yea, i think its about time to do an EGT gauge now. never had much smoke before, but then again, never had a turbo pump before. i can take off from a stop sign, floor it and start grabbing gears. if the tires dont break loose, it fills the intersection with smoke. i can even burp the throttle and get it to smoke now. kinda weird tho, boost doesnt seem to come on as quick. but when it comes on, it really comes on. once it hits 10 psi is when it really puts you back in your seat. maybe thats about when the LDA kicks in? also, did the governor mod, but im honestly not that impressed by it. sure it gives me full fuel, but the extra PRMs are pretty useless i think. it doesnt pull that hard past a certain point, then you grab another gear and it keeps pulling.
i really want to find someone around with another TD rabbit that i can race.
Hey josh, feel like drag racin the spearco truck again?
Just noticed this was back up again so time for an update. I've got a few thousand miles on the conversion, so far so good. Runs like it always did, just faster. Fuel economy is down a little, dropped maybe 2mpg. Still, totally worth it. Still working on my IC install, but it's coming along. It's funny how the EGT's behave with different cruising speeds. Flooring it at 60mph causes the egts to climb rapidly as noted before. Flooring it from 65, the behavior is totally different since the turbo is spooled up a little more already. Egt's only get to 1200 then before they start dropping. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the conversion. I'll keep updating this as the miles rack up.
And time for another update. I've put another couple thousand miles on the car. Everything is still working fine. I have a funny boost issue to sort out though. If you get into it on a long straight, and hold it down, the boost will rise to the factory maximum (~10psi) and stay there for awhile as the revs climb. Then at some point, the boost starts to creep up again and will max out at 14psi. It's kind of like the wastegate is opening, but not all the way so eventually it gets overwhelmed by the exhaust flow. Anybody else had this happen?
My pc at home is not working right now so I can't post pics. But if you click on my profile and then show post you will see how I used a blackstone intercooler on my Rabbit.
Time for another update. The rabbit is still running like a champ. I figured out the wastegate issue as well. The wastegate valve was stuck slightly open at 0 psi. It would move a little as the pressure on the actuator came up, and then it would stick again, never opening fully. Now that it is freed up my boost is nice and level. I've also finished my intercooler install. I decided against the using the Saab IC, and instead did an AWIC with a large heat exchanger in front of the radiator and A/C condenser. The IC works great! Egt's have dropped to 1000 while on boost, but I still need to get some thermocouples and actually measure the efficiency of the unit.