The ODB goes Turbo (1 Viewer)

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The turbo, intercooler, gauges, bov are sitting on the bench waiting to go in. Treadstone manifold is arriving next week along with the wastegate, turbo feed and drain lines. Still have to order charge pipe and dump pipe tubing.

I'm already having issues with the turbo drain fitting I installed. It is capped for now and already started leaking. It is impossible to tighten the bolts from the inside so i slotted the bolt ends and used a screwdriver from the outside which probably didn't get them tight enough. I used black fipg instead of the supplied gasket but i doubt it would have faired any better.

I'm pretty frustrated at this point and am considering bolting on a block off plate and trying again right next to it with a different type of fitting. In the pics below, i had to oblong some holes to make the drain fit. In retrospect, the 3 bolt drain from the bolt on turbo thread looks far superior to the fitting I selected.

For those who have tig welded a drain fitting to the upper pan, how hard is it to drop the upper pan? Maybe it can be done with the pan on the truck but that seems sketchy.

Now I'm at a point where i don't know whether to drill more holes or give up and go for a welded drain fitting. Not stoked on further butchery of my upper pan either.

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Ok well let me try and clear a few things up.

I am not sure where you got the flange but you’re using our instructions (I use the term our loosely since it’s not mine but it came from my thread). But there is a reason the flange we have is not a 2 bolt flange. Additionally why did you install the bolts backwards? That is why if you look at our directions we are providing the tap to tap the holes in the pan so it can be properly installed.

While I certainly applaud the effort, quite a bit of work and effort is going into the kit to make sure people don't face the issues you are having.

An aluminum bung could be TIG’d with the pan on by a good welder but everything would have to be very clean.
 
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My hat is off to you for creating a kit, I'm going at this the hard way without turbo experience and will probably suffer some. My experiences here might push more customers your way too! Haha

The fitting I installed isn't a typical bolt on bung. It is meant to be installed with the bolt heads on the inside. The 2 holes in it are threaded. It would be impossible to bolt it on from the outside because the bolt heads would hit the -10AN male portion.

If it's leaking while capped, I can only assume the turbo will make it seep even more. At this point the plan is to find a welder skilled/brave enough to TIG a new bung on and patch over my botched holes. I've heard welding on the engine can have fiery consequences but if I drop the lower pan and give the surfaces to be welded a thorough cleaning, I would be willing to try it.

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Well that seems very risky for me. I would not want the screws on the inside of the pan. You can't reach them if they get loose to tighten them. If they vibrate loose you have screws floating around in your oil pan. etc.

There are some risks welding on an engine, ideally you would want the oil pan off but that is a big hassle.

Just make sure the welder cleans everything very well, and have his ground clamp very close to his work surface...
 
Glad to see your upper pan is as dirty as mine :hillbilly:

I just drilled and tapped the pan directly and did not use any sort of fitting/adapter and did not have any trouble with that spot. Still has a screw-in plug holding tight now that the turbo is off. I guess it's too late for you to go that route now. FWIW the turbo drain line is very low pressure, probably not any more pressure than you've got in your oil pan anyway.

Where you're at now, I would probably buy a new pan and start over. I agree with Ryan, bolts in the inside is a really scary idea. What if they work themselves loose? That's probably the end of your engine.
 
I'd suggest taking the oil pan off and have a welder professionally weld on that -AN fitting.
 
I can TIG weld, and I can tell you that it would be difficult to get a full pass around that fitting were it is. Pulling pan would be your best option. There is bright side you will have a nice clean oil pan when your done, it might snowball and you could clean everything......... or not. Good luck
 
My current plan is to remove the leaking fitting completely and TIG a piece of aluminium flat bar over the holes as a patch. That should leave more room to get a weld near the top. Then TIG a new aluminum -10AN bung on next to the patched one.

I'm meeting a friend of a friend who is a skilled welder and will be making the downpipe. I'll see what his opinion is on this plan.

Pulling the upper pan would be ideal, but I looked in to the process and will attempt to avoid it if possible.
 
What a horrible design, having fasteners inside the pan. But if you must, torque them down, then drill the ends of the bolts and safety wire them together.

Personally, I've always welded a bung to the pan. No fasteners, no bull****.
 
I might go with a water intercooler instead of an air/air. Trying to stay away from Chinese crap like cx racing and frozenboost.

I possibly found a good solution. There are a lot of oem Mercedes AMG 65 water intercoolers available on ebay for under $200. The AMG 65 uses 2 of these intercoolers, but also has over 600hp. I think it should be fine to use just one on a barely boosted 1fz.

Mercedes R230 SL600 S65 AMG Turbo Intercooler Radiator Right Passenger Side OEM | eBay
 
I got an AMG intercooler for $100 shipped. At that price, I figure it's worth a try. I'm going to install a second intake temp sensor at the throttle body which should let me know if I get in to heatsoak territory. Honestly, I'm not too concerned about heatsoak since this mild turbo configuration could possibly be ran with no intercooler.

There is another potential problem. The turbo outlet id is 2.25" and the intercooler inlet id is 2.10". Is that 0.15" significant in terms of flow restriction? It's about a 13% reduction in cross sectional area.

The intercooler opens up to 2.5" on the outlet.

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I would worry less about the flow restriction and more about getting a coupler that will seal up well to the 2.1" inlet. Compressed air flows pretty good :) WRC rally cars make 300+ HP through a 30mm restrictor
 
So you're not worried about heat soak, but you are worried about a 13% reduction in cross sectional area? If your turbo system is so weak that you think you can do without an intercooler, then don't even bother with one because it'll just add expense and complexity to a system I'm not sure you fully understand.

I'd suggest you go buy a couple books- Maximum Boost by Corky Bell and Supercharging Performance Handbook by Jeff Hartman- before you buy more crap parts. There's a lot of good theory and math in those books that will take the guesswork out of what you're doing. Or you can just tell me to go fu
ck my hat because you've got all the answers. I'm cool with whichever way you go.
 
I am sure it is a better quality than the Frozenboost intercooler. What does the actual core measure? I would want at least 180in^3

Quality, yes. Without a doubt. But functionality? Ehhh... I'm not so sure about that. It's all just speculation without empirical data, but the AMG guys ditch their intercoolers more than any other marque that I've seen. The only way they get them to not heat soak is by replacing the heat exchanger with a Killer Chiller, even at stock boost levels.
 
The volume of the core isn't as significant as the number and style of turbulators and the number of rows in the core, and flow rate of the water through the core. Calculate what your discharge temps will be on a hot day, guestimate the volume of the rows the water flows through, and use that to determine if the core will be big enough and what your flow rate will be. The other half of the equation will be determining the size of your heat exchanger, and that's dictated by the amount of heat your intercooler is able to put into the water and the flow rate at which the pump has to move the water to most effectively remove heat from the intercooler. Buy those books- they'll lay all that out for you.
 
Or just run it with a temp sensor, as he already plans to do, and see how it does. At $100, can't hurt to try it out.
 

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