I killed my used Garrett 2560r on a FM manifold and downpipe.

I am cheap so I bought a Pulsar 2860 Gen 2 instead of the genuine Garrett because it was $700 instead of $2000.

I have a built motor. BP4W, 9:1 pistons, stock head, flattop intake, 6spd, Haltech, etc.

Initial quality impressions were good. I had to drill and tap the front of the compressor housing for a wastegate reference port. The boss cast into the side won't work with the FM turbo clocking.

This turbo is very good. It spools almost as fast as the old 2560r but keeps pulling all the way to redline. I see 15 psi by 3400 rpm.

I did not port the wastegate. This was a mistake: 15 psi at 7000 rpm with 3" DP and 2.5" exhaust with 7 psi actuator spring. (built motor don't care).

If you have a FM manifold and downpipe this is an excellent upgrade option.

I'll be taking out on track this weekend, if it blows up I'll report back with sadness.

 

Nice! Cool to see so many people running these lately. Definitely a solid deal for the money, they spool great and pack a punch.

Mine boost creeps like crazy too. 12psi on a 7psi wastegate. Also have a built motor and don't care. If you were on a stock block this would be a dangerous choice of turbo.

 

These are definitely gaining traction quite quickly around here. I feel like 5+ people have grabbed these in the past couple months.

I can also attest to the boost creep. I ported mine a teeny tiny bit and am still hitting something like 13 PSI on a 7 pound spring. At this point it seems like porting the wastegate on any relatively free flowing setup should be expected. I imagine I'll be pulling mine apart this winter to work on it more.

Mine did fine on the 1 trackday I did with it. No complaints there.

 

The value for money on the Pulsars is hard to deny. Unless people start seeing long term reliability issues with them I think they're a really good candidate for anyone with a T25 manifold.

Has anyone actually compared the 2860 Gen 2 to a 6258/6758 with dyno plots and transient spool response?

I intend to get this thing on a dyno eventually.

 

+1 here to the recent PSR2860 havers.

I haven't ran mine quite yet. I had to yank the motor out to deal with a faulty BE OP Relief. Motor is going back in this weekend so I'm hoping I'll get some drive time soon. I remember reading over Fire and SimBa's build threads about the boost creep. It seemed like porting was a sort of fruitless endeavor so I decided not to worry about it. Plus, looking at the sealing surface for the flapper, on mine at least, it's pretty dang close to matching the diameter of the flapper. So, not much room to take out material.

I'm okay with a little bit of creep, but this turbo sounds like a rod bender for sure. What approximate HP do you guys suspect the creep up to 12-13 psi puts you at? I'm curious of the minimum HP wastegate alone is.

 

I had the same thought regarding flapper/opening size; there is a little bit of material that could be removed but not much. You can sorta see the line where the flapper seats in this picture. There should be enough material in the turbine housing to grind a channel from the T25 flange to the high pressure side of the flapper opening.





I think it is a bad idea to run this turbo on a stock motor. Too risky.
All of the creep I saw was above 5500 rpm but when it starts it goes up quick. Extrapolating from other dyno sheets I think it would be difficult to keep the power under 250 whp / 220 wtq with an un-ported wastegate.

 

Alright, well while we're sharing info and chatting about this turbo I guess I'll throw some more of my experience in here.

When I say I "ported" the wastegate, I barely did anything. I hadn't ever tried, so it was more of an experiment from me than me doing a proper job. I also didn't have the correct bits, so I think there is still hope for porting the wastegate more to keep boost in check. I also remember reading that opening the flapper hole was pointless and you needed to add a channel to the exhaust housing, as well as reading the opposite,




My wastegate didn't fit properly either with the orientation of my turbo, so I spaced it out using washers and some longer bolts from Home Depot, which is working for now. I might model a block/bracket and have a friend CNC it from aluminum or something, but the washers have held fine for a track day and autocross plus some street miles. I will say that I found the wastegate arm had disconnected from the turbo after the track day, so that might be worth keeping an eye on if the fit isn't perfect.




I also had issues with the oil feed line leaking, which was the result of a bad flange in the CHRA oil feed. I was able to drill the seating surface of the oil restrictor out a tiny bit and that fixed that issue. Worth noting that Pulsar ended up sending me a whole new CHRA under warranty for that. You can see the small ring in the photo below where the restrictor was fouling on the CHRA. I used a drill to shave back the flange fitting at that point so the restrictor would clear and haven't had any issues since. I tried 4 (I think) different restrictors and all of them leaked, so I'm sure it was the CHRA.




As far as power goes, here's a VD Chart that I pulled on wastegate pressure. Keep in mind this was on E85 and I usually see lower numbers than other people. For example, I had basically maxed out my 2560 on this same setup around 270 WHP (E85) or 220 WHP (91 Octane). On the Pulsar at wastegate I was around 250 WHP.

Note that the names of the runs are wrong. I believe EBC was disconnected or turned off in the tune without my knowledge


And here is a graph of a random pull at about 220 KPA vs wastegate. I don't know exactly where these pulls were done, so they might not be a great comparison, but should give a decent idea. I usually try to get decent roads (and have some I use often) for these pulls.


And, while we're here, here's the EBC table I'm using for 220 KPA here in Boise. I've had some really strange looking tables due to the wastegate weirdness. This is open loop if that's not obvious.



Having said that, I went back and looked at a log from a trackday out in Oregon and you can see that I was making 220 KPA at redline on my "low boost" settings which is basically tapering down to the wastegate spring at redline.





Anyway, sorry if that's a bit more of a ramble/braindump than people were looking for. I figured it was relevant since these turbo's are still relatively unexplored on here.

 

Also, because I'm hopelessly addicted to Virtual Dyno, I threw in one of my last logs from my 2560 and compared to the Pulsar 2860. The 2560 log definitely had a spike towards redline, so the HP figure is inflated and should probably be closer to 260 WHP. I've left the smoothing low to keep that visible. However, the spool up is what I think is worth paying attention to.

To be fair, the 2560 was on closed loop and probably wasn't tuned as well, while the 2860 was on open loop and was dialed in a bit better. I believe the 2560 would have been spooling up at about 90% duty cycle and the PSR was at 100%. Realistically I think that's negligible considering most MAC valves are supposed to be maxed out around 80% duty cycle.

Granted it's only 1 graph, but the 2560 seems a tad bit quicker, but IMO it's negligible. It's not a perfect comparison, but I thought it was an interesting data point. Stock block I'd probably still go 2560, but with forged rods I'd say Gen 2 2860 all day.

 

Some really good info in this thread. I ran a 2560 and 2860genII many years ago and came to the exact same conclusion you have. They spool exactly the same but the 2860 obviously has the capability to push right to the 400whp mark. If I remember correctly on 100 octane and virtual dyno I made 401whp/370 something ftlb on the 2860 with a kraken low mount and 3" dp. When I ran it on a FM manifold (the older design), 2.5"dp... I made 373whp/350ftlb @24psi on a dynojet.

If you search my name you'll find a lot of threads where I did a bunch of VD pulls and compare the turbos etc. I run a 2867 now and I do love it but sometimes I miss the early spool on the 2860. I'm giving up probably 400-500rpm spool with a 2867 over the 2860.

 

Andy, your posts are the reason I went with the GTX - and your experience with the Pulsar was the first I read of on this forum. I always enjoyed your videos too, kinda wish you kept your YT career going, was really digging those car guy friday vids.

 

Nice!!! We should start making some videos again that was fun. It's hard getting everyone together to make a video sometimes. Yea, the pulsar stuff honestly as far as I can tell is just as good as the real Garrett stuff. I haven't had any issues from my turbo at all and I drive the **** out of it lol.

How's your turbo working out for you? You run a 2860 as well right?

.... I'm newly single again after 3 years so you all will probably see me more often I have a lot more free time now lolol.

 

Ha! Welcome back then! We're always here for you, brother!

And yeah, I actually switched from an OG disco potato gt2860rs to a Gen2 GTX2860 with the .64 hotside. Night and day difference. Spools way faster, especially transient responsive after a shift, etc. And endless headroom for what I want (stock 6 speed, and road course duty car). With the old 2860 I had to ramp EBC duty cycle to the moon to get it to hold 18-20psi (and even then on hot days it wouldn't). Pretty much maxxed the thing out to crack 315whp. The Gen2 pulsar unit holds 18psi easily to redilne with barely any duty cycle, makes easily 300+whp with no heat and lots of headroom. I haven't turned it up yet since I don't wanna eat another gearbox and 300+ is already pretty silly. It's an easy 350whp turbo though! And like you said, capable of maxing out closer to 400's.

 

Andy, I was going to say the same thing as Fire. I've read all your old GTX2860 threads ten times over at this point. Watched most of your you tube video's quite a few times as well. Glad to see you're back.

I'm in the same boat as Fire. I'm hoping to keep my 6 speed alive for a while longer and try to figure out if I'm going to try to build one or what. It seems to be about where my turbo's happy on E85 anyway, so it seems like a good fit.

 

Yep I'm with both of you on keeping the boost at a sane level for the 6 speed to survive!! I've broken 3 of them now. I think the 6 speed really is on borrowed time over 300ftlb. I've been running my current 6 speed for over 2 years now and I have my boost set to 20psi or so.

Sure I could get a bmw trans but I like the OEM drive line it's just easier to find/replace parts and I like the way the 6 speed shifts especially with my Miata roadster tall shifter.

I'm glad that I have helped people in the community with the videos and the posts etc. I'm a early millennial so I will really prefer posting on these forms instead of FB. When you post on FB nobody sees it after a week and it gets lost, all the good information is still locked away on these forums.

 

What failed on your gearbox? 4th gear? I've had two 4th gear failures and my last one was I think the input shaft bearing ate itself alive. I kinda want to pull apart all my old broken az6s and build one good one lol

 

Less is more for sure with power on these cars for sure. You can make more but then like you said risk the 6 speed. Plus once I was making more power I was spinning tires everywhere anyways. Even with my car turned down on only pump 93 I still spin 3rd especially now that it's cooler outside.

Do you run straight e85?
I kinda want to try like a e30/40 blend on my car but that would just raise the power back up lol. I get the urge to change and modify things even though everything is working as it should lololol.

 

So I say E85 but it actually registers on my sensor as E65-70. We only have one pump around here so beggars can't be choosers. I've been running that for a while now and don't have any itch to go back to 91. I actually haven't run 91 since going to the 2860, so I need to get back onto that one of these days and make sure my 91 map still behaves well with this turbo. I'm pretty sure I'll lose ~50 whp going back to 91 which is why I don't have much of a desire to, but it's still nice to have the option.