luckythirteen13

well as you may or may not remember my car made 567rwhp at 11psi when we put it on the dyno a month or so ago. Had some tuning issues to work out but also some mechanical issues as well. full boost wasnt made untill 4000rpm and there was a very loud ticking we thought was a rocker come loose. quickly realized a header bolt backed off and the #5 primary was leaking. so we get the car home and pull the turbo kit off and found that not only had the gasket been almost completely eaten way that all 8 primaries were leaking. had to pull one of the wg's off to get the header out of the driver's side and found there was no gasket there and that was leaking too. assuming i made the same mistake on both sides i quickly pulled the wg off the other side and found no gasket and a nice big black stain where it was leaking there too. ill skip some of the details but going with the advice of the guys on turbomustangs.com and used just silicone on the headers. long story short it leaked bad and the whole turbo kit had to come out again. got some aluminum gaskets from percey's and some locking header bolts.



the next problem to fix was the boost pipe. every other pull on the dyno the boost pipes would blow out under the hood. the problem was they were made of cheap thin metal and i couldnt apply any real torque to the t-bolt clamp without distorting the pipe. here is a shot of the pipe after i pulled it out, after it was only loosely tightened.



ordered some new piping and with just a couple cuts it fit together just like before



fixed my wg leak with some silicone



and here is how it looks now. as you can see there are some minor differences from my sig pic which was taken a year or so ago.



the percey's seal 4 good gaskets compressed a lot after the first test run. so much that we had to pull the dp's out and retorque every header bolt. some were so loose we could finger tighten them before needing a wrench. i know it was the gasket that crushed because obviously the bolts didnt back out, they have locking heads.

anyways, the good news is, took it for a test drive and its super responsive now. just crusing around i can feel the difference, it tries to go into boost at light throttle and really early in the rpms. cant wait to get back on the dyno and turn the boost to 15psi

TrimDrip

nice. I guess you were glad about the header leaking being the tick.

luckythirteen13

you have no idea, i try to avoid adjusting RR like the plague.

AdderMk2

you should find someone with a bead roller. youll never pop a pipe again

mjr46

looking good

luckythirteen13

adder, that has crossed my mind many times but id like to make that my last resort. i dug up a thread on the turbo forums about this issue and what seems to work well is taking some plyers and just bending up the lip all the way around. it wont look pretty but works fantastic. apparently spraying the inside of the silicone couplers with aquanet hair spray works great too.

i took the car out tonight to see if i run into any fun cars to race.......and to test my recent mods. unfortunately the only "race" i found was a chevy diesel and that wasnt even a race. his wot was as fast as my quarter throttle. the only way i could even tell he was on the gas was i could hear his turbo spool. no header leaks or boost pipes blowing off, so that was good. i pulled fuel out of my wot table since my dyno day and it seemed to help but its still rich when you first stab the gas. i pulled another 4% fuel from 2000-3500rpms when i got home. had a scare for a moment, oil pressure dropped to 0psi and then jumped from there to 5psi and back and forth. pulled over quick but found the nut on the oil sender came loose. tightened it up and oil pressure was fine.

1st gear is a total waste on the street. took it up to 4000rpms in 1st and hit the gas, slammed the 7000rpm limiter instantly.

now i just need time, money, and good weather so i can get on the dyno again. when i get there ill have the boost controller set to 15psi. no more 11psi tuning for me. if i dont get the power i want at 15psi, there is a 76 station near me that sells 100 octane at the pump. im sure 100octane and 20psi will get me to my goals. this will be a 9 second street car if it kills me!!