All done! Hughes came over this morning and we put the new blue hotness in. We had everything buttoned up and car started around 10:30am, then proceeded to putz with (gah I hate turbo swaps!) oil leaks. I had everything as it was with the previous turbo, same lines and everything, just oil was dumping *everywhere* out the bottom. After a trip to denny's I realized that I had taken out the stock o2 housing support bracket (it was in teh way of the o2/downpipe but just rubbed before) and one of the bolt holes led to an oil galley near the balance shaft.....DOH! Soon after that, I discovered that oil was leaking past one of the bolts for the oil drain/oilpan connection, so I begrudgingly yanked it, put a little rtv on the threads and back smooth section, and put it back in...making a mess in the process :P This solved all the oil leaks. During what we shall call 'leak testing' I had discovered that this turbo is everything its sold as. A direct bolt-on, stock-spooling, big-power-gains-up-top assembly of goodness.
I've been having issues with my alky kit lately and just on pump gas, torque in the midrange is up slightly, but power up top is just heavenly. Before I'd look for 6000rpms and then time it just after that to shift around 7k...now I'm hitting 7500+ and slamming in the clutch because its coming much quicker than I expect it. After we got the oil leaks figured out and we did some quick STi p0wn4ge, he kept saying, 'timing....timing.....more timing!' So we did just that. Added a degree across the board and leaned out the tune just a tad. Still zero knock and the car just puuuuuuuullls up top.
Now, big turbo guys, stop laughing. This thing is tiny, yes, it's probably not making 700whp...but on pump gas, I'm hitting full boost right around 3000rpms, and power pulls steadily to 8000. I don't want to make whp guesses right now, but I will say it feels up top as good or better than my alky tune before, which was about 360whp on DB's dyno dynamics.
Me likey.
The plot thickens though. A few weeks back I thought air was leaking past the seals in the turbo (the ix turbo I just took off) when I did a boost leak test. Today on the bench we hooked up a compressor and sealed off the comp outlet with the palm of my hand, and it not only holds boost, it doesn't leak air past the bearings. So it appears I had a healthy IX turbo....311, get on AIM, you and I need to talk. If anyone is interested in this turbo (the IX one), please pm me and we'll work out a deal.
All back together:
Hybrid Mode
