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Close-up
Unfortunately the ******* still squeaks... I'll run it for a bit to see if it quietens down, otherwise I guess it's refurbed alternator time again.
Next up, either repaint the intercooler, or fit a standard washer bottle.
Another thing that's been bugging me is my colour mis-matched rear door.
to sort, i got myself a door from a hawk, which is the right colour (tbh it's a tiny bit off, as the car and door have aged differently), but it's close enough that I don't care.
just need to change the glass out, as the new one is tinted.
So I've been knocking about in this for a bit - probably racked up another 100-150 miles, and I've taken it slightly apart again.
Got two exhaust leaks to fix. Up-pipe to turbo join, and also underneath the car.
As the turbo has to come off anyway, I've gone and ordered myself a 19t kit from Kinugawa - should arrive in a couple of days, apparently. Changing the turbo at this stage is a bit earlier than I would have otherwise wanted, but as taking the turbo off etc is such a PITA, I'm going to go for an upgrade immediately. Unfortunately it means that I will not get to do a dyno-run with the 15t turbo. According to Neil, it should be about 280-290 bhp currently, but no firm figures.
I _really_ like the way the car drives with the 15t turbo, and I am a little bit worried that going for a 19t might ruin it a bit, but we will see.
Will also drop the coolant again and re-fit the interior heating mechanism. The current heater just doesn't work as well as the proper subaru setup, and the subaru setup doesn't even weigh that much more.
It will also have it's fourth oil change in less than 400 miles
This is the kit I have purchased - 130 incl delivery, but I've been stung 35 pounds for import duties + costs.
What were you expecting??
I trust you read the small print??
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Item location: Nantou, Taiwan
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Delivery was incredibly quick - it's already here! Ordered on the 2nd of March (evening), and delivered by 2pm on the 5th. The parts were both packaged very well as well.
The quality of the castings is better than the OEM Subaru castings. Much better surface finish, and also the inside of the volute has much less protrusions than the OEM turbo.
The wheel came in its own little box inside the parcel, with lots of good quality bubble wrap. I thought this sticker was a nice touch as well - prevents the blades from being bent when an eager person rips the wrap off
Fantastic surface finish:
Balancing marks present on the back of the wheel. Only a very very small amount has been ground off, indicating (maybe) that the impeller was very accurately made in the first place.
Side profile of the blades. The taller blades are much taller than I expected, and you can also see the extended tips down towards the base of the wheel.
Will take me a couple of weeks to get around to fitting this, but even so I'm excited
Kaosone pointed out that the steering rack on the WRX has a rubber bushing in it, so then I had to go and buy a new knuckle from MattyBR5.
I originally had one of these with the STI rack, but back when I had the bug-eye the original knuckle broke (most of the splines sheared off all of a sudden). That was an interesting drive home, I can assure you, and I repaired it with the STI knuckle that was attached to the STI rack, so once I fitted the rack, I was stuck with the WRX knuckle.
I should probably point out the obvious looking crack in the bolt hole - it's a split washer that's been left behind from the bolt, not the actual knuckle
It should be a decent upgrade. The rubber on the WRX knuckle is so fat I had to massage the downpipe with a hammer to get it to clear, and it's still very close.
In between working from home and looking after the kids so my mrs can work also, I've managed to pull the turbo off and started taking it apart. This is not a complete guide (at least not yet), but rather some random photos and random comments.
Starting point - on the bench:
Remove the wastegate: 2x 12mm bolts, and one external circlip on the wastegate flapper, and it falls off.
Remove water pipes (otherwise access to the big fat circlip that holds the comp housing on is restricted). 17mm, and they were crazy tight - had to use an impact gun:
Oil return pipe has to come off too: 2x 10mm bolts.
I made this gasket up from gasket material previously - seems to have worked well so far at least:
Once the oil return pipe is off, you can use circlip pliers to remove the big fat circlip holding the comp housing on. Then gently pull the comp housing away from the CHRA and it should come loose (some turbos I've had to use a bit of blunt force on (rubber mallet)), but it usually pops off after too much trouble.
Do *NOT* lose the little metal pin pictured below. I put mine in a separate plastic bag so that it's a bit easier to find.
This is as far as I've got for now... next step, undo this little nut here (12 sided socket or spanner required), and the comp wheel should come off. Note, the thread is left handed (CLOCK-WISE to undo):
Got the compressor wheel off today. The compressor side nut is 8mm, the exhaust wheel side is 12mm, and as previously mentioned opposite thread to normal.
Old and new wheel side by side:
Unfortunately it turns out the well that the wheel sits in is about 0.5mm too small, so the compressor wheel fouls on the shoulder
I think an 18t wheel would avoid this problem, but never mind, the 19t wheel is a tiny bit bigger, so will stick with it.
The solution is to strap it up on the lathe and machine the shoulder slightly, but that's a job for another day. Means I have to take it all apart, unfortunately.
All in all it took about an 1.5 hours to set it up in the lathe and cut the shoulder (after digging the lathe out, finding all the bits etc etc). If someone was doing this professionally I expect they'd build a jig instead, which would bring the time down to minutes.
Hopefully get a chance to build the turbo up again in the coming days.
Me again, I read the thread again but can’t work out what the suspected benefit if going from a 15T wheel to a 19T is?
So what is it?
So the 13t that is the standard size comp wheel on the td04L turbo that comes with a wrx is good for about 270bhp.
The turbo that I started with here is a td04HL-15t, which has both a bigger exhaust wheel and compressor wheel- should be good for about 285 at a guess.
The 19t comp wheel with the HL turbine, should hopefully be good for 320-330bhp, yet still maintain great spool
So that compressor housing looks just like my Blouch version!!
Exactly - Funny that
If I didn't know better, I'd say it's almost as if there are only a small number of companies producing turbo parts, which other companies then assemble (if that) and re-badge as their own turbos..
Hacked together a couple of pieces of metal to hold the wastegate in an offset position, which also meant I finally got a chance to play with the bandsaw that I got from Aldi of all places.. I've only made some test cuts with it before. Nice bit of kit for the money, but pretty noisy unfortunately.
Bracket welded up...
And painted..
Bolted together, ready for install
I was thinking of porting the wastegate slightly, but decided against it in the end - more out of laziness than anything else, as I'm not sure it's needed, really. The hole by the flapper looks big enough, but inside there's a really sharp bend for the exhaust gasses, and I think this could benefit from some porting.
As the car is apart anyway, I set about tackling the sorry state of the intercooler. I've previously spent a lot of time straightening them with a screw driver after a previous owner dropped some tools or something on the core... The fins will never be perfectly elliptical like they were when new, but at least there's air flow through the core.
Anyway, even though the cooler worked fine, it looked a bit sad (the first picture here makes the core look BETTER than what it is in real life...). The plan is to give the core a light coating of silver paint, on the outside face only (to minimize the reduction in cooling that the paint will cause), and then re-apply the STI logo with a stencil.
Starting point:
All masked up:
Light coat applied:
Test piece painted with the same paint. I've used hammerite smooth silver finish, so it might be difficult to find a paint that doesn't react with the hammerite, hence a little test piece. Apparently the smooth hammerite is better from a paint compatibility point of view than the hammered finish, so hopefully it will be OK (otherwise, I'll leave it as a silver core).
If I didn't know better, I'd say it's almost as if there are only a small number of companies producing turbo parts, which other companies then assemble (if that) and re-badge as their own turbos..
One stupid thing I did when fitting the cage was take the interior heater out (because race car). I then had a bodged setup that only delivered heat etc, and was generally terrible.
I tried fitting the standard interior heater back, but unfortunately the bar of the cage that goes under the dash fouls it, so no dice. However, I have had this old oil cooler lying around for years now (decided not to use it in case it had any metal shavings etc in it as it was used), and I figured I could use that as a heater instead, with some ingenuity.
The basic idea is:
- build box around cooler core, and pipe hot water into it (hence turning the cooler into a heater...)
- duct air from the fan so that it runs through the heater box and up into the windscreen
- valve system to adjust heat
Box in process of being made:
With a lid:
assembled
water hoses (it's tight under the dash, hence the many 90s.
Fancy valve from T7 design to control coolant flow. This valve ensures that even with the heater off, the coolant still circulates like normal (The standard subaru heater doesn't have this valve, so coolant is always circulating through it, and the heating system instead uses different air ducting paths to achieve hot/cold air).
plumbed up
mid-installation here.. There's another piece of ducting that takes the air up to the windscreen (the standard windscreen outlets)
Does it work? Yes, it works perfectly, actually. I only have one fan speed at the moment, but it's such a revelation to have both hot AND cold air blown at the windscreen
18 January 2020, 04:22 PM
