Sunday 29 May 2011

Finally fitting the turbo

All three Team Trackbitch team members were back together and we were aiming to finally get the car back on the road. This time were were also joined by an honorary team member Dave Oates who is a professional photographer, he kindly took a load of pictures of us all hard at work which have been used through this posting, he also helped us out with his mechanical knowledge.

The turbo was assembled off the car to check all the bodged connectors we'd fitted all came together. With the new larger turbo, larger actuator and larger oil-in line it really was going to be a tight fit. We'd been able to use an adapted oil-out line off a Renault 21 Turbo which seemed to fit OK, the water in and out only required one new banjo bolt and the oil-in fitted with a bit of a squeeze. it was just the actuator again from a Renault 21 Turbo that took a bit of tweaking to fit in place.

Hole where the turbo was going - Picture from www.davidoates.net


With the turbo assembled off the car we first had to re-fit the downpipe. Whilst this was off the car we welded in an AFR boss, we could then use an AFR gauge to set the car up and also use on trackdays to check our air/fuel mix was correct. The downpipe proved to be an awkward part to get back on the car and took numerous attempts to finally get attached. With the car only on axle stands it was also difficult working on the car with limited space. After a lot of swearing and forcing the part was attached.

Numerous nuts & bolts, turbos and tools - picture from www.davidoates.net



As the car was having a new turbo we also chose to change the coolant as we didn't want to overheat our new turbo. In theory, this wasn't too hard a job, simply disconnect a couple of hoses near the radiator, flush through with a hose pipe, connect the hoses, add new coolant and then bleed the system. For some reason it was pretty difficult to get to the radiator hoses and we spent quite a lot of time taking more of the car apart to get better access to the hose clips. After a lot of swearing and cursing the clips were undone and the system was drained making a real mess over the driveway!

Time for a break - Normandy Cider - picture from www.davidoates.net


New coolant was added and system was bled. Now it was time to finally fit the turbo.

The turbo went on OK, oil-out, water in & out were connected up fine. It was the oil-in and actuator that proved to be troublesome, because we'd fitted a new oil-in pipe it was a very tight fitting and the larger actuator was competing for space in the engine bay, however after more swearing we'd finally got the new turbo on and all nuts torqued up.

Picture of Team Trackbitch hard at work - taken by www.davidoates.net


Finally, the new turbo was on. Next step was to prime the turbo with oil before turning the engine over, this is done by disconnecting the electronic ignition and allowing the oil pump to pump oil around the engine. In theory, you turn the engine over (but not fire up) for a couple of minutes and this primes the turbo, the electronic ignition is reconnected and then you start the car properly. However, the car was turning over but the oil pressure light was not going out, we disconnected the oil-in line at the sump to see if any oil had been pumped through but the banjo bolt was completely dry. It looked like we had an oil pump problem or maybe a lazy oil pump that need the engine running to pump oil through?

The way to test this was reconnect the electronic ignition and hope we had a lazy oil pump, if we did we'd see oil come out of the banjo bolt. The ignition was plugged back in and the engine turned over, we must have loosened the banjo quite a lot as it dumped around half a litre of oil on the drive (with no catch pan). We had a lazy oil pump.

We attempted to reconnected the oil-in pipe, but it was at such high tension at the turbo side it was impossible to screw back in. This now meant we had to disconnect quite a few of the turbo parts to then reconnect the oil-in line. It appeared you needed a lot of time and patience when embarking on a car project!!

TURBO BOOST - Picture by www.davidoates.net



30 minutes later and everything was put back together, all that was left to do now was start the engine. The engine was turned over and The Baron was alive again, there was still a bit of blue smoke, but the old turbo had dumped quite a lot of oil in the exhaust. After running for a few minutes this began to clear.

Video of engine running for the first time with new turbo.



On the test drive the new turbo appeared to boost fine, kicks in a bit later (around 3,000 - 3,500 revs when compared to 2,500 with the smaller T2) but we did expect this with a larger turbo. It also only boosted to 12psi when compared to 20 psi with the T2. This should mean there is quite a bit of tweaking we can do :o)

Due to it once again starting to get dark and everyone short of time, we cut the test drive short. But, at last The Baron was up and running, all we have to do now is set the car up properly, could be a job for a professional at a rolling road.

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