That gauge thing is Steve's handiwork. I just run the two gauge setup in the old dual din radio position. But that's too much Steve already for this post. Onto what I really came here for.
So we start here.
We got the Ebay "AMK" Manifold with the Tial knock off Wastegate. The manifold was totally fine, but the gate, not so much. As noted in previous posts, we had to mod the mani to get it to fit and even dumped straight out the bottom, it can't hold boost down at all. This lead the car to run anywhere from 11 to 37 PSI, throttle dependent. So, I find a solution.
A fresh out of the box DN Performance T3 Manifold with a V-Band 44mm gate. The Wastegate is from the company "On3 Performance" which sells their stuff on the Bay. I contacted them about their gates before purchasing it and was pleased with what I heard. They specialize in V8 turbos and the like with some parts going on Turbo diesels and such. My concern was how did their gate compare to say the big two, Tial and Synapse, and how well did this control boost on the low end? The response I got was they had put two of the 44mm gates on a TD truck running somewhere around 70PSI. The flange and manifold melted, but the gate was fine. They use a dual spring setup and have been able to keep boost levels on a Mustang south of 3 PSI. I said, ship it and we'll give her a go.
I took the Turbo off the car.
Not much to see here, literally.
Now, why do this you ask when all I'm doing is replacing the manifold? Well, it's the Ebay GSP 3582R fool!. It's been around the block now for close to 8K, been pumping 15-30(throttle controlled) PSI the whole way and run on nothing but Valvoline VR1 20w-50. Let's see what she looks likes.
Just the hotside with the housing removed but you'll notice the abject lack of anything on the oil seal. There is a weeping leak at the oil inlet fitting but that's my fault. Wanted to see how much blow by I was getting, peeked up the cold side housing to take a look.
...as a whistle. I have to say, I am relatively impressed. The turbo has no shaft play, no lateral play, no oil anywhere except for the aforementioned inlet fitting. Quite positive thus far. The real test is still a week or so away though, but more on that later.
So, we reassemble, and...
Give it the thumbs up. I got some baby hands with some gnawed azz fingernails, but it's still a big bastard and still pretty amazing for what I paid. Onto the new stuff. First, a side note. Gaskets.
Of course we have 19,000 different exhaust gaskets for the car, most of which work most of the time. Some not so much. I got in touch with the guys down at the shop here and they found that RemFlex makes a gasket for the 4G63 motor. If you don't know what that is, it is this.
It's basically a graphite gasket. Graphite has amazing heat retention ability but is very soft. This means two things. One, it absorbs a lot of heat, and two, it can crush. To give you an idea of how thick this gasket is, I compared it to the thickness of my lighter.
It's got some width there. What this does is allows the manifold to be effectively torqued totally incorrectly, and it will still seal. The company claims they tested some gaskets with only half the studs, and it still seals. In addition, the Graphite is good for north of 3000 degrees, so no chance of a blow out. There are two problems with it. First, you can only use it once, but at just 35.00, not a big issue. Second...
It ain't cut right. The holes for the exhaust ports were not even close to the size they needed to be. The material was all there around it, but I had to manually cut the holes out. I did this with a side cut drill bit and my Dremel. Any bit with fine teeth on it gummed up almost immediately, because the graphite is so soft and waxy, it instantly fills any small grooves, like on a carbide bit. The side cut drill bit worked well though, just a bit messy.
So here are the manifolds side by side. The mount flanges are the same thickness, but the runners on the DNP are longer and equal length. The AMK are not as noted by the double under 1-2 pipes. Also, the mount location of the turbo flange is different. Hmmm, this might be bad.
This is bad. The turbo won't go on the studs of the new manifold. Why not. Well it's GSP. So the holes aren't right dead on, where as with the DNP, Pretty damn sure they are. No bother, Dremel, carbide bit, 2 minutes and...
All better. So I installed the setup in one piece back on the car, then came the next part. The wastegate dump. What shall I do with that. Oh, I know. I'll...
Run it through the top of the hood. The way I see it is, sure, I drive it on the street, and sure, flames may shoot out the hood, but this is Texas. I got a redneck down the road from me has dual 6 inch pipes on his dually up behind his cab like the damn Rubber Duck from SatB, and no one seems to give a hoot. It's also the loudest truck I ever heard next to the jet powered Van I saw once, but still, not a problem. In Texas, we can pretty much do whatever we want.
So I hacked the pipe down to sit somewhat flush with the hood. I am still working on cleaning up the hole a bit, but this was not a problem. The problem, I didn't take pictures of because I am that way.
So from the beginning. I had this sweet Thermal 2.5" exhaust I traded Steve for his 3". It never really fit, but mostly because of the custom O2 dump I have. With the AMK manifold, the DP barely fit under the pan, it hit the pan actually, and didn't really seal well on the O@ housing. I figured, new mani, Remflex 3" exhaust gasket, should be solved. Well I mentioned earlier, the turbo mount flange between the two manifolds is different. So much so, the DP is a full 2 inches off the O2 housing and hitting the pan. Even with the tail end of the DP laying on the ground, I can't get the flanges to touch. So the quandary. I can't drive it, and I don't have a welder at the house. The immediate solution is going to be finish the turbo install, and use a 12" hacked straight section off another exhaust and just dump the exhaust straight to the ground. Drive it over to the shop, and have the new DP made, or old one modified. Hopefully, we will take care of some of the noise issues with the exhaust and get a decent seal on the flanges. The good news is, the shop I'm going to, is the same one with the AWD Mustang Dyno. So once the new setup is on, a day or so later, it will finally hit the dyno. I have money saved up in case anything serious goes wrong with the car on the dyno, but I have no plans on pushing it to far. My goal is modest, in the 4-500 hp range.
So I will update in a few days. The temp fix to get it to the shop will happen this weekend, and I hope to be at the shop getting the DP fixed Monday. This puts Dyno time somewhere in the middle to end of next week. Again, 450WHP, and this turbo was worth every penny. It's already lasted longer than most would have expected.
/brox
