[xpystchrisx]

The SS304 P20 exhaust housing is installed and the turbo is ready for business. I was too excited to take photos. I wanted to get the thing installed since the day before I had gone to a job interview that lasted eight hours. The OE housing was difficult to remove, but the new housing was easy to install. The fit and finish looks good and the weight difference felt minimal between the two. The IWG port is much larger in the new housing, and the internal finish looked great. The physical dimensions of the housing appear to be different. Time will tell how it holds up.

In other news, I finally got back in touch with DRP today. I guess they've been having email issues, which is why I've been out of communication with them. Going to do my best to haul the car up this Friday or Saturday. It's a 5 hour trip without a trailer being pulled behind a '99 F-150. Up and back in one day should be interesting.

 

[xpystchrisx]

These UHaul Auto Transport trailers are heavy. With the STI loaded on it, they're very heavy. Kudos to Ford and whoever put the 4.6l triton motor in the 1999 F150. 230hp and 300lbs torque sounds like not much when towing 5600ish pounds. It does just fine, not fast, but fine. Stopping, on the other hand isn't fun. Thankfully Florida is mostly flat. Tear down should start next week if DRP has an opening.

 

[xpystchrisx]

One very long Saturday later and the car is now in Jacksonville at DRP. Got up with my wife at 3am and drove up the center of the state. It was foggy for the first part of the trip, and not being used to towing made the process nerve-wracking for the first two or so hours. Once I could see and the fog lifted it wasn't so bad, however I won't be putting the car on a trailer to get it back. Going to pick it up and drive it on surface streets all the way. It'll be longer but the towing experience wasn't something I want to repeat.
Eagerly waiting to see what the word is on my car and how much OE stuff has to be replaced.

 

[Karlot]

i'm excited to see how it turns out. i used that same trailer when i blew the engine to take mine to IAG. man was that trailer a pain, i also lost my splitter when unloading it, i guess loading it went over the top where the front end hangs over, but unloading it caught the back and just completely tore it. i just trashed it haha. lesson learned.

 

[xpystchrisx]

I had read about that same experience so we purchased some 2x4's and 2x6's to raise up the loading angle for the ramps. I then placed the wood under the tires before it hit the tire stops. Otherwise I'd have been replacing a front bumper. That thing also weighs about 2200lbs by itself lol. My truck was perfectly fine the whole way, but you could tell that I was pushing the limits.
I'm excited too. Debating telling DRP to just slap a DOM 1.5XT-R and ETS TMIC on her but... I like being married.

 

[Karlot]

I had read about that same experience so we purchased some 2x4's and 2x6's to raise up the loading angle for the ramps. I then placed the wood under the tires before it hit the tire stops. Otherwise I'd have been replacing a front bumper. That thing also weighs about 2200lbs by itself lol. My truck was perfectly fine the whole way, but you could tell that I was pushing the limits.
I'm excited too. Debating telling DRP to just slap a DOM 1.5XT-R and ETS TMIC on her but... I like being married.

hahaha that last comment had me cracking up lol. my wife is all for me modding/racing my car, but i dont think she fully understands how expensive that can get. the dom 1.5 is my favorite stock location turbo, by far. and yours is a va chassis, if you arent on e85 and really really pushing that turbo you wouldnt even need the ets tmic, the standard one outperforms it (killerb has quite a bit of testing/data to back that up).

 

[xpystchrisx]

I have to give my wife credit. She's been very understanding about this whole situation. Never once has she complained about how much it's going to cost, she's only concerned that we're doing it correctly.
The TMIC decision is a difficult one. I know that the ETS is solid, there are folks around here who have both that and stock and they're both getting the job done. I really want to see the KillerB TMIC unit, but I'm sure they're busy getting real world test data. I know there are some crazy kids who are even spraying meth on the intercooler (not in the intake tract) to get it to cool down faster than just water. There's also an intercooler from Wagner Tuning that caught my eye a while back. It's tube and fin, not bar and plate, and looks pretty solid. I'm a sucker for trying out new stuff, which often leads me to doing things over again. But it's all about the adventure.

 

[Karlot]

I have to give my wife credit. She's been very understanding about this whole situation. Never once has she complained about how much it's going to cost, she's only concerned that we're doing it correctly.
The TMIC decision is a difficult one. I know that the ETS is solid, there are folks around here who have both that and stock and they're both getting the job done. I really want to see the KillerB TMIC unit, but I'm sure they're busy getting real world test data. I know there are some crazy kids who are even spraying meth on the intercooler (not in the intake tract) to get it to cool down faster than just water. There's also an intercooler from Wagner Tuning that caught my eye a while back. It's tube and fin, not bar and plate, and looks pretty solid. I'm a sucker for trying out new stuff, which often leads me to doing things over again. But it's all about the adventure.

yeah anything ETS is going to be solid, just at that power level i dont think it's really worth upgrading, you can always drop a turbo and log and if you need an intercooler get one after. and KillerB's stuff really is top notch, i'm sure theirs will be awesome. i personally have a spearco tmic, i have debated swapping to a fmic, but for the foreseeable future, i'll stick with spearco.

i havent seen meth sprayed on the intercooler, however i have seen people run a C02 fogger system to hypercool the tmic. I have debated running C02 on a WOT switch and setting it up with an on/off button so i'm only using the C02 at the track, but i do have to check with class rules to see if it is class legal. hopefully it is. lol.

i have a 2 friends running water to air intercooler setups, i need to research more on those, both of those guys exclusively run autocross, so they put ice in the water part of the system to keep it cool on autocross runs.

 

[xpystchrisx]

DRP has the car torn down. No real metal in the oil so that's a relief. Completely forgot to ask them what the failure point was today, but I honestly couldn't really care less.
Parts are ordered and the car should be back together... maybe this week? We'll see. Due to concerns from my CFO about scope creep on the budget we did not buy a new turbo or intercooler. I also didn't go speed density since I'm sticking with a TMIC and DRP isn't comfortable drilling a top-mount intercooler for speed density. Those funds went to IAG pitch stop, transmission and motor mounts, since the motor is out anyway, and there's no additional labor to install.
I'm racking up quite the list of parts that I need to sell after this process is done. Not looking forward to that.

 

[xpystchrisx]

Today is six months since I last drove my car without something going wrong, coolant spraying all over the engine bay, white smoke coming out of the exhaust or some other calamity.
I miss my car.


Also I'm short timing at my current job so I'm bored.

 

[Archer1.8]

The SS304 P20 exhaust housing is installed and the turbo is ready for business. I was too excited to take photos. I wanted to get the thing installed since the day before I had gone to a job interview that lasted eight hours. The OE housing was difficult to remove, but the new housing was easy to install. The fit and finish looks good and the weight difference felt minimal between the two. The IWG port is much larger in the new housing, and the internal finish looked great. The physical dimensions of the housing appear to be different. Time will tell how it holds up.
View attachment 67567
View attachment 67568
View attachment 67569

In other news, I finally got back in touch with DRP today. I guess they've been having email issues, which is why I've been out of communication with them. Going to do my best to haul the car up this Friday or Saturday. It's a 5 hour trip without a trailer being pulled behind a '99 F-150. Up and back in one day should be interesting.

As on OEM+ fanboy I love whats going on here. I may have missed it, but is this P20 housing ball bearing? This was the route I planned to go with my RA. Giorgio from ASE said he could build me a VF48/P20 turbo with a dual ceramic ball bearing CHRA. When he approached me about the S208 Vf58 I went the Twin Scroll route. I was always curious what the ultimate OEM+ Single Scroll turbo build would look like on the dyno.

 

[xpystchrisx]

This is a P20 journal bearing housing from Mamba. If Pavel hadn't given the housing a recommendation I wouldn't have purchased it. I did not ask about a ball bearing CHRA mostly because I'm not sure how long I'll keep this setup, also because I didn't think to ask.
I did chat on Nasioc with one person that put this compressor and turbine setup in a VF52. His statement to me was that this combination does not hesitate to build boost when going on throttle. That said if I can get a ball bearing CHRA swapped onto this unit that would be of interest to me. I'll have to ask Pavel if he can do it. If not I'd reach out to other shops, but I'm leery about using anything other than IHI bearings, after watching a few videos about cheap bearing systems.

 

[xpystchrisx]

Drove back to DRP today and picked up the car. Drove to my Brother-in-Law's house about 100 miles away for the first break-in-miles. The tune is just a break-in tune so it's not the best. The clutch is a bit grabby, and needs some time to break-in. Competition motor, transmission and pitch stop mount aren't playing around. Give the motor a bit too much throttle and she revs up fast. Also the turbo builds boost without hesitation, which right now isn't what I want to be doing.

That drive took two hours and it was pretty intense.

And I loved every minute of it.

 

[xpystchrisx]

Drove another 5 hours today from Orlando to home in Naples. The last four hours I used ear plugs. It's not so much the noise as the NVH transmitted into the cabin. You can very clearly hear the gears, and below 2000 rpm on deceleration is a bad time.
The clutch is simple to use, but there's some surging off the line. I'm guessing that has to do with the light flywheel and twin plates. It's noisy like you'd expect from a twin plate, but the effort is lighter than stock.
The car amazingly got the wife's seal of approval. Single photo for now, which looks like very little changed, exactly how I wanted it. More in a few weeks when I've had a chance to re-shield the downpipe, exhaust manifold and up-pipe. I also need to re-shield the intake, if for no other reason than to clean things up.

Have I mentioned that I'm soaking it up and can't wait until I can really get on it? Even capped on a base tune I love it.

 

[xpystchrisx]

Started a new job this past week so updates are sparse. Hit the first 500 miles today and changed the oil. That oil came out fairly clean, a little bit dirty but nothing unexpected. Looked around under the car and I can't help but be impressed with Dirty Racing Products' work. Everything is put together just like it came from the factory. They wire tied my turbo blanket over the exhaust housing on the turbo better than I have ever been able to. Found my oil temp sensor tied to another harness in the engine bay, a nice little touch when I found it.
The next few weekends will be packed as you'd expect but I'm going to do my best to get a few hundred miles in if I can.

 

[xpystchrisx]

900 miles on the clock at the moment. This weekend I did a two and a half hour drive of pure SWFL traffic. I came back mentally exhausted, but I was able to knock out 120 miles in a single go. I am having trouble with the clutch. I'm not sure if it's me being afraid of the car, bad habits from driving a large displacement motor previously, or what. I am typically fine until I screw up, then I over-think and get worse.
I'm also getting a few more first gear lock-outs at a stop. I it used to happen once or twice a year. It's happened at least once per drive now. Maybe it's a twin-disc thing? Double clutching or trying to go through other gears typically resolves the situation so I'm not too worked up about it. Mentioning it here since it's my post.
I'm on the schedule for getting tuned at DRP with JR on the next trip. My new boss is totally cool with me taking the time even though I'm inside of my 90 days, so I technically have zero time off right now.
Once the car is back I'll re-do the heat shielding on the exhaust manifold and possibly the up-pipe. Looks like the next auto-x down here is Feb, so I don't want to potentially compromise getting to that event.

 

[Karlot]

900 miles on the clock at the moment. This weekend I did a two and a half hour drive of pure SWFL traffic. I came back mentally exhausted, but I was able to knock out 120 miles in a single go. I am having trouble with the clutch. I'm not sure if it's me being afraid of the car, bad habits from driving a large displacement motor previously, or what. I am typically fine until I screw up, then I over-think and get worse.
I'm also getting a few more first gear lock-outs at a stop. I it used to happen once or twice a year. It's happened at least once per drive now. Maybe it's a twin-disc thing? Double clutching or trying to go through other gears typically resolves the situation so I'm not too worked up about it. Mentioning it here since it's my post.
I'm on the schedule for getting tuned at DRP with JR on the next trip. My new boss is totally cool with me taking the time even though I'm inside of my 90 days, so I technically have zero time off right now.
Once the car is back I'll re-do the heat shielding on the exhaust manifold and possibly the up-pipe. Looks like the next auto-x down here is Feb, so I don't want to potentially compromise getting to that event.

double clutching is a downshift technique that is basically outdated/non existent with the tech that now exists in transmissions in the last 35 or more years......so what are you doing that you call double clutching? and what do you mean by first gear lock outs? like it wont go into first? sounds more like a clutch fork/throw out bearing or something along those lines.

 

[xpystchrisx]

double clutching is a downshift technique that is basically outdated/non existent with the tech that now exists in transmissions in the last 35 or more years......so what are you doing that you call double clutching? and what do you mean by first gear lock outs? like it wont go into first? sounds more like a clutch fork/throw out bearing or something along those lines.

Not on downshifts. When sitting at a light or stopping. Double clutching from a stop to get into first is when it happens. I was thinking forks or throw out, but I did some reading and found that there was mention of the clutch pedal being too long, and causing the clutch to re-engage beyond a certain point. Again, this might all be in my head. This morning I drove the car without incident and zero issues. If it's still a problem in two or three hundred miles I'll look into it more deeply, this is more just to record that it's happening.
On another note, do you have the link to the build that used an EFR low-mount for autocross? or was it someone else who was linking that? I'm hot on the idea that this turbo will be a lot like a gateway drug. I think I'm going to be left wanting and have gone so far as to plot the lb/min and pressure requirements for my motor based on 400 whp and ultimate response. I do need to pick someone's brain as far as what, other than aero, impacts boost threshold/response on a turbo setup. Pie in the sky I'd like 400 whp, with a rotated or low-mount setup, and inconel heat shielding covering anything hot-side related in the engine bay. Costly but I'd like to do this correctly.

 

[Karlot]

07 Sti 2.5L EFR7163 0.85 a/r, E85, 535whp / 557wtq by Moore Automotive, Alex Maximov - NASIOC

07 Sti 2.5L EFR7163 0.85 a/r, E85, 535whp / 557wtq by Moore Automotive, Alex Maximov Proven Power Bragging

forums.nasioc.com

^that's the low mount setup my buddy ran for autocross.

for a fast spooling autocross setup, you wont need to go low mount, it's cool but it's also alot of custom work and probably more expensive. you could talk to killer b, as they also had a low mount setup on their old GD chassis, but they didnt make many, i know you can buy their low mount header designed for a garrett gtx turbo, which will significantly aid in spool times. but you can get fast response with a rotated setup for sure. for 400 on pump the efr7163 or the garrett gtx3071 gen 2 will both be very good in rotated configurations. garrett also has the new g series, and the g30-660 will likely get you there....at least on paper, although i havent seen much of those in terms of real world testing as of yet.

 

[xpystchrisx]

07 Sti 2.5L EFR7163 0.85 a/r, E85, 535whp / 557wtq by Moore Automotive, Alex Maximov - NASIOC

07 Sti 2.5L EFR7163 0.85 a/r, E85, 535whp / 557wtq by Moore Automotive, Alex Maximov Proven Power Bragging

forums.nasioc.com

^that's the low mount setup my buddy ran for autocross.

for a fast spooling autocross setup, you wont need to go low mount, it's cool but it's also alot of custom work and probably more expensive. you could talk to killer b, as they also had a low mount setup on their old GD chassis, but they didnt make many, i know you can buy their low mount header designed for a garrett gtx turbo, which will significantly aid in spool times. but you can get fast response with a rotated setup for sure. for 400 on pump the efr7163 or the garrett gtx3071 gen 2 will both be very good in rotated configurations. garrett also has the new g series, and the g30-660 will likely get you there....at least on paper, although i havent seen much of those in terms of real world testing as of yet.

Funny, those are the turbos I'm debating between. I was looking at the G25-550/660, if I relaxed the power goals a bit, but I really think 400 is the goal and is achievable.
I'm reading that the G-series really need to be kept under their RPM limit or things go very wrong very quick, while the GTX series turbos just take abuse. I was looking at Precision and Xona stuff, but anything outside of Borg Warner EFR and Garrett seems to spool later and be focused on top end numbers, not area under the curve. That might be a misconception.
I'd probably pick up an ETS kit. I've reached out once and they said that they can do a custom turbo request so long as it doesn't require re-working the piping etc. I'm thinking that will mean that the EFR7163 is out if I go with their kit. All conjecture at this point, but good to have a plan.