Upgraded T04 turbos for less $ than stock! Wtf? Link inside
- Thread starter Mightbaal
- Start date
Good info.
Did you touch the heads, cams or compression on the built engine?
I could be wrong but, he chinas look like they might have a less efficient design than brand name stg2s .no suprises really.
For comparison in testing my FF tune (2nd rev) I had about 23psi and basically no timing and ran 10.7@131mph. Full weight 335i coupe on road tyres. I am on revision 4 now with 6 deg on e85 and I'm leaving it at 24psi and just getting the rest of the tunes built around logs for road, circuit and 1/4mile or 1/2 mile , so I can get the power delivery right. No point having a dyno queen if you cant realise all the power in a race.
Your timing pulls could have a few reasons but, I think the consensus is (stock engine) any brand stg2 likes to live at 24psi max on good fuel. Above that you tend to see the signs of the system having issues and the possibility of increased turbo failures. With the restrictive stock n54 head they work too hard.
Need to get your beast out on a track dude and see how it goes. Appart from giving you a real world power indication it will help you get ready with traction and other elements for a big power hike when the time comes. Plenty of money to spend on that bit too
EDIT: Thanks your finding and reading my post. Unfortunately, Spoolstreet is no longer a neutral platform where we can have honest discussions on subjects and products freely.
For this reason I have deleted all information I posted on the forums.
For this reason I have deleted all information I posted on the forums.
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EDIT: Thanks your finding and reading my post. Unfortunately, Spoolstreet is no longer a neutral platform where we can have honest discussions on subjects and products freely.
For this reason I have deleted all information I posted on the forums.
For this reason I have deleted all information I posted on the forums.
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Thanks, I saw that and those are definitely TD03 compressor housings.
I'm surprised a 19t fits inside. Have you got an example of the differences of a td04 housing? These are not using original oem housings, they're custom castings.
They even struggle to get a 2 inch inlet on.
They even struggle to get a 2 inch inlet on.
Yes OEM is TD03. Someone please post up a picture comparing these vs a stock turbo. Unless I am missing something these are nothing more than a casting of stock housing with a larger 2" snout for the inlets. 19T comp wheels were put into stock machined housings 5+ years ago. Also measure the outlet on compressor housing and post the results. Below is a stock housing machined for a larger wheel, a GC housing, and a TD04 housing for comparison.
The question needs to be: "Are these a TD04 CHRA/bearing housing". Most of these China hybrids have bigger wheels stuffed into a TD03 CHRA which has much smaller internals and bearing surface.
From this entire thread, the worst part is somehow this douche nozzle keeps pulling stuff like this and getting away with it. At least with these China turbos you get SOMETHING delivered. Even jpworkz would deliver some others. Andy is no better than a regular Facebook scammer that takes payment and then blocks people. I bet this guy has scammed over 100k of of people by now.
Been reading this thread with a great deal of interest, Who wouldn't be tempted to pick up a set of these if they in fact are well made with proper Quality Control, half or less what established vendors charge for a similar-appearing product. But I don't think they are. At first I thought the cheerleaders must be on a vendor payroll (hey it happens) or at least exaggerating but probably what is going on is something described in a book called "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Talib (of Black Swan fame).
Suppose you made 1000 sets of these turbos but did not balance any of them. Chances are very good some of them would be assembled with just the right parts + or - and if you were to test them would balance out well. But the statistics of the entire production batch might not be pretty. You'd have a large mean and variance of errors & tolerances, perhaps all over the map. Like I said a handful could be fine, but on the entire batch the stats would be pretty bad. If you got one of the good sets you'd think these people walked on water and people who didn't agree were haters. Contrast this with a builder who balanced everything to a set of tolerances so that EVERY set or nearly every set came out meeting or exceeding those specs. Very tight variation across the entire production run, ideally every unit well within spec. That is proper QC but it is also time consuming and therefore expensive. Add to that expense (perhaps) superior parts and materials, machining, design and so forth, and those are a few of the reasons you pay a lot more money for them.
We already know the balance sheets included in these chinese turbos are fake. Super bad sign IMHO. That does not mean a few of them wouldn't accidentally balance out OK as I said. The people who are (frankly) over the top insisting these are fantastic bargains are either shills (maybe) or just happened to get a good set. Oddly enough they point to other more established vendors and say things like, well some of theirs blow up too. When the same sort of thing might have happened there. A set or two got through QC and they may not have been balanced right or installer error whatever, but 99% (or whatever) are fine. Fooled by randomness again just the other way.
You want to buy from a manuf. who has proper QC in place, and has the stats to back it up. Not because some dude on the internet happened to get a great set by accident, and erroneously concluded every set from that vendor is fine. You want to see stats on hundreds or thousands of units and that each and every one was balanced, with a legit balance sheet within spec. You do not want to bet that you got the lucky 1 out of a hundred that accidentally got assembled within spec.
It is also possible these chinese vendors did limited QC/balancing. For example they pull 1 out of ten or 1 out of 25 units and test them, balance half-heartedly if needed, and ship them. All sorts of ways to skimp on QC or outright fake it. I guarantee you there are people who think like this: "what is the minimal cost I have to incur for QC vs what I can sell them for so that the number of pissed off customers refunds etc. I have to buy off means I still make a ton of money on the rest?" Guess what zero QC is often the answer, at least in China. What I would want to know is given the high reported failure rate of these (and the obvious fake balance sheets) what fraction of the entire run is bad? Nobody knows but you'd really want to know that before you could conclude that 1k is a fair price. If 99% are bad then paying 1/3 the price of proper QC is not a good deal. If only 20% are bad, maybe it is worth a shot if you like to gamble.
You want to minimize the probability that you get a bad set and the only way to do that is go with somebody who has decent QC procedure in place and discloses what that is, and of course you actually believe them. This post only talks about balancing but the same ideas apply to all aspects of QC for parts, assembly, and manuf.
Suppose you made 1000 sets of these turbos but did not balance any of them. Chances are very good some of them would be assembled with just the right parts + or - and if you were to test them would balance out well. But the statistics of the entire production batch might not be pretty. You'd have a large mean and variance of errors & tolerances, perhaps all over the map. Like I said a handful could be fine, but on the entire batch the stats would be pretty bad. If you got one of the good sets you'd think these people walked on water and people who didn't agree were haters. Contrast this with a builder who balanced everything to a set of tolerances so that EVERY set or nearly every set came out meeting or exceeding those specs. Very tight variation across the entire production run, ideally every unit well within spec. That is proper QC but it is also time consuming and therefore expensive. Add to that expense (perhaps) superior parts and materials, machining, design and so forth, and those are a few of the reasons you pay a lot more money for them.
We already know the balance sheets included in these chinese turbos are fake. Super bad sign IMHO. That does not mean a few of them wouldn't accidentally balance out OK as I said. The people who are (frankly) over the top insisting these are fantastic bargains are either shills (maybe) or just happened to get a good set. Oddly enough they point to other more established vendors and say things like, well some of theirs blow up too. When the same sort of thing might have happened there. A set or two got through QC and they may not have been balanced right or installer error whatever, but 99% (or whatever) are fine. Fooled by randomness again just the other way.
You want to buy from a manuf. who has proper QC in place, and has the stats to back it up. Not because some dude on the internet happened to get a great set by accident, and erroneously concluded every set from that vendor is fine. You want to see stats on hundreds or thousands of units and that each and every one was balanced, with a legit balance sheet within spec. You do not want to bet that you got the lucky 1 out of a hundred that accidentally got assembled within spec.
It is also possible these chinese vendors did limited QC/balancing. For example they pull 1 out of ten or 1 out of 25 units and test them, balance half-heartedly if needed, and ship them. All sorts of ways to skimp on QC or outright fake it. I guarantee you there are people who think like this: "what is the minimal cost I have to incur for QC vs what I can sell them for so that the number of pissed off customers refunds etc. I have to buy off means I still make a ton of money on the rest?" Guess what zero QC is often the answer, at least in China. What I would want to know is given the high reported failure rate of these (and the obvious fake balance sheets) what fraction of the entire run is bad? Nobody knows but you'd really want to know that before you could conclude that 1k is a fair price. If 99% are bad then paying 1/3 the price of proper QC is not a good deal. If only 20% are bad, maybe it is worth a shot if you like to gamble.
You want to minimize the probability that you get a bad set and the only way to do that is go with somebody who has decent QC procedure in place and discloses what that is, and of course you actually believe them. This post only talks about balancing but the same ideas apply to all aspects of QC for parts, assembly, and manuf.
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The new 19t are an unknown quantity, someone here in the UK is fitting a set this week.
But I can tell you I'm not on any Chinese payroll, in a large whatsapp group there are 20+ people running these (17t) now, there have been a couple of failures but nothing catastrophic ( smoking seals after a while but still boosting ).
The balance sheets may be fake, but it's elaborate if that's the case as no 2 sets of turbos have identical balance sheets.
Believe what you want but they have been an absolute bargain for most of us.
But I can tell you I'm not on any Chinese payroll, in a large whatsapp group there are 20+ people running these (17t) now, there have been a couple of failures but nothing catastrophic ( smoking seals after a while but still boosting ).
The balance sheets may be fake, but it's elaborate if that's the case as no 2 sets of turbos have identical balance sheets.
Believe what you want but they have been an absolute bargain for most of us.
so you make this extremely well worded post regarding something you have no first hand knowledge with and is laced with assumptions and the same basic thought process covered the entire length of this thread.
alright
I get the logic but it's really more a strawman. I know someone running the VIV sold turbos and is doing well with them (E85), and has customers running them. Over time this is bearing out to be a reliable setup (Whatsapp group et al). Who else sells the same setup as VIV ... don't know and I wouldn't speculate. Maybe someone will deterministically bear this out. In the $1k price range, there are 4 options: used turbos (crapshoot), rebuild OE turbos with a reliable shop (RB et al), general chinesium choices (total crapshoot), and the VIV turbos. If I was in the market for $1k solution, I'd give the VIV stuff a serious look - there is enough information and history to make a reasonably informed decision.
Filippo
Filippo
My catch can was routed improperly, caused by oem turbos to smoke because crankcase pressure couldn’t escape. Shop thought the turbo seals just went bad. Bought VIV 17t’s and on first startup the turbos were still smoking. Seals were shot from crankcase pressure before we found the actual problem. I messaged them amazon said they seals were bad from the first startup. Just claimed the seals were junk. We sent messages back and fourth for 2 days, they seemed a little reluctant and insisted the turbos were balanced and seals were fine. On my 3rd message I said if you can just sent the centersection/chras then my shop can replace/rebuild the turbos. Next message they sent was OK shipping new chras. VIV offers a 1 year manufacturers warranty on amazon. The square trade warranty says it doesn’t go into effect until after the manufactures warranty. But in the fine print the square trade doesn’t even cover turbos
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