A little back ground before the results.
Ok for those of you who dont know there are a couple of turbos on the market right now that are similar to the MHI e316g (mitsus Evo III) turbo.
These turbos are being sold under the almost misleading name of "Evo III GT" or even "Evo III 16g GT". For those who might not be as informed as others these turbos are not a Mitusbishi factory part nor are they made from a MHI turbo.
As stated above there are 2 "knock offs" out there that I know of. One of these is made in China and the other Tawain.
Since the subject has been almost beat to death on dsmtuners.com I am not going to go into all of the details about both or the diffrences between these 3 units.
My test started with a purchase from eBay for one of these Evo III GT's. This unit has its roots in Tawain (BBL) not China.
At first glance the turbo looks awesome, comes in an almost UPS bomb proof box, and is exactally as advertised with a 7cm opening, a 34mm flapper and all the gaskets needed to install. At this point I cant wait to put her in and throw some dirt around.
Install of the turbo went smooth as silk with 2 slight modifications. Thefirst is that the holes for the oil return line are not as deep as a MHI turbo and you must use shorter bolts. I went with 5mm less than stock. The second is the waist gate actuator line is in the way of some piping and needed to be bent downwards aprox. 45 degrees. This might actually be in part of the non-stock piping in the car.
After dialing the boost way down (14psi) from where it was on the Big 16g that I was using I started breaking in the new motor. Since I cant drive this thing on a daily basis I only got a handfull of miles and a few dozen vaccuum pulls in before it was time throw some power down at a rally cross.
I left the boost alone at 14 and did some minor adjustments for tuning to run a bit rich and then it was WOT time.
The car pulled just as hard with the new motor, which was also severly changed internally, and new "knock off" turbo than it did mostly stock on the b16gat 18psi. I was very impressed to say the least.
Since rally cross isnt exactally the best testing or tuning grounds I didnt know what to expect. After one afternoon of basically 1 minute at WOT every 20 minutes, times 8 runs or so I thought that the combo was doing wonderfully.
Then wanting to put more miles on the motor and start some tuning work I took it back out on the highway to turn the odometer some more. This took place aprox. 1 week after beating on it at the rally-x. This is where the whole experiance started to go south. With about 200 miles on the motor/turbo I noticed that after full boost shifting I am creating a smoke screen behind me comparable to what street level pictures of the WTC disaster looked like.
Hoping that I didnt just blow up a multi k dollar QPR motor or its internals I took off the turbo inlet piping and found my problem.
The shaft on my new turbo moves and I am not talking about normal rotation here. This thing move from side to side so bad that it has already started to seriously eat the comp. wheel. If I could measure it I would but guessing its close to 1/4 of an inch. I ate a brand new turbo in under 200 miles.
As to the cause of the failue I dont know what it could be yet. There are a few options including oil pressure, turbo inlet restrictor and many others including the quality of the turbo itself that have yet to be proved or disproved at this point.
Since these turbos are sold with a no questions asked 12 month 12k mile warr. I was able to contact the vendor and have them replace the turbo at no cost to me but shipping the other one back.
I should have its replacement either the end of this week or the beginning of next and at that time I can continue my "knock off" turbo testing.
My goal is to try and prove that the turbo is a viable alternative to purchasing something else with less features or that costs more. The plan is to get the Rally Squad back up and running, get her tuned up on a dyno with some decent numbers (looking for a reliable 300 that I can use all day) and bring the whole package to the table on stage at LSPR.
More to come when I get it.
Dan Moore
www.sidewaysmotorsports.com
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