Summer is well and truly here in Okinawa, with the temperatures rising and the sun shining. Checked the weather report at 9am this morning and was told that it was 31°C but that it felt “like 36°C”. Thankfully the humidity was only 70% and a sea breeze coming through my apartment managed to keep me [...]
So the car was up and running again, but I still wasn’t really feeling the big increase in power I had expected from a turbo/ECU/injector swap. If anything, it was feeling even slower than before! I knew the best way to check what bost the turbo was putting out was to fit a boost gauge, so I found one of the cheapest I could locally, and wired it up.
My suspicions were proved true, as the turbo was only spooling at over 5,200rpm and then only reaching a maximum of 0.6bar. The stock boost level for this turbo was 1.0bar so something was wrong somewhere along the line. I checked my hosing for leaks but found nothing. Even pulling the hose off the turbo actuator (an action which should cause the wastegate to stay shut and the car to overboost) had no effect on the turbo’s output whatsoever. It was producing boost, but just hardly any of it.
It was at that point that I decided it was probably better to cut my losses and go back to a stock setup to see if the boost was any different. I started by changing the ECU and then testing the car, but it made no difference. The injectors were then put back to stock ones but no change either. Eventually I had to pull off this new turbo and put the old one back in. Took it for a drive and put my foot down. The turbo was spinning to 0.7bar and spooling by 3,000rpm or so, feeling much more sprightly. So it looked like it was the turbo. In the end I sold off the ECU and injectors as a package, and sold the turbo for parts.
I realise now I’d gone from pretty much a stock car setup and headed straight to stage 2 modifications without doing the basics first (i.e. I had tried to run before I could walk). The parts sale had gained me some money too so I elected to save a little of it and spend some on the stage 1 upgrades I should have made in the first place.
Tags: alto works, car problems, featured, spool, suzuki, turbocharged
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