Turbos

Building Experiences

This process of the last nearly three years has had its ups and downs.  As with any big build, challenges occur and then you work through them. It would have been better if I had sat down and thought about what I really wanted with my build prior to starting.  I first started with only wanting a tune but it has rapidly progressed from that to a full-on, all-out build.

Related: Car Builds
Also related: Rods and Pistons

I first went to a stage 2 pump 91 tune and was very happy with the speed.  I ran it on the half mile and was very excited to see a few more miles per hour than I had 6 months prior.  A little later I was put into a group chat for others who shared the same tuner.  I was pretty green with what could be done and what had already been done.  I only had a pump tune, others were running E70.  The way you got to an E70 tune was to use E85 for the majority of your fill up and then mix in pump gas for the rest.  This was to enable the injectors to keep up with fuel demand.
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Related: Shift Sector

Soon some had changed their injectors out to run straight E85 from the pump.  I first started with an E70 tune like the others had done then went to injectors, a low pressure fuel pump and straight E85 as well.  Wow the power difference between E70 and 91 octane was insane.  The car performed better and smoother on the tune than it did on the pump gas.  It also gave a lot more power. The only downside was the mileage went down but that was an easy thing to overlook.  Who would have thought that making nearly 500 wheel horsepower a car could achieve 21-22 miles per gallon on the road.

In the same chat more and more owners were added.  Other turbos became available and other options for building.  Growth for the platform was happening by leaps and bounds.  I already had downpipes and an intercooler along with the E70 tune.  I was getting tired of mixing my fuel so injectors and a low pressure pump were the next things to install.  I went to a friends house to install the injectors.  He lived about 45 minutes away.  We finished up injectors fairly late and then started the car.  It didn’t run correctly.  It turned out I didn’t have the right tune.  I was used to a carbureted car and changing things on it.  Let my learning experiences be yours so you don’t have to learn the hard way.  Turns out there wasn’t even a pump and/or injector tune for the TT RS yet, only one for the RS3.  They are different because the ECM/ECU controls more than just the engine and the RS3 has some parameters which are different than the TT RS.  So my buddy brought me home and I had to wait for a couple of days before I had a tune ready to be able to drive my car home.

I went to the next half mile event and went 159.xxx, quite a bit faster than I had done.  After a couple of runs my tuner let me know I was running a hot file and I was running more runs at my own risk.  He offered to pay for the event but I ended up just going home and being happy with the added speed.  Again a learning experience. 

Related: Racing is addictive

As I already stated other owners were joining the chat and other turbo builders.  I met up with a local guy who was also tuned by Custom Code.  We went to a couple of events together and had a good time.  He introduced me to Jesse from Pure Turbos.  I had never considered swapping turbos and I was plenty happy with my speeds.  Well I got a good offer from Jesse as it was still in development and my car along with a few others would be showcasing the turbo and what was possible with a “Stage 3”.  I ran that turbo a couple more half mile events making a best speed of 173 MPH.  I drove it to various cars and coffee events and had lots of fun with it.  I knew at that time I needed to build to be able to push the turbo further.  So I started talking to engine builders in the area and from our tuner chat.
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Related: Speed is addictive

​Somewhere along the line I needed a TCU tune.  The extra power was slipping the clutches.  So I purchased one from Custom Code as well since they were already tuning my ECU.  The first TCU was pretty decent for the stage 2.  It had to be matched with the tune you wanted to run.  If you wanted a 7400 RPM limiter to get through the 1/4 mile in 4th gear then you used that TCU.  The server just required that you look at the tune you wanted to select and read the description.  By the time I went to a hybrid, the stage 2 TCU wasn't holding.  A more aggressive TCU was loaded but it wasn't as smooth, hunted gears and many other little quirks.  That has since been fixed but took a few months to happen.  More on that in a future blog post.

When I decided to build, Jesse offered a turbo upgrade to a bigger hybrid.  I decided to go that route and purchased a hybrid Pure Turbos put together for me.  That turbo was a one-off hybrid in the form of a GTX3582R from Garrett Motion.  I drove the car all the way to the Greater Toronto Area to Apex Motoring with that turbo on it and my tune from the Pure700, making sure I didn’t race or get on it hard.  I knew this turbo was capable of so much more and I didn’t want to break any connecting rods along the way.  I wanted to make sure my engine got there in one piece.  Three days of driving carefully is a tall order with a new turbo on the car.
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Nathan built the motor in a matter of days and we got it back on the dyno to see how the power added up.  On the tune I had from the Pure700 it still was limited to 500-508 pounds feet of torque.  I didn’t realize the entire time that the tune could limit torque with different turbos.  The horsepower was a bit more I think around 660-665 or so from the 653 it had made on the Pure700.  High hopes…

Sorry to leave you hanging but you'll have to stay tuned for part 3 tomorrow on turbo Tuesday.

Thanks for visiting and remember to "Strive to Arrive"!