#22613, "Woohoo finally made it to Club7PSI! )LONG+LOTSA PIX)"
Yep you heard right I'm boosting 7 psi now bwahaha, official stage 2!!! I knew the car was ready for 7 psi for quite some time now just that my manifold gasket blew and my compression is kinda low so I've been holding off on upping the boost. Well after going easy on the pedal for like 3 weeks I finally got my TTI racing manifold gasket. It's a nice chunk of copper that I kinda had to bend to get to to fit properly. Looks like it won't explode on me like the old gasket dide bwahahah, only time will tell. It was a bitch getting that stuff of out there and back in, it felt like I was installing another turbo kit. I crossthreaded a manfold bolt too that sux ass
While I had the manifold gasket changed I brought the whole turbo system to a muffler shop and they made me a dump tube that went into my downpipe kinda like dino's. For the most part he did a good job except in one spot I'm not really happy with. It's like a square 90 degrees bend (if you even wanna call it a bend) in the dumpipe, thats gotta suck for flow. Then I was soooo concerned about getting it to clear the engine bay hoses and crap that I forgot about under the car. I'm trying to put this downpipe in and crap it doesn't fit, the dumptube is hitting the crossmember! SO I take it to another muff shop (it's a bitch looking for a muffler shop and when I do find one they think I'm crazy!) and have them kinda move it so I can install the cross member. I drove the car with the crossmember half on, it was pretty scarey, you could feel the engine jumpin around and the crossmember making all these noises. Haha it was super ghetto.
Well eventually I got this bitch working right before reserve drill weekend. My unit is like 30 miles away and there are some nice uphill climbs on the way to test it out. Woohoo it pulls, I got my lost power back. That gasket held in there well, didn't have any bolts poppin out. Got to 110 pretty quick and I climbed a steep ass hill pretty easily at 80. The best thing NO stinky exhuast smell during hill climbs woohoo and I could hear the turbo spooling a lot longer, still got kinda loud but not as loud as before! The wierdest thing is that when I drove real early in the morning when it was really cold I managed to get the AF ratio to stoichiometric. Haha first time that happened at 5psi, but when I drove home later it was rich again. The EGTs were still goot too never went past 1450 even though it was leaning up a bit.
So I'm satisfied with the 3 days of grueling work I did on my car so I decide it's time to up the boost woohoo. So I set the MBC to 7 after running it up and down the block like 10 times. Damn cheap ass boost controllers. Then i drive it the next morning to drill. Haha I got hella scared cuz I peged 10 PSI when I went WOT for the first time. So I'm all hmm boost controller must've moved or something. but it didn't for some reason it spiked to 10, that was the only time that day. Wahahah that 1 second of 10 PSI was heaven though I'll say that. So then I take it on the the freeway in the freezing ass weather and woohoo it hauls ass. I flew up the hill even faster this time. Then as I was getting closer to where I was going the same exact thing happened again, the fuel ratio starting leaning out! It was eventually in the red, but the egts were around 1400. I'm like oh crap I maxed out the fuel system haha! It was tripping seeing the gauge reading red instead of green. So I try to go easy and let it cool down some. On the way home it's fine rich again cuz of the warmer weather. But dang the intercooler is that good that I can peg 10 PSI in cold ass weather and was enough to lean out my mixture! 7 psi is gonna be some fun shit I'll say that bwahahahha!!! Perhaps I'll go for another dyno run and see if the car doesn't poop out on me and I'll know if it was the manifold gasket from the start. But that's when I can pull out 50 bux from my ass to spend I spent like 150 bux to get my car fixed up Looks like injectors are next hehe....
Booo look at the mess the dump tube made! OoOoOo shiny I could have sworn that this was black when I first installed it Before After Notice how the crossmember is pushed to the side and not bolted on I had to drive it to the muff shop like that! Bleh look at that horrible joint I had to lower the RRE tie bar (as if it wasn't low enough yet) so it'd clear the dump tube with washers and a longer bolt, supa ghetto! Whew my car has pretty much no space in the engine bay or under the car now as you can see!
