to the chaos for now.
Finally made it to the dyno and am pleased. Feel like 12psi should yield more hp, but whatever, feels great and making somewhat flat GLTC class hp. I'm actually shooting for 191whp at 2351lbs, so have plenty of overhead for making this even flatter, but waiting til I can get on the GLTC compliance dyno before changing anything. Happy with the results! Boost control will need some more work, but that's a pain to dial in on the dyno. Exhaust gets waaayyyy hotter on track and requires some tuning based off that, dyno/street just ain't gonna respond the same.
05-07-2023, 03:20 PM
0
