Ptrhahn, my turbine housing hopelessly stuck too. I tried several different approaches. Nothing was working. You must be very careful if your going to try and hammer it off. The housing will cock and bind the fins on the turbine wheel; possibly bending them. What finally worked was using the housing bolts as jack bolts. I cut a few lengths of 5/16" diameter rod to use as a spacer to reach the other side of the center housing. One of the bolts, I used a piece of flat stock against a coolant boss. Since there are 5 bolts, you'll have to pick the best 3 so you can push it off evenly. Be very careful, spin the turbine wheel every time you turn a flat on the bolts to make sure your not binding the wheel. It's a little cumbersome and you have to fiddle around to keep the jack rods in place, but it works and doesn't leave elephant prints all over your housing from a BFH. Good luck with it.

I forgot to mention, I only had one summer and roughly 2500 miles on the turbo. And as I stated above, it was hopelessly stuck. I think I'm going to try some Cop-Graf anti seize lubricant on the housing and bolts. It's rated to 1800°. I work in a steel mill and they use this stuff on the coke oven door bolts. The doors get red hot. The guys that that take the bolts off say it's stays intact.

Thanks. I'm not going to mess with it and risk hurting the turbo. I'll send it someplace.

UPDATE:

I got the turbo apart, and the whole shebang reinstalled and leak free. I haven't, however been able to find enough space/lack of traffic to open it up past 6k in 4th. At 6k, it's showing about 12 psi.

It appears the spool may be hurt a bit, or at least it may need more preload on the canister (I'm at zero) to prevent the door from cracking open (maybe there's more pressure on it now). I'd also swear the car is louder now, but maybe not.

As soon as I can find a quiet moment out on the roads, I'll know for sure—but the boost is steadily climbing at that 6k/12psi mark, so I'm not necessarily optimistic.

The pattern is, if you watch the trace you can see it crack at about 8 psi like it's supposed to, then there's a flat spot for a while, and then it'll start to climb in higher RPM. All will be revealed soon, and then I need to figure out how to get the PFC boost control working.

If it doesn't do much for the top-end boost creep, I'm inclined to go back to the unported housing and live with it.

Quick update

I ported my turbine housing, see post 137. I've been driving it easy to break in a fresh rebuild. After roughly 400 miles, I figured I might as well give it a go. I did three 3rd gear pulls. I wasn't logging; just watching the gauge. I ran it up to redline. It never went above 18 psi. Considering it was creeping to 24 on a regular basis and peaking at 26 on cooler days, I am going to say the porting was very beneficial. Once I get a little more time on the motor I'll do some logs to see if it was hitting 18 right away or creeping up to it.

I am tuning my 8374 IWG 3.5" downpipe with 3" midpipe back. I am able to hold about 12PSI with the medium wastegate canister.


I do notice that with a richer tune the car wants to boost more than say a little leaner. car is making great power. I am also running water/meth.

I think I'm in business. 12psi. Spun it to 6500 in 4th, wasn't really creeping. It's 12 all the way to 7500 in lower gears

I'm going to put some preload back on it and then if that holds I'll try electronic boost control

OK, so at 3 turns of pre-load, I'm at the same peak boost (12 psi), but spool isn't much affected. I need to get the electronic boot control working now to see if it can be helped.

That sounds like good news. What did you end up doing to it?

See post #142... ported wategate, divider removed, and T4 divider removed in area of wategate. I'm actually using an undivided T4 gasket now.

It does seem to have hurt the spool a bit though, so hoping electronic boost control can help.

Right on!

Now you can try a 3.5" downpipe/midpipe to get the spool back and start all over again trying to take the boost creep out LOL. (Exhaust restriction is all a relative term...):lol:

But seriously glad you seem to have licked the boost creep the way you wanted to do it (fixed it with no exhaust restriction besides the little 3" exhaust).

:nod::icon_tup:

Well I guess I'm done till I get an external boost controller.

For whatever reason, the PFC boost control isn't doing anything, see here:
https://www.rx7club.com/single-turbo...-900599/page3/

I hooked up the Adaptronic, which Dave also tuned supposedly, but couldn't get it to idle cleanly (NBD for at least testing boost control), but despite having not touched anything in a couple months since I last used it, WARI no longer recognizes the ECU, so I can't tell what the fuck is going on.

I downloaded Eugene, which opened right up, and recognized the ECU (didn't even need a basemap loaded), but I've no idea if it's running the map Dave tuned, or what. It doesn't look like the boost control is set up, and it certainly didn't seem to work on the quick test I ran, so who knows. Windows computers absolutely blow, I can't believe there aren't angry hoardes of people regularly forced to use them burning down microsoft headquarters.

It didn't really look exactly like the video shows, nor could I get the live gauges to work as directed.

Here's pic of the boost control screen (upside down of course):

Update:

I found one of the boost solonoid pigtail wires was cut so I resoldered the whole thing. I don't know what happened there. Shitty wire.

Put the PFC back in, and now boost is uncontrollable. Even set at .80 and the lowest duty (20%) it just keeps rolling past 15 psi.

Not sure what to say now.

These cars will drive you crazy sometimes no doubt. I've been sorting through running issues on my BB '95 lately so I know how you feel Pete......

When you download Eugene, the ecu will not recognize Wari any longer. Both need to be uninstalled and reinstall Wari. I don't know enough about Eugene to know which ecu file you were using once you updated but I didn't think it was safe to run on vehicles yet.

You guys are legit speaking Greek to this PFC dude :rofl:

Yeah. Adaptronic really needs to state that on it's Web site MUCH more clearly. And maybe not offer it as the first choice above the software that actually works.

It says "shouldn't be used for tuning"... but if you can't RUN a car on it, why is it offered at all?! And why wouldn't you state that it'll hose up the program that WILL run a car. Now I've no idea what it's done, or whether or not the map on the ECU that Dave tuned is still there or overwritten (I don't have another copy of it, and who knows where Dave is). It still didn't run right because Dave couldn't get it to idle... and it starts too hard (almost like the old accelerated warm up system).

I watched the video on the new live gauges feature, and thought, "great, maybe this is finally usable". I took the Adaptronic off the car last fall amidst road tuning and decided to take the car to Speed1 and have the PFC tuned because my coolant cap sprung a leak and nearly overheated the car—without the PFC Commander, which I've always used for a water temp gauge, I didn't see it coming (the tiny little window on the laptop isn't really viewable while driving). LUCKILY I was trying out a vented hood so I saw the spray come out on the windshield. Otherwise, my motor would have been toast. I've since removed the hood. Bottom line, the thing needs a commander-like device for simple viewing of gauges and fiddling with basic settings without using a laptop or some expensive race dash and/or convoluted bluetooth/android/app setup. And they need to think a little harder about what they offer up for download.

I remember when I first got the Adaptronic and installed it and began running it—I downloaded the new firmware (14), and it had some new setting checked that just randomly disabled the car while i was driving and nearly stranded me in the middle of the highway. After that was fixed, I drove around with a box with the PFC and tools to swap it in sitting in the car, because I just didn't trust that it wasn't going to get weird again.

Nevermind the fact that, Eugene's live gauges setup doesn't actually look/work like the video yet, as the features have been disabled, so it was completely pointless in the first place. I'd intended to just sell the Adaptronic, but figured I'd try it as a test since I had it laying around. Every time I use it, and/or a Windows laptop (which it necessitates), I want to strangle small woodland animals.

Anyway, rant off, but that's ridiculous.

Talked with Fritz this AM, and he's going to send me a manual boost controller.

If that will spool the turbo up like the electronic does, and keep it at 15 psi, I'll be fine with that. I'll just screw it down a little bit at the track.

Curious, are you controlling boost off the PFC straight, or via the added boost controller kit?

All the "kit" is, AFAIK, is a solonoid, which the EFR already has, and it was wired to the "boost control" wiring supplied in the Rywire harness.

Hi Peter,

Based on reading about your troubles it just sounds like you need some better support. So When you have time this week I will be happy to teamviewer into your PC and and make sure the Adaptronic ECU is setup correctly for you. Give me a call when you are free. 763-753-9939.

Thanks,
Shawn Christenson

Thanks Shawn, I appreciate it!

If I decide to put the Adaptronic back in and reconfigure my laptop, I'll give you a buzz.

P

I know it's a different set up but when I went single I couldn't control boost with my greddy profec anymore, turns out I had to re plumb the solenoid since it differed between external and internal wastegates.

I can't imagine that's an issue, because the solonoid is made for (and comes with) the EFR, and I've reversed the wires.

I hooked it up like all of the pictures show, but it doesn't take long to reverse the hoses I guess.

Manual boost controller should tell all.

Except that a manual controller cannot vary VS RPM, just peak boost pressure.

So its not going to give you the same response as an electric unit.

shawnm565

Except that a manual controller cannot vary VS RPM, just peak boost pressure.

So its not going to give you the same response as an electric unit.


Well, I found you can get really good response out of a manual boost controller with some work.

With a checkball and bleed manual boost controller you can vary the bleed orifice size by slowly drilling it larger with wire gauge drill bits until the boost spike with boost onset is just gone.

This assumes the bleed orifice was non-existent or undersized to start with. You might have to buy a spare inlet nipple/fitting to start with no bleed hole on the outlet nipple.

With the check ball and bleed MBC the boost pressure has to unseat the ball and then overcome the pressure loss from the bleed orifice on the backside of the ball before it starts moving the wastegate diaphram.

If you go too far on the bleed orifice size you will again have an area of higher boost before you settle into nominal boost. Its not as spikey as the spike from not enough bleed and varies more with how you pedal into full boost.

You might actually like this as it gives good tip in torque feel, but it also takes away some pedal sensitivity as you will get more boost the slower you are on coming into the pedal.

Varying this MBC bleed size is the same as an electronic boost controller "gain" that controls the transition from staying open at low boost and then varying its duty cycle as you near peak boost.

You can get "fancy" and put a variable orifice on the MBC bleed, but I like the simplicity and bullet proof-ness of the fixed orifice and -AN lines with swivel fittings.

I did this with my Hallman Pro RX on my old 60-1 and got really flat boost.

Except that a manual controller cannot vary VS RPM, just peak boost pressure.

This is still true.
With a MBC you cannot choose to taper boost off in the higher RPM for instance if you find the higher exhaust manifold pressure from peak boost is killing power after peak torque.

Unless you did some clockwork/steam punk mechanical system that would surely be more complex than a simple EBC.

But this is a high boost/pushing the limits of the compressor kind of problem.

I fully intend to resolve the electronic boost control issue one way or another, but right now I need a car I can enjoy driving and take to the track.

Early testing says it could probably use more tuning as well on the lower end of the boost curve... I can see the needle wiggling, so that's an indicator that the A/F isn't ideal.

A quick fix so you can get to enjoying the car would be to get an extra intercooler pipe and have a Pop off pressure relief valve put in it that will release any positive pressure over 12 psi (or whatever pressure you set it to) that is in the manifold tract.
A quick replacement of one of the pipes or an additional Greddy elbow you plumb for the Pop off valve and switch out for track days and you are not going to ever show the motor more than the set pressure for the valve. Its also great insurance for your motor if the diaphragm in an external wastegate were to melt due to track EGT's or cold ambient temps end up causing extra boost pressures the value will ensure the pressure is bled off before the motor sees it.

They are used in CART so the racecars can't run more boost than the rules allow. They immediately bleed off any extra pressure to atmosphere that the turbo makes. I have been considering installing one just for safety but it could easily remedy your boost creep issue without screwing around with the actuator and exhaust restrictions.

I have an internal gate, so not too worried about failure, and I no longer have an overboost problem (without the electronic control on), so I'm in decent shape. Just need to get the spool up, and be able to raise the peak to 15 psi on the street, and little less on track.

If all else fails, Fritz has a Blitz SBIC standalone electronic controller. I'm likely to head down there this weekend, so maybe we'll try that out. The once IRP is back in business, I'll get the tuning touched up.

Ok sounds good. I will just leave this here for future reference for those wanting an easy solution to controlling boost and creating a safety pressure relief valve if something were to cause a boost creep, spike or other high boost condition. Here is a ready made solution for future reference that would do the job.

Anyone building a car that has a ton of money into the engine build might want to consider this even if your boost is under control for the time being.
928 Motorsports - Mega Boost Limiter Valve

Yeah, back in 2001 when I did my TII build I used the Greddy version of the "Pop-off valve".

It works.

Greddy one sounds like a cow fart when it opens and on my set-up it was enough to give me hesitation which is fine because it keeps you from wanging up against the overboost/venting and overspeeding your turbo and killing it and the crazy high intake temps as well.

Back in the 80's and 90's we would wire the actuator door open on turbo Z's, SVO mustangs, Turbo T-birds etc. would get crazy fast boost response and it cost us next to nothing...we used the pop off valves to keep from blowing the motors. Just adjusted them up until we maxed out the fuel.
Well, except we ran the piss out of everything and it cost us next to nothing to do it lol.
We probably ran the shaft speed of those turbos to death but we made a lot of power for back then on stock turbo cars.

The application I am advocating here isn't the above. It's just the same concept of controlling manifold pressure when there is a problem or as a safety net in case of a problem controlling boost. The pressure will bleed off instead of blowing it up.

Like stated you will be able to hear it if it does actuate at some point and it will be an incredible relief to hear a cow sound vs a blown seal.

Hey all,
So, I had a closer look at my old turbine housing... and it's pretty easy actually to see the likely issue. The exhaust left an orange deposit or buildup on the inner walls of the housing. Sort of like "flo-viz" on F1 cars, you can see where the exhaust was going.

First, look into the housing from the bottom, and you can see the inlet to the wastegate passage on what would be the front rotor is much more shallow, with less exposure to the exhaust. That passage also has a longer more tortured path to the outlet, whereas you can actually see the door through the rear wastegate passage.

Then, have a look at the underside of the wategate door, and you can see a nice, half moon shape of built up exhaust deposit from the rear rotor's wastegate passage, where as it's clean from the front rotor.

This indicates that there's significantly more flow hitting the backside of that door from the rear rotor while it's closed... and stands to reason it would evacuate more exhaust once opened.

What cutting off the T4 divider and the wastegate divider did was give the front rotor an easier flow path to the wastegate outlet... with some cost in spool from an undivided housing. We may very well have overdone the removal of the T4 divider completely, and really just needed to give the front rotor a better flow path.

So, UPDATE:

I bolted the wastegate shut to test the spool (and eliminate variables), and bottom line is 15psi at about 3400-3500 depending on the run. AFRs are mid 10's in the 2000-3500 area

I got a Blitz DSBC standalone boost controller and started setting it up. It's really nice, and has a boost source feedback input which I think helps. At +20% boost, and 100% gain, I've got a nice 12psi setting. At +35% and 100% gain, I've got a nice 14-15 psi setting. Boost is ROCK solid—maybe a little spike on the higher setting, but I could reduce the gain. 10psi by 3000rpm. The transient response is pretty nice... sure the spool isn't amazing if you're starting at 2-2500 in 4th, but you don't really do that in real life. If you downshift to 3rd, 15psi is almost instantaneous. The ideal would be if the boost limit wasn't set as a percentage, but as an actual psi target, but somehow it seems to do a great job producing a steady curve despite the variation between spring crack pressure, and creep pressure at redline.

I've declared it good enough to track it, and am signed up for a local day at Summit Point, just to test & tune.

For the future, I think I'm going to have my original housing ported—but to a lesser degree than the one in the car now. I think removing the whole T4 divider hurt the spool, perhaps with diminishing return in boost control... I think opening the path from the front rotor is the ball game. Once Ihor has his dyno up and running, I'll probably go back for some fine/drivability tuning

That's great news that you finally getting the boost level u wanted. Also why u thinking getting a retune? I thought it made decent power from speedone? Also r u running a midpipe? If so does the car smell upon startup? I am debating if i should get one but i hate rotary fumes it makes u cry, i had my days with older rotary with no cat's.

Yup, it's tuned for WOT on the wastegate spring, but I think it could use some area under the curve work now that it has boost control, and drivability tuning. I do have a midpipe, so yeah, it's a little stinky. Part of the fun.

Khris, you need a RennaTune.

My FD smells a bit but nothing horrible. I also leaned my idle AFRs out to low 13s and the car seems to like it, and about 80% of the wheel went away too :nod:

Peter emailed me an update and the boost creep is completely fixed on his car. Its holding 11-12psi at the track, even WOT through 4th gear.

Yup... boost is solid through 5th hear, 140mph+.

Boost response at normal rpm range (3k and above), is nearly instantaneous as you can see if you go HD mode on the video. At the boost you see in the video, it out drags the new GT350 Mustang with the flat-crank motor.

In the fall, or over the winter, my plan is to perhaps swap in a less-aggressively ported turbine housing and see what that does/doesn't do, but for now, it's TRACK TIME. Another run with Fritz at Summit Point coming late in the month, and then Watkins Glen labor day weekend.

Car/setup is looking good Peter!

Badass!! Any guestimates on what power level you're sitting at?

Well i'll just throw my experience into this thread. We dynoed my 91 TII yesterday in nearly 100 deg heat and high humidity. Temps held pretty well. E85 did it's job and the car never experienced any detonation. The setup and tuning was quite solid and certainly impressive. The ignition worked very well as the dyno graph was nice and smooth.

-8374 EFR IWG with turbosource cast manifold
-3" downpipe and straight through presilencer with y-pipe into 2.25" dual mufflers. (Racing beat RevTII exhaust)
-Mild street port by pineapple racing
-S5 TII internals (9.0:1 rotors)
-Stock ignition
-3" air to water intercooler

Down side is the car was boost creeping/spiking upwards of 17.5 psi. Ended up cracking the rear plate. Also ran out of fuel pump. I bought the setup intending to run 10-12 psi and no more. I also want to track my car and don't want the tire/wheel/brake budget nor the high speeds and risk that 500 hp necessitates. (Not to mention short engine life.)

My suspicion is that the primary culprit is the air-to-water intercooler, because has such a low pressure drop compared to an air-to-air intercooler.

Since the engine is coming out to get a new rear plate and may get studded and/or doweled we of course have the opportunity to port the wastegate. I like the setup but wish i had known about this prior. The car was almost built when this thread surfaced.

RockLobster,

Do you know what your IATs were with that little 2.5" intercooler? That intercooler looks like the Frozen Boost Type 20 which is only rated at 350hp (piston). You're trying to cool about twice the air it's rated for. I had mediocre luck with a Type 4 which has over twice the core volume as the Type 20. I would see 30-40F temp rise over a pull. I switched this year to a Type 15 which is about 4-1/2 times larger than yours and finally have decent cooling (4F temp rise over a 3rd gear pull, 15 over ambient).

With ambient temps that high in the dyno cell, I wouldn't be surprised if you IATs were crazy high.

Actually the piping is 2.5" but i recall now i got a frozen boost type 19 with 3" inlet & outlets. Rated for 600 piston HP. I was only planning to make 400.

IATs were good but got somewhat high near redline. Then again it was 100 deg in the dyno room when we were running it.

IMO the HX size makes as much of a difference as anything else. We got one of the larger ones. I think it's a type 118 with (2) 7" fans. If the HX can provide colder water inlet temps for the intercooler it should keep up. I'm not all that concerned if the IATs rise a bit near redline, running E85 is the secret sauce.

That's a pretty damn stout stock ignition to hold up to 500 rwhp.

FD plates don't crack at that level unless you're doing something pretty silly, what do you think was the cause on your S5 setup?

+1

do you have the late spec rear plate in yours? or just the normal S5 plate?

I assumed the late spec plate was just as strong as the FD rear plate.

link to what I'm talking about if you don't know:
Rotary Resurrection home of the budget rebuild.

His car does not have a late S5 rear plate, just a standard FC thin plate.

I didn't expect the car to make 500+rwhp at such low boost(17.5psi) power to be honest. Tune was on the light side too.

I have cracked 3 FC plates now and its all around that 460+rwhp range on stock dowels/tension bolts. All of the engines come apart with ZERO issues, and all of the cars on the dyno are extremely smooth( even with dyno set to zero smooth, graphs are like silk). All of the cars have had extremely different setups too, from pump with water, to pump with meth, to E85, from Carb, to EFI etc...

On a positive side I do know for a fact the cure for cracking plates on sub 750rwhp cars regardless of the why. Above this power level its almost impossible to prevent with heavy detonation( irons split in 2).

What is strange to me is some cars have boost creep, and some do not. I have tuned about 10 of these that hold 12-13 psi...

no. no you don't. it's completely impossible. impossible on s4s.

I had mistakenly thought all the S5 plates were the same (and more stout than the S4 plates). Hell of a way to learn....

We ordered up a new rear plate from mazdaspeed. Hopefully i will get the good one...