[s-cars] Driving Impressions from Evahboost, Long...

[CaptMagu at aol.com]

s-heads

Well, early this fine Evahboost found me driving the Beast to DIA for a day 
trip to San Diego. I am in fact at altitude as a write this missive. I have had 
several inquiries about the tubular manifold, the Garrett GT 35R dual ball 
bearing turbo, the Turbosmart Wastegate, the adapter I came up with, the install 
in general, and my driving impressions so here we go.

The Tubular Manifold:

This manifold was built in Sweden by RS Tuning. We chose mild steel vs 
Stainless because of the brittle nature of Stainless in these applications. When 
Dave Dawson and I made the first installation attempt, we met with defeat because 
the original orientation of the turbo would not allow the the turbo intake to 
fit behind the headlight assembly. It seems that Ronnie of RS Tuning had 
designed these manifolds for S2/RS2 applications with a parallel to the head mount 
and we were very disappointed. I tried to sell the manifold and source 
another with no success. Stuck with what I had, I began to engineer. TEC came to the 
rescue with a set of machined T3 flange plates that would accept a 2 1/2" 
stainless pipe. Next was a 45 degree mandrel bent pipe that could place the turbo 
at an angle and further outboard. The pictures I have posted show the 
placement. EGTs are significantly lower to the tune of 200-250 degrees. More 
observations to follow. Dave has 3 of these manifolds available if you're interested. 
His e-mail is:

Djdawson2 at aol.com

The Garrett GT 35R Turbo:

Dave Dawson has a GT 30R turbo with mostly stock paraphenalia with the 
exception of forged rods and pistons and LWFW. He even has the stock I/C. His turbo 
spools at about 4000 rpm but he did see an improvenment when he went from a 
.82 ar hotside to his current .63. The GT 35R does not come with a .63 hotside 
so I had TEC machine a GT 30R .63 hotside to accept my GT 35R. Since the GT 
30/35 turbos come without the turbine housing, this was a simple paperwork fix 
but a much more complicated machining challenge. TEC had to model the profile of 
my turbine wheel and then machine out the inside of the housing. The results 
are outstanding. The boost threshold is about 3-400 rpm higher but the flow is 
amazing. I have seen redline pulls of 22 psi in first, and 25 psi in second 
and third with no drop off. Simply amazing. Charge air temps are a little lower 
but with the Happersized FMIC, its hard to tell a difference. My Davtron I/C 
temp gauge's inlet temp probe has been kaput for a while so I don't have any 
quantative data on the input side, just the output side. Lower EGTs are 
attributable, for the most part, to the new tubular manifold.

Turbosmart Wastegate.

I have had a lot of questions concerning the WG. Like WHY??? Well, our stock 
WGs are pretty ugly even if you polish the cap like I had done. Second, the WG 
orientation and fabrication of the WG downpipe and its orientation to the 
exhaust DP are the hardest part of this type of mod. As I was exploring options 
with Jim Latour of TEC, we came up with the Turbosmart WG and its dual V-band 
clamp mounting assembly that gives a you 360 degree option to the WGitself and 
the WG DP. The BLING factor had nothing to do with this decision. You guys 
trust me on this don't you????????????

The Adaptor.

The TEC provided T3 flange plates are stainless. They machined out a 2 1/2" 
female receptacle that allows the mounting of the 2 1/2" SS pipe. The pipe had 
a 45 degree mandrel bend and about 10" of straight on either end. We ended up 
using the entire 45 degrees and made the cut right at the junction going to 
straight pipe. Dave also rotated the bend upwards to raise the turbo and give us 
the maximum room for placing my current SVT Cobra Snorkel airbox and 
PBMAF(Pederhousen Big MAF tm) below the compressor inlet. The bottom of the box is now 
2" lower than before and I'm gonna have to do some surgery to cut the bottom 
of the box.

General Stuff.

I thought I had everything we needed for Dave to get the install done 
starting Friday morning. I had backups and backups to backups. I still ended up 
running about 10 trips to Flaps, TEC, and Home Depot. Dave's partner Ian helped all 
day Saturday and Ben Howell made several bailout runs with extra odds and 
ends. We needed all the extras we had and then some. Check and recheck all your 
parts and always have extras. You can always return what you didn't need. 
Having a major turbo distributor almost next door is a real plus. If you've got 
turbo needs call TEC at 303-271-3997. They can help anyone with your turbo needs. 
This type of mod is not for the weak hearted. It really helps to have friends 
with lots of expertise and lots of tools. You have to be bale to think and 
replan when things can't go the way you originally planned. It really helped 
that I already had the FMIC and snorkel intake with the original airbox removed. 
I have already posted that it might have been easier had we not had to deal 
with my airbox/MAF placement. This type of mod also gets real expensive real 
quick.

Driving Impressions.

I was able to flog the car around the hills of Evahboost last night and this 
morning, I drove to DIA so my impressions are limited. I can't wait to get 
this thing on the dyno and the track. The powah delivery although at a slightly 
higher threshold is very linear and the but dyno is severely tested. Its kinda 
scary to stay on the throttle. The push is mind numbing. I am guessing a 
15-20% increase in my hp/tq numbers. Dave and Mike Pederson have reported a 
tendency for tubular manifold cars to die when coming to a stop as they drive along. 
I have the same problem. Something familiar yet weird going on here. My custom 
dyno tuned Sportec software seems to have held up very well with the new 
hardware. I did have to increase the fuel pressure to compensate for the increased 
flow with the current A/F at 12.5 with 25 psi of boost. It was really hard 
early, 5:00 AM, this morning on the drive to DIA to keep from flogging the car 
hard. Big Brakes are very important for survival. My old turbo and RS2 manifold 
were impressive but the new stuff is just over the top. The sound is 
different. Things are quieter around town and on the highway but the intake howls when 
the GT 35 comes on. I need to find somebody locally that can do some sound 
bites or better yet video. Yahooooooooo. That's all for now but more will 
follow.

Hap, wit lots moh dakine turbo stuff from Evahboost, Maguire