Boost leak after installing turbo-side induction, why?

[JETURBO]

Where are you located OP ?

[DoubleCee33]

Located in Bendigo in central Victoria.

[FiftyOne]

I'm central Vic myself.  I am not aware of any tuners or reputable mechanics that would be able to diagnose it any better than yours already has in the area.   It's rapidly starting to sound like a Melbourne job for a mob that regularly does turbo barra's

[arronm]

NIZPRO.....

[DoubleCee33]

Pretty much straight after we figured out that it wasn't a boost leak and then subsequently that it wasn't the waste gate, pretty much from there we figured that it was going to be something we would have to liaise with experts in Melbourne about. 

 

My mechanic is on fairly good terms with the owner of Herrads in Thomastown, apparently 95% of his work is done on FG XR6 turbo's, tuning etc, apparently he has heard of this issue but it is extremely uncommon, so we're going to take the turbo off and if we can't find any issue with it we're going to send it off to him. 

[DoubleCee33]

UPDATE: so it's been a while since I last posted an update on here, and that is because unfortunately not much has really been happening, it's still at the mechanics and they unfortunately still don't know what's going on with it.

 

Last time I updated you all myself and the mechanic were talking about sending the turbo away to a professional performance tuner in Melbourne who fairly well exclusively deals with Barra tuning, since then the entire turbo setup has been taken off the engine and thoroughly checked, just to absolutely make sure that it wasn't wastegate issue we actually bolted another wastegate to the turbo and put it back on, made absolutely no difference whatsoever.

 

My mechanic says that the next step over the next week will be too plum the turbo directly onto the engine itself, no intercooler or anything like that, and see if it actually makes boost, at this point we're both trying absolutely everything we conceivably can before we admit defeat and send it off to the specialist, but at this time it's looking like the most likely cause is going to somehow be the turbocharger unit itself, which as we all agree absolutely defies logic because there was no issue with that turbo before the turbo side induction kit was installed.

 

Current on hoist time is sitting at around 60 hours worth of labour, it's now been roughly 4 being roughly 4 and a half weeks.

 

I will continue updating this thread and till we do get a definite answer, but at this point it's still the process of elimination, the only problem with that is there is only one more component to be eliminated and nobody believes that that's actually the problem.

[k31th]

hmm doesn't sound good financially... good luck with everything is all I can say now

[DoubleCee33]

To be absolutely honest, if I had a crystal ball and I could foresee that I was going to have these issues prior to buying the turbo side induction kit, I would have never done it in a million years.

Credit to Antz performance though, they have been more than willing to help whenever I send them a message and they have never ducked the issue, they of course did get a little bit defensive when I asked them what their refund policy was going to be if I returned the car to stock and it turned out there was an issue with their product, but I don't think anybody seriously thought that returning the car to stock would actually change anything.

 

Graham, mine mechanic, has actually been really good about it, he doesn't know how much all of this is going to cost when we do eventually figure out what the issue is going to be, but he has said that he would be willing to put the final figure on a payment plan, that's how much it's probably going to wind up being, that's partly why we're trying to avoid sending the turbocharger away to the professionals in Melbourne, because obviously I haven't paid a cent for any of this work yet and they're obviously going to want to be paid for whatever they do, which is completely understandable, but going on what Graham charges, the bill is estimated to currently be somewhere around the $5,000 mark, which at this point it would have probably just been cheaper to buy a brand new Turbo straight from the get-go.

 

I'm going to ring him on Friday and see how his experiment bolting the turbo straight to the engine goes, but we both agree that if that doesn't work and we don't get the answers we want we're going to have to send it away to get checked before we talk about buying a new Turbo or even a second-hand turbo just for the meantime.

[arronm]

Car needs to go to an expert for correct diagnoses.  Your mechanic is obviously lacking if its taken this long...

[DoubleCee33]

I can completely understand why people would assume that, but I have to disagree, he is probably one of the more qualified mechanics in central Victoria, the bloke build his own engines for the race cars he races at tournaments like Springnats, Summernats, he also apparently does a fair bit of sprint car competition, and that's just him, he also hires three mechanics and between them all there is almost 300 years worth of mechanical experience, they're calling this one of the most frustrating jobs they have ever had to do in their entire careers, everything that the problem should be, it isn't, everything that it conceivably could be has been double checked and triple checked, they are being extremely thorough...