IT RUNS!!! - My 500whp build - Element motor and Moore Performance Twin Scroll Kit! by dexterous

5 minute(s) of a 312 minute read

The turbo didnt make it back on time because vendor's shipping guy put the wrong zip code on the box. This was a total PITA to get corrected but the turbo finally showed on Friday night. This new delay has pushed my tune date back to August 9th which really sucks. After a long time of thinking about this I have realigned my goals. The 2011 season is a total loss so my real focus is to get the car fixed before it goes into storage this fall. With a bit of luck I will finally have success on August 9th leaving me with about two months of good weather. What a bummer.

7-31-2011

I finally got my turbo back yesterday so I am planning on putting it back together later today. Moore Performance has scheduled a few runs on the local dyno for next Saturday to test everything out before I go back to Element. I also scheduled another tune on August 9th. I really hope this is it.

I finally got my turbo back together and the car is running again as of about five hours ago. I expected some smoke the first time I drove the car since the oil needed worked out of the exhaust and thats exactly what I saw. According to my wife who was standing in our front yard watching me drive the car, it smoked heavily when I drove out of our neighborhood (similar to what its been doing). Fortunately, she also said that the smoke appeared to be totally gone by the time I got back from a test drive. I even went so far as to have her watch as I drove the car up and down our street several times both on and off throttle and there was no visible smoke. I intend to drive the car around a good bit more and I also have a dyno session scheduled locally on Saturday August 6th. We plan on doing up to six 2000 to 6500 RPM pulls at WOT which should be enough. If I see a significant amount of smoke on the local dyno I wont be going down on Element on Tuesday August 9th.

In addition to the smoke there's something else thats really bothering me. After I came home form my test drive I noticed steam coming out of the Element breather can. I have noticed this on a number of occasions including the very first time we had the car on the dyno back in April. I am not sure if its relevant or not but I pulled the oil filler cap off when I noticed the steam and I didn't see anything coming out of the filler cap. I have emptied the breather can on four of five occasions (including immediately before starting the car today) and there was almost nothing in there on all but one occasion. On that one occasion (~700 miles worth) there was about 3/4 of a cup worth of a very watery substance with just a slight hint of oil. I have actually saved 100% of the contents of the can since the very first time I started the motor in 2011 so that I can monitor whats showing up in there. I took a picture of the bottle tonight so you guys could see what I am talking about. As you can see, there's a bit more than one cup of light watery liquid and a small amount of oil. Its hard to say exactly but I am going to guess that this is the result of driving 1700 miles including the three dyno sessions this year. I have also noticed that the breather's filter always appears to be wet after driving the car.

How does this compare to what everybody else sees? Where's the water like stuff coming from? Is there a need for concern?

Here's a pict wth the compressor cover off. There was some drama with the compressor cover, shipping, etc so I had to mock up the turbo like this which made me really nervous about damaging something. Any way, the filter is the largest brass piece and the restrictor is the very first thing screwed into the center cartridge.

Here's the bottom part of the oil line (-4 banjo with -3 adapter and -3 line.