im currently letting the wastegate run into the atmosphere since its SUPPOSED to not leak and i dont plan on building boost if any untill my fresh rebuild is broken in...BUT, the damn thing is leaking. the valve is leaking.
at first i thought i needed vaccum to it but i am sure thats wrong. its the stock spring (so im told from previous owner, bought it used)and doesnt want to seal!!
any ideas???
should i get another spring for it??

**edit**
its a 46MM wastegate

 

so wait

do you have a new gasket? how do you have the vacuum hooked up? if you are running straight wastegate pressure you should have pressure from your pressure source to the lower port on the wastegate, and the top one should be open.

and when you say it leaks, do you mean like if you sit there at idle you can see smoke coming out?

 

no gasket. its the dump part of the wastegate.
the thing is, im going to have a AEM tru-boost gauge hooked up to it. right now there is nothing hooked ot the vaccum lines,
and leaks, if i place my hand over it (before it gets to hot), the leak is gone.

 

do you have a dump pipe or is it just open? dump pipe should have a gasket. and you still need a pressure source to the bottom port of the wastegate or it won't even open.

and somebody can correct me here if i'm wrong, but it can't leak from the dump port itself unless the wastegate has already been opened by pressure. And it's not going to open by pressure at idle. I would think that there would be a lot of slop in the spring and you could move it by hand easily (with it off the car) if you had a bad spring. It sounds like it's not sealing to the manifold properly but not necessarily because the spring is bad. I don't know about the Tial but on my HKS knockoff the gasket has a little ring in the center to seal against the spring. Your wastegate could be sealing poorly at the gasket and it just looks like it's leaking at the dump port.

I know this works on an internally wastegated turbo, but could you try and pull the wastegate off and use a hand/foot pump to supply air to the wastegate to see how the spring is working?

 

well i hooked up the wastegate with my AEM tru-boost and it still leaks from the DUMP TUBE.
if i hold my hand on the DUMP TUBE i have NO LEAKS anywhere else.
its dumped into the atmosphere until i begining boosting. this is a fresh rebuild and it hasnt even left the garage yet
im not worried about the dump tube yet sionce i wont be boosting for 1000 miles.
but if its going to leak ill prob put one on it.

wastegate lines attached as shown in pic.

 

Excuse the dumb question but what is that thing that's hooked up inline with the vaccum hoses?

 

its the boost controller valve that controls the amount of pressure to the wastegate.

 

whats the history of it?
happened to one of my old hks wastegates because an apex seal was caught in between

 

I dunno how much of a leak you're getting, but I'm not surprised it's leaking a "little".
The mating surfaces are not perfectly machined.
It's not designed to give you a 100% leak-free seal.
I think you're being a little paranoid.


-Ted

 

Plumb it back into the exhaust and you won't hear the leak. As a bonus you won't have an offensive exhaust note under boost...

 

thanks people. i guess ill route it back into the exhaust....i was just curious since ive seen other members running these and didnt hear to many complain about them leaking...its not a BAD leak...just bad enough to annoy me....paranoid strikes again!!