Twin Turbo IS-F failure averted

Hey guys, I had made an intro/"new member" post in that section a few days ago, and promised a follow up thread with info and pics of what we've been up to with a customers TT IS-F. Following is a detailed description of what we found and then what we did to cure the issues(all of which is forcing us to consider producing a quality turbo kit for the IS-F community).

When we received the car from the customer, he had dyno sheets showing his current power level of 459whp. He informed us the car should be making 520whp according to what he was told/sold when he bought his TT kit and asked us to see if we can figure out what the issue is. After looking the car over nothing apparent was the cause of the lack of power, but we did see some things we didn't agree with as far as the kit and the install is concerned. The short list of those items are:

- No boost control(other then wastegate spring) and the size of vacuum line(too small) run from the engine bay to the back of the car where the remote turbos/wastegates are sitting. Along with the size, it had been "T'd" so many times(for twin wastegates and going to the Methanol injection system in the trunk), the manifold pressure needed to control the many items just doesn't seem to be there.

- Turbo oil return lines/fittings were leaking oil.

- Oil return system was less then ideal. An oil catch tank and scavenge pump would have been the return system of choice IMO. What is there is a line off the bottom of each turbo going to a "T" and a single line continues all the way to the engine bay where a pump is trying to pull the fluid back to the engine. At that point it is just dumped into the valve cover breather instead of the oil pan or some other location more suitable. Also plumbing it to the valve cover breather effectively plugs the "breathing" ability of that valve cover.

The most blatant issue with the oil return system however was the manner in which the pump had been wired in. While driving the pump turned off and the turbo's began to smoke and puke oil out the back of the car(car was shut of instantly). What we found to be the reason for this is "T taps" were used and the pump was cutting in and out with any kind of bump or wiggle of the wires. An issue like that can/will not only kill your turbo's but can cause oil to enter your engine/combustion chamber, which leads to detonation and possible engine failure. We of course rewired and soldered all of the wiring.

*We have videos of this as proof.

- As far as we can tell, there is no "tune" in this car other then the methanol injection kit. This just is not the way to do it. When we put the car on the dyno after our mods(which will come later in this post), the first base run of how the car was running as delivered to the customer revealed significant detonation/knock in the midrange of the power curve and the run was aborted.

- The methanol injection kits progressive controller begins working at 0psi by pulsing the pump, but the progressive controller does not turn on the pump fully until 8psi is reached. Thus at the 3psi the car was running, the pump never turned on 100%, it was only pulsing. On top of that, the jet they used was too small and should have been larger.

- On the topic of wiring, the Tein coilover EDFC that was installed at the same time as the turbo kit was also wire tapped and quite working on the customer. Again we rewired and soldered everything.

- The bumper and exhaust tips on this car were/are flopping around as the bumper is either torn or burnt(below the tips on the drivers side) and the tips are attached to the loose/broken bumper.

- Regarding the design of the kit, it's put together reasonably well, however we fundamentally do not agree with the "remote mount" design in general. Other then remote mount, the charge piping is running directly along side of the exhaust/manifold secondaries if you will, which isn't great for air temps pre intercooler.

Now on to what we did to rectify the issues(other then what I've already covered above).

- Regarding the boost control we added an electronic boost controller(Apex-i AVCR) and mounted the boost solenoid in the trunk in order to keep the vacuum line lengths to a minimum. The one vacuum line that was used for multiple items is now solely used for the methanol injection kit. We also replaced the tiny jet with one more suitable for the power level the car is at.

- Fixed the oil leaks by simply taking it all apart and reinstalling properly.

- Regarding the oil return system all we have done so far is rewire it in order make sure it works constantly. It will probably be an item we will try to get the customer let us redesign entirely but his initial goal was to get his car running at the levels he expected in the first place.

- Now on to the tuning side of things. Along with our good friends at AEM we worked to wire in an AEM FI/C and get it running without any check engine lights and able to tune fuel and timing maps. We have all the pin outs mapped and ready for other customers when the need arises.

*Special mods are need to make an AEM FI/C to work properly on an IS-F. Please contact us if you are interested in purchasing or having us install one for you.

What came to us as an IS-F running 459whp in a non satisfactory condition is now a 516whp car running reasonably well. We were shooting to go for more but it seems at this point we have reached the limits of the stock fuel system. We are in the process of coming up with a solution for this and hope to go for more power in due time.

Between Andy and I we will post pics and dyno charts in the following posts.