LONG POST (even for me):

This guy flagged me down in the p-lot at BestBuy today... "Hey man, is that thing boosted?" "Yah, wanna see?" "Dude, I'd love to. We just installed a turbo on my buddies car and it won't run." UH-OH! So they all came over and I ran them through the basics for about 20 minutes and then we went around the corner to where the storage lot where the car was. SKIP TO THE BOTTOM IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ MY REVIEW OF THE TURBO-SPECIALTIES KIT.

***********************
This is the exact kit:

Actually, the manifold, turbo, and IC seem to be all right... but the rest of the pieces and overall engineering is for crap.

The water hard-lines splice into the heater lines going into the firewall... which means your heater now works REALLY WELL! And those lines run directly across the top of the turbo and DP. Because of that, there is very little room or method to heat-shield anything short of individuall wrapping everything.

The oil feed comes via a sender under the intake manifold (which made zero sense considering where we usually take our feed). They do have instructions to tap the pan (and they recommend in the kit instructions to remove the oil-pan for this, actually citing the Haynes reference for removing the crossmember and lifting the engine). No menion of simply tapping under PS motor.

The BOV is chrome plastic crap... can't see how it will hold any boost at all. The couplers and vacuum lines are all the cheapest hard-line crap or NO-**** made of rubber.

The IC piping is that really crappy metal stuff that you swear is really plastic with a light metal coating. There is no port for the IAC hose... in fact, his IAC tube was still on the IAC, but just sitting there unattached to the intake. I told him to expect a slight idle problem.

The vortech-style AFPR (not shown in the pic) was chromed and looked like it would fail with just stock fuel pressure running through it.

But all that being said, if you knew what you were doing... you could probably make this thing work fairly well for awhile. Things are going to start breaking immediately, but upgrading should be straight forward. The turbo is a Garrett 2554r, so it's good to go, but I would be surprised if anything else in the kit lasted longer than 5k miles. He also had the SAFC installed, so fuel control should be "easier". He had nothing for timing... I enlightened him. END OF REVIEW
***********************

So, they wanted me to help diagnose the problem. He turned the key. I could hear the solenoid click and the starter clearly engaged... but the motor wouldn't turn. "Your battery is dead." So I backed up and hooked up the jumpers... same thing. Starter is engaging with plenty of juice, but it won't crank. So we got out a socket and tried turning the crank by hand... WON'T BUDGE... even with a cheater bar. He said on their first attempt to tap the pan, they drilled to far back and then redrilled further forward. They plugged the original hole with a bolt that they say currently extends about 1" into the pan. Check the pic. QUESTION: Would a bolt sticking 1" into the pan in either YELLOW circle hit anything, like the crank? I know the forward one might hit the oil pickup, but that's their current tap, not bolt.

I told them to charge the battery overnight. Then see. If it won't crank, rap on the starter with a hammer while trying it. If that doesn't work, take the battery and starter in and have them checked. If they are good, pull the pan and see if the bolt is hitting something. I didn't say anything about push-starting it.

CAN ANYBODY THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE! An improperly wired SAFC wouldn't keep the motor from cranking, would it? He said it ran 100% perfect prior to the install and that it's only been about 3 weeks since then.

 

yes the improper safc would. with an improper wiring job the FP wont come on and no FP= no running motor. Also the bolt could have messed up your windage tray and wedged it on the crank. better to JB weld the hole etc. GL man FWIW i tapped there and it works fine.

 

Check the grounds. My guess is that the ground on the drivers side got disconnected and now it won't crank...

Mark

 

if you couldnt spin the motor with a cheater bar on the crank, then it doesn't matter if the battery is charged fully or not; the starter will never spin it either.

grounds, safc, fuel pump, battery voltage, none of that **** matters if the block is frozen. a push start would have been a bad idea. the rear wheels just would have locked up, that's never good.

 

My guess is they need to take out the bolt (cut it down and put it back in), you already ruled out the starter by trying to turn the crank, just hope they didn't F' it up too bad.

How is the downpipe? I was always curious about this kit, sounds like it might be a good starting point for someone who knows what to change right off the bat.

 

Wouldn't take long to pull the bolt and see if the crank will spin. My concern would be if they damaged the windage tray, like magna suggested, then simply pulling the bolt may not work and the whole pan might need to come off.

 

Yeah if the signal from the SFAC is @@$@# it wont turn on. I say disconnect the SFAC first as it is just wires. If that doesn't work try the plug.

So you say the manifold and turbo are "alright" what about a DP ???? Maybe new source of parts if they can drop the price and just sell that or "alright" only when compared to the rest of the crap?

 

If the engine is LOCKED, IE you can't turn it with a cheater bar, then it doesn't matter if the ****** has a fuel piggy wired correctly or not.

 

Listen to Ben guys

 

Missed that... pull spark plugs and see if it's hydrolocked.

Mark

 

Pull his spark plugs and look inside. For me, when we installed megasquirt, we ran into the problem where we literally filled the cylinders with gas and hydrolocked the engine and had the same symptoms you describe.

 

maybe i should read the whole post

 

What may have happened is that the bolt pushed the windage tray inward enough to interfere with the crank, or the bolt itself is actually making contact with the crank balancers. You were unable to turn the motor in either direction? The only other would be that the engine is hydrolocked, unless they messed with other things besides just the pan, and I assume they left the windage tray attatched when the pan was off.

 

hydrolocked. if that bolt has been in there 3 weeks and this just happened, it wouldn't make sense. someone running a SAFC without ignition control would probably subscribe to the thinking that more fuel would compensate.

 

so what can you do if the motor is hydrolocked?

 

suck it dry?

 

If it's hydrolocked with gas, I'll bet they grounded the injectors (causing them to stay open) with the SAFC install.

You need to pull the plugs to let the motor dry out. You migh be able to pull the plugs and crank the motor and gas will shoot out the plug holes.

Frank

 

I may drop a letter off at the car later today. I've never heard of "grounding the injectors" to cause them to stay open... but the whole hydrolock thing is an interesting discussion.

 

cut the top, steal everything you can. forget being helpful.

 

the injectors receive +12v when the ignition is on. the ecu makes and brakes ground to fire the injectors. I think the safc intercepts the afm signal, not the injector signal, though. But if someone were to add ground to the injectors, they would stay open until the ground path is removed.