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I'm sure Lars will get you straightened out. You can check my build thread for some good photos of how I got mine situated. Tips:
- turn the wastegate actuator so the nipples are pointed sideways, not up. The way you have it, they may interfere with the hood and cause your signal line to rupture. As sixshooter said, it needs to be flush to the bracket.
- the big square bosses for the compressor bolts can interfere with the actuator bracket, causing it not to line up properly. Check for clearance; you may need to grind them down a bit so that the bracket fits properly to the housing.
- see the three metal straps that go between the six compressor bolts? Those hold the compressor housing tightly to the compressor. You don't need the metal strap under the actuator bracket, the bracket replaces it. If you do it the way you're doing it, too few threads are engaged in the aluminum compressor housing and you run the risk of stripping the threads (ask me how I know). Remove one metal strap and position the other two straps between the four bolts that aren't occupied by the actuator bracket.
- Once you've done all that, and your compressor housing is clocked correctly, you can tweak the bracket itself in a vice to get the arm pointed to the flapper correctly. It's pretty soft metal- go very gently.
Other tips:
- get your oil feed line fitting mounted, and your feed and drain lines attached, before you do the turbo stuff. It's a lot harder to do once the turbo and charge piping are situated.
- Use some Permatex high-temp thread sealant on all of the threaded connections for the oil feed and drain.
Not good. You need to clock the compressor housing differently. And you need to keep the actuator squared up on the bracket.
Clock the housing so that the discharge heads more towards the top side of the drivers fender above the frame rail. Try it with the actuator between the compressor discharge and the head.
It strange that your wastegate flapper arm opens in the opposite direction from most of the ones I think I've seen, too.
Clocking the housing that way is going to foobar the intercooler routing from Lar's kit. If that is the only way to get it to work I will do it, but I would rather look into modifying the bracket before moving in that direction.
There are others that have this exact setup and seem to make it work (from MKturbo.com):
Originally Posted by Schroedinger
I'm sure Lars will get you straightened out. You can check my build thread for some good photos of how I got mine situated. Tips:
- turn the wastegate actuator so the nipples are pointed sideways, not up. The way you have it, they may interfere with the hood and cause your signal line to rupture. As sixshooter said, it needs to be flush to the bracket.
- the big square bosses for the compressor bolts can interfere with the actuator bracket, causing it not to line up properly. Check for clearance; you may need to grind them down a bit so that the bracket fits properly to the housing.
- see the three metal straps that go between the six compressor bolts? Those hold the compressor housing tightly to the compressor. You don't need the metal strap under the actuator bracket, the bracket replaces it. If you do it the way you're doing it, too few threads are engaged in the aluminum compressor housing and you run the risk of stripping the threads (ask me how I know). Remove one metal strap and position the other two straps between the four bolts that aren't occupied by the actuator bracket.
- Once you've done all that, and your compressor housing is clocked correctly, you can tweak the bracket itself in a vice to get the arm pointed to the flapper correctly. It's pretty soft metal- go very gently.
Other tips:
- get your oil feed line fitting mounted, and your feed and drain lines attached, before you do the turbo stuff. It's a lot harder to do once the turbo and charge piping are situated.
- Use some Permatex high-temp thread sealant on all of the threaded connections for the oil feed and drain.
Good tips, I will see if I can change things around soon.
One question: from all my reading I am seeing that AN fittings require no thread sealant. Are you only talking about the threaded ends that attach to the drain and feed adapters for the turbo, or both those and the AN fittings for the feed/drain lines?
I know that -AN fittings aren't supposed to need thread sealant, and that's how I hooked mine up. Sure enough, I was leaking oil around the fittings. Very slow leaks, but enough that it bothered me. I went back and used sealant on both sides of the screw-in connectors (-AN side, and standard thread side that screws into turbo fittings) and it's been tight as a drum ever since.
You may wonder how long to let the thread sealant sit to harden. Seems to me like it never hardens, so feel free to drive it right after. I played it safe and waited 24 hours though.
Are you using electronic boost control? If not, you don't need to hook up both ports of the actuator. What do you have those hoses running to?
Wastegate pressure for now. Source line is coming off pre-throttle body cold side intercooler piping and is getting tee'd to feed both ports on the WGA:
I think this is incorrect- it should go only to the port closest to the front, leave the port closest to the firewall open. One port is on either side of the diaphragm- if you have the same pressure going to both sides, the diaphragm doesn't move and the wastegate doesn't open.
After a minor setback, everything is buttoned up and ready for tuning. I made an intake using various silicone couplers and a K&N filter. The filter looks a little small, but I did the math and this filter should flow enough air for around 200hp at 7000rpm. I have some room to move to a bigger filter if needed.
Still need to make the heat shields, but I want to get a rough tune on it before the weather gets to cold.
That heater hose is awfully close to the downpipe- in one picture it looks like they’re touching. Did you bend the hard pipe backwards before you installed the turbo stuff? I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but I wouldn’t run it like that.
I’d go ahead and build a boost leak tester, and test thoroughly. You’re probably going to lose a bunch of boost through the PCV valve, read up on that and the solutions. Take some time and sort out all the mechanical stuff (leaks, wastegate pretension, etc.) before paying money for a dyno tune. You can’t fix mechanical issues with tuning.