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I think progress has been made. I removed the compressor housing and cleaned out the puddle of oil that had gathered inside. I then idled the car from cold to warm without the compressor housing on the turbo. There was no oil coming from the wheel after 5 minutes of idle!
This is obviously not conclusive but it's encouraging. I then removed all the intercooler plumbing, cleaned it, and reasembled. There was no time for a test drove though. Tomorrow I will change the oil and take her for a spin. Hopefully there will be no signs of oil.
The bigger drain may have been the answer and there may have just been residual oil within the compressor housing and piping. Removing the scrubbies is just a bonus for back pressure in the crankcase if that was a factor at all. If this solves it then that turbo is just a really picky son of a bitch for drain requirements. Or maybe it has something to do with yours being cocked at an angle instead of horizontal making it more susceptible.
I changed the oil in the car and drove it to my girlfriends house for a test drive. There seemed to be a small amount of oil present on the turbo which means that problem is not solved. BUT IT GETS BETTER! I went to start up it to drive to target and it has a bad misfire. I shut it down and pushed the plug wires down thinking I didn't have one pressed all the way in. I go to start it back up and it doesn't want to start at all now. I let it sit while I go grab some stuff from target and come back. Plug the laptop in and note that it's not a bad coolant sensor this time. Try to crank the car over a few more times and it hydrolocks on fuel because it's flooded.
I'm not sure I'll have time to bring it to Southeast or that they would be able to diagnose and resolve the issue with that short of notice. You don't rebuilt these turbos. You buy a new supercore.
Ryansmoneypit had southeast rebuild his turbo, it was quite reasonably priced.
I changed the oil in the car and drove it to my girlfriends house for a test drive. There seemed to be a small amount of oil present on the turbo which means that problem is not solved. BUT IT GETS BETTER! I went to start up it to drive to target and it has a bad misfire. I shut it down and pushed the plug wires down thinking I didn't have one pressed all the way in. I go to start it back up and it doesn't want to start at all now. I let it sit while I go grab some stuff from target and come back. Plug the laptop in and note that it's not a bad coolant sensor this time. Try to crank the car over a few more times and it hydrolocks on fuel because it's flooded.
****.
This.
Car.
I can relate...
my head hurts reading this, hope you get it resolved.
Much cheaper and should accomplish the same thing. Any reason why a simple restrictor wouldn't work? I get that regulating pressure is technically better but if a restrictor is adequate at 1/10th the cost I would rather go that route.
I had a chance to work on the car again last night. Working in a parking lot after having a garage is absolutely terrible.
1) Put a 1.6mm pop rivet oil restrictor on the oil feed fitting.
2) Pulled plugs. Ran spark test mode. I had strong spark on all 4 plugs without cleaning them. Cleaned them with a torch anyway.
3) Spun the engine by hand with the plugs out to clear the fuel.
4) Tried to crank with same injectors and got nothing. It just flooded again. Did not hydrolock it this time.
5) Swapped in my ID1000s but it was dark by the time I got it all back together. So I didn't have a chance to manually clear the engine of fuel again.
6) Showered and then changed the injector settings in Tunerstudio. Used the 4 bar ID provided settings. Injector dead times of 1.203ms. I also adjusted req fuel accordingly.
I am thinking that I need to log next time I crank to see if I am getting a proper cam signal. I didn't think to check that yesterday. I wonder if my cam sensor went bad or something. Is there anything else I should be checking to see if it doesn't start right up next time?
I'm glad you posted about the scrubbies in the valve cover recess. I did that to mine, and while at MATG noticed I had vapor coming out of the filter on the exhaust side of the valve cover. Never noticed it doing that before, but if my valve seals are leaking like yours then it might be a contributing factor. Thanks for passing along the information, I never would have thought of them causing an issue.
I tried to start the car again and took a composite log of the event. Something doesn't look right here. My brain isn't working well at the moment so I would love some help diagnosing the issue.
Apparently it was just the spark plugs. I got new spark plugs to throw in and realized while I was swapping them that last time I took it apart I had also accidentally switched two of the coils
It fired right up with the new spark plugs and the coils on right. It is now also running on the ID1000s I swapped in so the fuel needs to be tuned again. The idle was a little lean based on the req fuel adjustment so I imagine the rest of the map will be similar. I will do some driving this week to get the fuel tuned and closely monitor the turbo to see if the restrictor is working. Is there a way for me to tell if the turbo is being oil starved without waiting for the bearings to give up on me?
I also think have an exhaust leak on one of the turbo connections from the last time I had it apart unless it's burning off some oil that may have been spilled in the engine bay. Hopefully I can finally get some VD logs up.
So I pulled my turbo last night and dropped it off at Southeast Power Systems this morning with Mike Franke to test again. We had a very in depth conversation which included a demo turbo that is cross sectioned. Long story short he still contends it is not the turbo. He has seen only 3 seal failures on EFR turbos is the 7 years he has been servicing them. These failures were all iron center housing turbos on extreme EGT applications. There were 2 rotary engine failures and 1 air cooled Porsche (No ability to water cool the turbo) failure. The failures involve the seal rings relaxing from heat and then closing around the main shaft. This feels like bearing drag when you try to spin the turbo. He spun mine by hand and told me he can already almost guarantee that has not happened. He will run all the tests with both air and oil on their tests rigs to confirm that the turbo is actually in good shape anyway and let me know.
We then talked about my setup. He agreed that my oil drain and valve cover venting seemed to be more than adequate. He described my breather setup as overkill. His opinion is that it is either pressure in the block/oil pan or a stuck oil pressure relief valve causing excessive oil pressure, in that order of likelihood. The oil pressure would have to exceed 8 bar of pressure on an EFR to start seeing this issue and since my problem appears across the rev range he finds that to be an unlikely cause though he did recommend I get my oil pressure sensor on the car to be sure. So we are back to crankcase pressure. He pointed out that the BP is a timing belt engine and not a timing chain engine and it probably does not have adequate venting between the block and valve cover for high boost applications. He is pretty sure that is the issue and we discussed that since this is not something everyone is dealing with that there is something about my engine causing it. He suggested a leak down and compression test. If the oil pressure, leak down, and compression test all come back fine he suggests venting the block. Even if the leak down test does come back bad indicating I should re-ring he still suggested venting the block since I plan to run high boost as it is best practice and how an OEM would handle it.
So the current plan is as follows:
1. Await results of the turbo testing. In all likelihood nothing will be wrong here. If something is wrong then they rebuild it and problem is hopefully solved.
2. Leak down and compression test. I will perform these regardless of the turbo results. Pray there is no issue as I really do not want to re-ring this engine.
3. Buy oil pressure gauge for sensor I already bought and hook that up. Again, this needs to be done anyway. If oil pressure does end up being the problem then I plan to remove the relief valve from the boundary pump and run an external relief valve like Madjack since this is not an uncommon issue.
4. If everything else checks out or the leak down test comes back bad and the engine has to come out anyway I will vent the block where Bbundy did in front of the oil filter on the intake side of the block. This will go to my catch-can and I will block off the passenger side vent hole in the valve cover as it seems this is recommended on track cars anyway.
I will probably end up doing all of this because my gut is telling me it will be the rings because **** my life.
I'm hoping that they get to testing my turbo by tomorrow so I can get some word before the weekend. The way he was talking yesterday made me thing it would be done same day or this morning so I was surprised I didn't get a call already.
Maybe they found something interesting. Or the video and summary are in post-production. I'm sure they're being very thorough. That seems to be his way.
08-01-2017, 11:29 PM
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