Let the tinkering get serious!!....

[Greg Roles]

Thanks to a rainy weekend, got into the engine bay once again. Tided up my new battery wiring, and put all my electronics kits into one big box which will be far more weather proof. Nearly at the stage of having it all running!

Spent the rest of the weekend getting the intercooler pipework from the turbo to IC completed, and bolted into the factory mounts. Took a lot of messing around to keep the joins minimal, in line, and not hitting anything. Also made several mockups and sacrificed some pipes to avoid 90 degree elbows, and keep it all as short as possible. It's a fair bit shorter than stock, with much better bends, according to theory. Ignore the amount of blue on the pipes, there's some there to act as potential rub guards where it comes close to the gearbox. All joins bead rolled and siliconed, just to be sure. Test drive later today!

[Buller_Scott]

man, this is so inspirational to me (went to ReVolks on the weekend, fell in love with my car after seeing it all polished up etc from a distance, lined up to some other watercoolers).

i gotta save for a cheap daily so i can do some of what you're doing.

by the way, how's the egr situation going? still playing things relatively safe?

[Greg Roles]

Driving fine so far, but driving quietly till all the silicon dries. Be interesting to check the spikes in comparison, but expect little from this end of the plumbing.

EGR is throwing error codes and the engine light comes on, but otherwise it's running fine. I've ordered a EGT gauge to put back in my car ( I'll bet hiho wil laugh when he sees this! ), and need to do another max EGT effort up my local test mountain with VCDS logging, but if that comes back OK, I'm all go for the IC to manifold plumbing. I'll have the EGR valve and flap mechanism left plugged in but hanging in the breeze till I can defeat them electronically / via a tricky tune.

That piece of plumbing will be where any effect will be, that plus the water meth finally working.

Then it's onto the dump pipe!

[Transporter]

I see you went with Odyssey battery now. That should last no worries.


Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

[gldgti]

So Greg, is that 2" hot piping and 2.5" cold?

Pipework looks good, nice job. I think its overkill with silicone on the joints (at least for keeping the air in) - but in my car, all the pipework is high up in the engine bay and so I like to be able to remove it easily, where I don't think you have that issue so much.

IIRC, when you last logged EGT's you saw over 800C?

[Greg Roles]

Boy silicon boots make some noise when they POP! Makes for a noisy but slow drive the rest of the way!

Guess I need to really crank those clamps down. Still after solving a leak that developed yesterday thanks to a incorrectly placed clamp it's been handling 20 plus PSI all morning, but it just went bang right before the office, so I'm off to pull the car apart down in the carpark.

It's 2" for half the hot, up to 2.5" as per the stock setup. Then 2.5" all the way cold.

I'm sticking to the silicon ( ha ), but I'll have to recheck them all this arvo, as I'm obviously being a bit pansy on the clamps.

[Transporter]

Just an idea,
try not to put the silicone on it. It is possible that silicone didn't cure between the pipe and the hose and made the hose well lubricated at the joining surfaces and easier to come off. Some hoses suppose to be fittled dry.

[gldgti]

Good point transporter, I when I have mine apart, I clean the ends of the silicone tubes with degreaser to get the film of oil off, so there is no "lubrication".

Cog, whats your peak boost?

On a side note - back when I was just starting to "tune" my car, when i had the top mount in - one of the pipe unions I had didnt have a good enough "blow-off" bead around the ned, and it came off at about 22psi, going up a hill on the F3. It wasnt the pop that was loud though, rather the scream of the little T2 as it went overspeed.... I nearly had an accident (of the toilet kind). The good news is that the little T2 never caused me any trouble though, so I dont think it did any damage.

[Greg Roles]

It spikes around 22-24psi, and it's that which caused me the problems yesterday. I take onboard what you say about silicon acting as a lube, and may go back to bare dry joins, but last night when I decided to unclamp all the joins and try to pull them apart, I could only get the two joins that failed to move, the others are all stuck fast. I'm using high temp Red engine silicon too, not just basic silicon, on thinner cleaned junctions.

I sanded those two problem joins out, sanded the inside of the clamp and made the main problem one double clamped and put them back together with even better black Sikaflex. I'm not driving it for a few days to let it fully cure, and on the weekend I'll give it a really good hiding near to home to see if I can get it to come unstuck again. I do have popping the inlet out down to a T on the side of the road, and tightening up clamps!

I'm actually glad it failed, for I was able to find the weak links, ahead of doing the cold side.

Now how to get this black Sikaflex off my hands before seeing a Surgeon in his rooms for work today.....

[Greg Roles]

Well it's getting a bit tedious, but I'm down to the last possible connection failing in the pipework. Off to fix it now, but it actually failed at my aftermarket alloy coupler that C clips into the intercooler tank. Seems I'll have to bolster the clip mechanism, but at least all the other clamps are holding up!

God knows how the Yank diesels run 80PSI....