I put my turbo back in on Friday and the car ran fine. Then Saturday afternoon, I drove about an hour and a half on the interstate and the drive up was fine. After stopping and driving around a bit, for some reason the turbo wouldn't make more than 2 psi. I shut the car off and started it back up and it was fine. After driving more, it would boost in some gears and then not in others. Then after shutting the car off and letting it sit for a bit, it would boost fine, then after a few miles, not at all. Then I drove in to work today, for the first mile or two, it boosted fine then not at all again. It is internally gated, btw.

It was suggested to me that it may be a blown pipe but I don't think that's what it is, otherwise it wouldn't be so inconsistent, not to mention I checked all of my piping and yanked on it all. I can hear the turbo spooling when it doesn't make boost but it also doesn't blow off. It's really weird. My thought is maybe the bov isn't shutting or maybe the gate is getting stuck open somehow. Not to mention the turbo sounds like ***. Any ideas?

 

do you have a catalic convertor?

 

Nope. What would that have to do with boost?

 

Check your wastegate vacuum line and the lines going to the BOV. They may be leaking after they heat up (might be a whole in the line). Could be a bad spring in the BOV. Also check to see if hte turbine has any additional play in it. Those would be the first places I would check.

Hope its something simple.

 

After playing around with everything, I've found it's the bov. Don't know why yet but it's staying open after letting off of the throttle and sticking, either due to a bad bov or a bad vacuum source. I"m going to try and t into a different vacuum source tomorrow and hopefully that'll take care of the issue.

 

Well I went and met up with a friend today and we spent the whole damned day troubleshooting it. We replaced the bov with a greddy, checked the pressure in the ic, checked the wastegate. No results whatsoever. I'm kind of stuck at this point. Not sure what to do now. Hopefully I can come up with something though. Still looking for suggestions.

 

One thing you might want to try checking is your spark plugs and the plug wires... I used to have a set of MSD plug wires and they started acting up on me...The car sounded like a helicopter (no lie)....furthermore i was barely able to produce any boost. Replaced them bastards with stock OEM's.... and car ran fine afterwards.... It wouldn't hurt to try.

 

You know, I'd try that but I have a d17 and it uses single coil packs so I don't have plug wires or even a distributor.

 

I would check the wastegate. it might be sticking open. what type do you have?

 

It's an internal gate. We pressure tested it as well and it's tight. I don't think that's it.

 

Im getting similar probs. My car when going into boost in 5th gear stumbles and the boost needle goes up and down rapidly like it cant make up its mind. After getting my clutch installed its now does it in 4th gear and stumbles in 2nd for a split second when hitting boost. The car feels like it is using the brakes when i let off on th throttle and the blow off valve opens. It doesn't sound right. Its not smooth anymore. Maybe we knocked something or loosened something? Does this sound familiar?

 

Not really. When the car's warm, there's no boost at all