KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

I'm on the list for JnR's turbo kit and I could PM IHC and/or Rodney/John but thought I'd throw it out here instead.

I figured I'd get something to measure boost and afr but is there anything else you guys could recommend? Would you recommend a obd ii interface with the wideband O2 and additional inputs for this and other measurements or just individual gauges?

With regard to exhaust. I have a custom exhaust going from the 3rd cat @ 2.5 inches through a somewhat large resonator to a Y that drops to 2.25 inches through Magnaflow mufflers.

Would swapping this with a the same basic layout except for going 3 inches all the way make a huge difference in the turbo performance?

phee

iTrader: (5)

always get a wideband
a 3 inch catback usually yields nice gains on a turbo kit

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

Well learning what I learned from the experts here, you don't want pressure in your system. You want it to be as free flowing as possible. So what has been suggested to me is 3" from catback into a Y with an inlet that's 3" outlets at 2.5" and just run straight resonators if it's too loud (no mufflers). LOL. I think it maybe too loud. I have an ATLP already, but instead of hacking it up , I may just do 3" piping into a Y that has 3" in and two 2.5 outs into the 2.5 muffler inlets. That should be cool.

Plus, gauges. IHC recommends knock sensor for force induction as well as AFR, and maybe boost gauge? I'm not sure in this department either. Plus, you'll need to move your battery to the trunk. Other plans? well, there's a lot to do to get the most out of it. I think I'm also gonna go with some motor mounts, I thought 60A was enough, but someone said at that power we should probably run 75A. I think I may go with Versus Front as well (if I can find one) so the air can hit the FMI directly.

Phee,
What's a wideband do?

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

A wideband o2 sensor is an oxygen sensor that reads a much more accurate air to fuel ratio. I would look into a electric boost controller like the blitz sbc controller, this allows you to tune your boost and keep it at level you are comfortable with while under full boost. If you are tuned for 9psi and decide you dont wanna run 9psi at full boost on a daily baisis but rather at like 7psi it will allow you to only boost up to 7psi and it has a boost gauge in it as well and you can change back to 9psi as you are able to preset different boost levels. A turbo time may be something you want to look into as well. I havent followed the turbo kit thread much lately and i dont know if the turbo is oil and water cooled. But a turbo timer is good to help run fluids through the turbo after you have driven the car hard and for the fluids to keep flowing after you are done driving to help the turbo whine down.

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

^ good to know... so the electronic boost control is to the wastegate as EDFC is to Tein SS?

Majofo

subscribed.. can't wait to get more turbo TL's out here.. wrxyboy.. you gonna turbo the type-s? There's a couple more spots left..

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

Something of that nature i used the boost controller all the time when i had my STi tuned to about 30psi for track racing and tuned it down to 24psi for everyday driving since at the track i would run 109 race fuel and 92 for my daily driving.

I would love to turbo the type-s but there are no reliable tuners here in hawaii to tune the car more precisely. I am assuming that the tune provided will be safe to prevent possible problems. But i will wait to see how the first batch comes out and wait till the bugs and problems are full worked out on the type-s side since the kit was developed on the base model.

pass427

For the most part the types isn't much different than the base in regards toaking the kit work just a few adjustments & definelty a different tune 3.2 vs 3.5.......we've did most if not all the testing to get bugs out , I know there's never a product without bugs but for the most part we've tackled most if not all that we've run into.........Kn-tl hold of on that knock sensor for now but go ahead and get a/f wideband , aem boost gauge works well & turbo timer ....I'd say run the exhaust you have now then upgrade later and some innovative mounts would help too....... Last but not least make sure u have good brakes ...

KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

Thanks. I was definitely going to swap out the mounts along with the boost and afr gauges.

I was wondering about how you prevent turbo death by people who insist on reving just before shutdown. typically, how long does the timer usually keep the engine idling before shutting down?

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

I'm guessing a few minutes so everything can cool down... but then again, I've never had a turbo'd car

Excelerate

iTrader: (1)

A 3" single exit exhaust would be a good setup or you could do a 3" mid pipe to split 2.5" axlebacks.

I would definitely recommend a boost gauge and a wideband gauge setup. AEM makes a good setup for both of those. An oil pressure gauge is also another good gauge for a vehicle with a turbo kit since oil pressure is extremely important to the life of the motor and the turbo.

You should also invest in a boost controller (not sure if their kit will include it).

You will also want better engine mounts to control the engine movement and better tires for traction.

A water/meth would also help reduce the chances of detonation and, if tuned for, allow you to make more power. The ECU will automatically make some adjustments to net more hp with the water/meth but not as much as could be had.

KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

Is there an all in one solution for monitoring wideband O2, boost, oil pressure, etc along with boost control?

I was looking at the AEM site and the 8 cyl F/IC has boost control but the 6 cyl doesn't.

What's the opinions on electronic vs manual boost control.

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

^ yes I wondering the same thing... one solution for everything... like something that will feed to video, and maybe it can be displayed on the LCD Nav screen through the Dom Nav2Go unit? lol maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but that would be a nice and tidy solution.

I hate cars

Don't rev before you shut it off. That will just speed the turbo up and then you cut off oil pressure to it when you turn the engine off so it's spinning with no oil.

As far as shutdown goes, you don't need anything special as long as you follow a good shutdown procedure. I've had no oil related turbo failures, no coking and I run dino oil and 1,650F EGTs. My turbo glows so bright it lights up the whole engine bay. Up until recently I ran a non water cooled unit.

All you have to do is drive it nicely a mile or two before you shut it off. Idling for 30 sec to a minute won't hurt either but it's not necessary if you drive nice before you shut it off.

Running a quality synthetic (true synthetic) will greatly reduce the shutdown requirements.

I hate cars

For the other questions, a knock guage is the single most important guage you can run on a turbo car. Everything else is secondary.

If you can only get one guage, get a knock guage.

As far as electronic vs manual boost controller, it's personal preference. I run a manual controller with an inline check valve that greatly improves spool.

There are many different techniques to controlling the wastegate for best spool without overshooting.

3" or dual 2.5" exhaust should be used along with straight through mufflers.

A small shot of meth/water will greatly improve reliability.

No matter what the instructions say, run a plug that's two steps colder and close the gap down at least 20%.

KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

I've done some searching and found a Blitz SBC-i boost controller that has optional temperature, pressure and wideband o2 inputs. It can't display more than one of the optional inputs at a time, but it looks interesting.

Any known issues with Blitz products?

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

With the blitz sbc you will need to get the blitz power meter as well. If i were to turbo the type-s those would be a for sure buy. I would also invest in EGT gauage and IAT gauge just to watch motor temps. As well as a methnol injection kit.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

for those who have a navi you can invest in this which is what i was looking to invest into. The HKS Camp 2 http://www.hksusa.com/categories/?id=3470

KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

Power meter needed for the i-D only? I didn't see anything about this for the SBC i-color.

KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

And WOW, cash is just going to flow out of my hands to get this complete!

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

there are so much supporting mods that can drain the bank. Going turbo is a huge investment.

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

NICE... that's exactly what I'm looking for!! There are a bunch of cool vids on youtube of people using this.

KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

The Camp 2 looks like an excellent monitoring package but I don't see where it is also a boost controller. Is that correct?

I also looked at the Blitz SBC 1-Color and it doesn't allow both pressure and wideband o2, it's an OR deal.

The SBC 1D III is the unit that can be tied to a power meter but I don't want all kinds of units to mount.

The search continues.

Opel

While all these "PS3" like, bells and chimes, and the cool color gauges, and all that are all cool...HOWS YOUR SUSPENSION? HOWS UR BRAKES? YOUR TIRES? you know you will drive your car much harder when you have a turbo, and SPEED AND POWER WITHOUT CONTROL dont mix very well. Just throwing it out there, since everyone seems to be so focused on gauges, control interfaces, LCD screens and all that...and trust me when i tell you, they can sometimes be very distracting while you drive... while youre accelerating at WOT, you're gonna wanna look at all ur gauges, and LCD screens, and ur LEDs and whatnot, just because it feels cool to look at them, while the numbers change, the vac/boost gauge jumping from vac to boost, and forth, ur AFR numbers and LEDs, ur EGT, and anything along those things. This is especially true for those who will be doing this for the very first time (the boosting, im talking about), you may doubt what im saying, and thats fine too, and the point im saying all this is not to discourage you from any of those things, because quiet frankly, its not costing me anything whether you get them or not. Its rather a simple suggestion that your main focus should be on the only necessary things, and avoid turning the dash of your car into a space shuttle cockpit, because at the end of the day, youre gonna wanna drive, and drive, and drive, and not be distracted by too many unnecessary things only because they look cool.

IHC made a great suggestion and it is something you should seriously look into...KNOCK SENSOR GAUGE, or anyway to monitor KNOCK.

You want a vac/boost gauge, thats fine...if it aint making boost, youll know a charge pipe popped off the clamp lol

EGT? Honestly, a trustworthy reliable accurate WIDEBAND AFR GAUGE is more youseful, because power is really made on a good AFR, and not certain EGT, which can change based on a number of things, and im not gonna get into that right now. When your AFR is good, you need not worry about your EGT.

I'd monitor Oil Pressure on a built motor, and what i mean by that is not some cams and valve springs and such...but pistons, rods, crank, bearings

By the way (this may have been posted, and some of you may know), the TL has a cool safety feature on the low oil pressure issue...if its low to the point where its unsafe, once you climbing up on the rev, at vtec engagement point, as the vtec solenoid opens up to allow oil through for the lifters, which causes even more pressure loss, vtec engagement fails (it is where its actually set to allow you to rev up to once ur low enough on oil, but you wouldn't know untill u try reving past vtec point...assuming you didnt find out from checking oil level lol ), ECU sets the car in the worst limp mode you could possible imagine. wont rev past 3k, and it does so very slowly, your dash will turn into a christmas tree.

Monitoring the oil temp....use the right oil, and you wont have to, but if you had to choose between this and the oil pressure, i would suggest Oil Temp.

I hate cars

Once again, a great post.

Didn't know that about the oil pressure safety feature.

I don't think oil pressure monitoring is all that necessary on a stock motor like you said. Of course it's going to fall off a bit since the turbo is a bleed. Another good reason to run a quality 30wt or 40wt with a turbo.

I didn't mention it in my other post but Redline was made for these types of applications.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

The HKS Camp 2 is not a boost controller but more of a monitoring system instead of having to find a place to mount all the gauges.

These are all good points. I would for sure do a oil pressure gauge since oil is vital to the turbo's bearings as well, last thing you want is shaft play than you will for sure get inconsistent boost and may even cause boost spikes on some occasions. But if i were to only need 3 gauges on a daily basis it would be vac/boost, Oil pressure, and i am kinda biases on the AFR gauge if the tuner has tuned it correct your afr levels should all be in check. But it would be the afr gauge and IAT gauge. Just to know what your intake temp is.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

Quality oil is a must i did learn a valuable lesson while using rubbish oil. It cause the shaft to have play which resulted in horrible boost.

I hate cars

You can get away with an average dino oil if you know how to treat it and run a little more viscosity. For the general public a synthetic is a must in a turbo app.

I had good results in the GN running Superflo dino but it was changed once a year or 1,000 miles, oil temps were always kept below 195F, and I always followed a strict shutdown procedure.

Most people won't do that consistantly so syn is recommended.

Opel

I have no reason to disagree, however, only thing i wanna point out is...if oil pressure is so low that it wont even take care of the turbo bearing...your motor is in trouble! at that point my reaction is to completely ignore the turbo and focus on keeping those motor bearings from frying up lol. a turbo can easily be replaced, or refurbished...motor gotta be torn apart. cost? DAY and NIGHT difference. but lets hope that safety feature will stop you from going all crazy lol

i have a IAT gauge, for 2 reasons...ive been relying on meth, and i can see temps drop right away, rather than depending on a green LED that tells me pump is on, solenoid is on, but geeez, anything could go wrong lol, soo seeing temps drop right away puts my mind at ease...and i found it for cheap

just like you guys mentioned....quality oil, right for the application is a must

I hate cars

It doesn't take much pressure to float the shaft in a journal bearing turbo and it doesn't take much flow to lube the bearings in a ball bearing turbo. BB turbos have a restrictor to limit the flow of oil.

In other words, the turbo is going to be the last thing affected by low oil pressure. My car when it was running bottom 11s on the 200,000 mile engine had 1-2psi oil pressure at idle for a couple years and the turbo was fine.

wrxyboy

iTrader: (2)

Sorry havent kept up much the the turbo thread but what is the operating psi for fuel. will fuel rails and regulator be apart of the upgrade. Having the external waste gate is a total plus as compared to internal wastegate. I had a horrible boost flutter between shifting on the stock turbo of my STi since i was trying to push that little turbo to its limit. Also this time around if i do it i will make sure it is 100% recycle, keeping the acura tl a sleeper without people knowing that it is turbo'd is the way id go.

Opel

as far as i know, the kit involves bigger injectors, and fuel pump...rails i believe are good enough to handle the extra flow. I wonder if the kit involves spark plugs (colder) preferably 2 steps...and please NGK. i forgot to ask on what kinda plugs they tuned the TL.

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

Well you are right... and then you are right. But trust me, all the gizmos, doodads, mickymicks, and whatchamacallit gauges are something that I wish I can do without. As I keep learning and reading everyone's posts, the project becomes bigger and bigger. I really would rather invest in the utility of something rather than the form of it.

I'd much rather spend my money on the other things we're gonna need: brakes, tighter suspension, beefing up the engine, motor mounts, lightening the car via wheels/hood/trunk, more freeflowing exhaust, and the list goes on. But in the end, the gauges (or the one knock sensor) still become a necessity, correct? Isolating problems and troubleshooting would be a PIA without them no? Although, it seems that JandR have done their fair share of homework, I'm still trying to prepare for unforeseen issues. Heck I just thought of another expense, maybe a 'beater' commuter car for TL down time. Sorry for the long post, basic question... where do the gauges fall on the priority list (even the one knock sensor)?

I hate cars

Knock sensor should be at the very top as there is no other single gauge that will determine reliability. It's as simple as if it knocks it will die. If it doesn't, it will likely live a long happy life. The good thing about this gauge is that you don't need a special understanding of engines to interpret it. It either knocks and you lift off the throttle or it doesn't.

Boost would be second. If you don't have enough, you'll be down on power. If you have too much, you'll knock and the knock gauge will tell you, so in that sense the knock gauge is more important. Even so, you can't just preset a wastegate from the factory for a certain boost. You can get it in the ballpark but it will be up to the installer to set the boost.

AF is more for getting the most power out of it.

The bare minimum you need besides the kit is:

Knock gauge

Boost gauge

Freeflow exhaust

That's it.

Optional:

AF gauge

manual/electronic boost controller

Fuel pressure gauge

Oil temp gauge (recommended)

Oil press gauge (pressure will be fine on a stock unbuilt bottom end unless it's hurt)

Water temp (With that big front mount intercooler blocking airflow and 100% more power it's not a bad idea) The stock gauge is buffered so the temp has to raise quite a bit to get it to move.


You can set the boost with the external wastegate included in the kit by turning the adjustment screw. You don't have to have a remote manual or electronic boost control.

KN_TL

iTrader: (3)

This is the exact reason why I asked these questions.

It's funny how I started thinking I just needed a couple of monitoring points and it started turning into a million monitor graphical interface.

Thanks Opel for slapping some sense into me, wrxyboy, and IHC for your information!

pass427

Also check out greddy new 3.5 LCD all in one guage monitoring system...I'll try to post link or someone gets around to it please post link

pass427

Powerful and user-friendly, the new Info-Touch provides advanced engine monitoring, with touch screen ease. Installation of the 3.5” Color TFT unit is made simple with the provided OBD/CAN and 12V cigarette lighter plugs. The Info-Touch is ideal for most vehicles, from stock cars to highly-tuned street machines. Depending on vehicle, the unit can display from a large list of factory ECU signal Items, estimate Power with a weight/acceleration run, estimate Fuel Economy and Cost in Eco mode, Data-log up to 15 minutes of info, and read/reset DTC (Diagnostic Trouble Codes,) And by simply touching the controls, you may select from choices of viewing the screen vertically or horizontally in 5 pre-set patterns and 6 meter styles: [Digital, Bar meter, Needle meter, Circle bar, Graph, & Chart]. Other features include, options for English or Japanese, SAE or Metric readings, Peak-hold memory, visual/audio programmable warning values and selectable scales. The Info-Touch also has options for displaying external signals from other GReddy units like the v-manage and f-manage or even non-GReddy units like A/F meters and more.

Here's specs on greddy new info touch

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

Well you also need to consider that the graphical way might be the tidiest way to go with this. I've only seen one person mount one pod on the front pillar of our cars. I mean those couple of monitoring points are pretty important, but I'm going to go with IHC advice first. I mean.. money's gonna be tight after this ... lol

BTW Rodney, what are you using? Just traditional gauges? And what gauges?

Opel

I have a 3 gauge pod on the pillar...Autometer Sport Comp vac/boost,Nordskog digital IAT, Innovate Wideband AFR.

I already explained why I have the IAT gauge, and vac/boost<<<well honestly I like watching my vac after pushing the car and I come to a stop, at idle. On 2 occasions I lost a few numbers on vac, even though it was good still (at 19) but that was from 23-24, I suspected smth was wrong..there was no CEL, and didn't feel any misfires, but the drop on vac was due to broken pistons...while monitoring vac doesn't really give you any preventative means on anything because if the drop is so great, you will feel it and car will idle rught, it just really simply tells me a few things are still good lol... The AFR gauge, you all know its use, and it was a quick way of having some monitoring means, bcs I'm still to be tuned. I've been looking into the KNOCK monitoring and when I come accross smth that I think will be good, I will share it

Maddizm

iTrader: (5)

^ How do the pods affect the airbag device in the pillar? Did you disable the air bag? Or does the side airbag deploy near the top of the pillar?