Im driving down the highway at 60 in 4th. A few hundered feet back, I back fired 2-3 times. I hear a huge BOOM from my engine bay, right under me. Theres a scraping sound of metal on asfault- so I shut it down imediatly. Now at this moment im thinking oh fuuck im screwed. There goes all my savings.

I stop the car, look under it, and my GUTTED cat has blow its shell off.
I search every inch of the engine bay and cant find anything. I hop in a turn it over, starts right up, runs great. Ok, so im thinking, what the hell now. Pull back on the road, steped on it in first- BOOM 5psi! 2nd I hit 7psi, 3rd, my guage shoots to 8.6 and I feel fuel cut. 4th, the needle shoots to 10 PSI. :-o

I couldnt build above 5 psi yesterday or the past few months. WHAT THE HELL.
The sound came from my passenger engine bay, oil, water, and everything looks good. Turbo has previous play (just a little)-

Im lost. What happened and why is my power back?

 

cus you have not cat. durr.

 

Quite possibly not as gutted as you thought it was?

 

it obviousl clogged up somehow and got mad at you. Stop gutting cats you sicko!

 

ya dude... do you have precats? what about emissions stuff?

 

Precats are gone, exhaust was completly gutted. I double checked.

Theres an EGR valve left and thats it. No Air pump, no ACV, no cats/split air pipe.

Now Im only building 7psi in 4th, but im still pulling strong all the first 4 gears- I have no idea what happened. Oh and the turbo used to make a strong :wooshing sound: when building boost, now it dosent as much. Its odd.

Im having someone come and help me figure out this pulsing idle, Ill see what happens when I tear the UIM and turbo off. I think I need to replace my gaskets/rtv them- I can smell exhaust in the engine bay.

Oh and when its cold- I can hear a backfire from the turbo side of the engine bay if I romp on it (I try not to)- so somethings not sealing right.

 

Turbo is comming off, inspected, compression test, and full fluids change.

Im thinking ill rip the UIM off, pull it apart, put a modded TB on with no Thermo wax- and reseal everything with a fine layer of RTV.

 

If you're getting these boost numbers from the stock guage then there... don't. It doesn't know any better than you do

 

Aftermarket guage.

 

Wondered why I could smell exhaust.... Spent a good 20 minutes examining the manifold and noticed a good 1" crack.


Im picking up a used turbo asap.

However I got pretty fed up staring at the dent on my car, so I fixed it today- looks ok- Its going to the body shop next monday.