OK guys,

well as you know i just finished turboing my car with part kit part custom. I used a used TSI turbo and manifold and custom did the rest of the stuff (piping, oil lines, bov, etc). Soooo, the problems have been getting worse and worse. Last weekend it fired up and worked fine, the only issue was smoking after the car warmed up, which i figured was bad seals on the turbo, or possible problem with the oil return line. Soo since last night 2 new problems have arisen. 1) (which i think could be totally unrelated) i'm getting a rhythmic squeaking noise once i'm above 5 mphs with the clutch in, out, neutral, in gear, doesnt matter, but i get a squeeaking like its brakes accompanied by a knocking sound on the underside of the car....

Thats the first problem, second, which i hope is a blown turbo which requires a rebuild, and not something serious with the engine. Second once the car has sufficiently warmed up i cannot rev the car without being extremely light on the gas. If i tried to "pop" the accelearater the car's exhaust pops and sputters and the revs dont go anywhere. When the car is cold or just warming up the car revs freely and has no problems. I fixed the oil drain tonight and there is no way the oil is not backing up, then i refilled the oil, and started the car and let it idle for a good 8-10 minutes, during which time i could rev it easily no problem. I drove it about 100 feet down the block when i heard the knocking sound so i turned around, pulled in the driveway, and within a minute or two the idle jumped up to around 1400 and thats when it started to not let me rev it. If i try to give it gas you can hear it sputter and pop. Totally blown turbo? or something worse? anyone had anything similar?

 

check for vacume leaks in the charge pipes. pretty sure thats what your reving problem is. you may need to pressure test it because some leaks only happen when pressure is applied. as for the clutch sound it could be a busted throw out bearing. are they plastic in these cars?

 

I cant even get it to the point of building boost. this is with the car in neutral sitting parked in the driveway. also the sound comes when the car is moving regardless of whether the car is in gear or if the clutch is engaged or not. The more i thought about it it started after i took my right tire off the other day to get at the oil feed plug, so i'm going to pull it off again tomorrow and put it back on, the tire coudl be mounted a little crooked or something

 

i'd still check for vacume leaks.....

 

How free does your exhaust turbine turn? Can't build boost and if that was stopping/limiting exhaust flow it won't rev either. The knocking is probably the downpipe because the car is running like a piece of trash and is shaking.

 

knocking sound on the underside of the car.
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That could be also an impending rodbearing failure. I had such problems on 2 cars.

Check the turbo
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does it spin freely? does it wobble a lot more than a little? If not, it's okay.

At idle, if you can't get enough boost to rev and let go the throttle to make the BOV go off, it's your vac lines. On my Talon Tsi, I had a leaking cap on my ECU (much different than lancer). Otherwise, goto Vfaq.com and find the homemade Vac Leak tester. I had borrowed it from a friends and had much fun finding vac leaks.

 

Well number 1, the knocking sound under the car happens whether the engine is at load or not. I can just throw it into neutral and let the car roll and it will make the noise, and its rhythmic with the spin of the wheel so i'm almost positive it has something to do with my right front end.

As for the revs, wouldnt a vac leak affect it from the moment i started it up? This only happens after the car has been running for an amount of time. For a good 10 minutes or so after startup the car is fine and can be driven normally. This happens after that time period when the car has been warmed and running. Vac gauge looks normal, egts are normal. And i checked the turbine before i put it on the car, some side to side play (not crazy), and the shaft spun freely

 

Vac leaks shows itself when the turbo starts making initial boost. Basically, the turbo never reaches peak boost like sandbagging a run or major league short-shifting it.

Since you have tested the turbo w/o any major faults with the shaft, it can't really be the turbo. Otherwise, you really have to put out some smokescreen.

I had rodbearing problems on 2 car: 89 240sx & 95 Voyager. The nissan made loud clanking for the first 30 secs of starting up like lizards constantly getting diced up by the heat pump fan. The Voyager did the same thing, and I also overheated and toasted the cyl head. When it gets really hot outside, low end knocking at any speed while hearing air sizzling out on the top side of the motor.

If you can find Marquez in the RA forum, you may experienced something similar to his past TC'ed mirage. His T3/T4 cooked his motor a bit.

 

Yeah but like i'm saying, i don't have any of those symptoms. Don't pay attention to the sound comments i made because the more i thought about it the more i am realizing it almost has to be related to the right front wheel because the sound comes from there, the squeak comes from there, and it is rhthymic with the spinning of the tire.

As for the turbo, it did put out a smokescreen for the past few days, but last night i resealed and repositioned the oil drain tube (it had shifted to be pointing downwards). It doesnt smoke half as much now, but this seems to have started the day after i got my exhaust fabricated up. I had my car running no o2 sensor and open downpipe for a few days after the install until i could get the downpipe fabbed up, at which point they put 2.5" pipe from the downpipe to the new replaced cat. I reinstalled the O2 sensor, and took it for a drive, seemed ok, still blew smoke (until last night when i replaced the drain tube) but like i said, after a little driving time and then brought to a stop the problem with the idle revs started. Before the exhaust was installed i drove it to the exhaust shop with no problems except smoke. Boost built normally, held normally, egts were fine, narrowband read rich, the idle just was a little loopy but thats because i havent gotten a chance to make a recirc port yet for my bov. I'd rather get this other problem figured out first

 

this may be your problem. when the engine is cold vacume is low so it may not be able to open the bov but once it warms up and has more vacume it may be opening the valve causing a intake leak and cars that have air mass meters run like **** with any vacume leaks. have you tried reseting your ecu?(disconnecting your battery then touching the negative cable to positive cable) the car may be going into limp home mode if anything is wrong.

 

Well speak of the devil, i did some troubleshooting today and fixed both problems. 1) the knocking squeaking noise was because in my idiocy i didnt tighten the lug nuts all the way on the tire when i took it off and put it back on the other day. So it wasnt seated properly. Tightened it up and the sound went away.
2) we found that the BOV wasn't closing totally at idle and causing the engine to go into limp mode once the car totally warmed up after a few quick boosts. When the car was sputtering and idling weird i covered the bov port and it immediately evened out, i then disconnected the vac line and so far i have no problems. I havent boosted yet cuz i dont want to give rediculous compressor surge but it seems to have fixed the problem

The only other issue i have now is before i trouble shooted the BOV issue i was running lean at boost, the Narrowband was reading dead lean and the AFRs were going up, but i'm banking on the fact that the vaccum problem because of the BOV leak was causing the FMU to not work properly. Its a 14:1 FMU so it should be plenty rich. I'm ordering a Greddy BOV tonight and fabbing up a recirc port tomorrow which should hopefully take care of all problems. The smoking has totally stopped and the only other issue i have is the oil feed. its leaking a little where the banjo meets the turbo oil inlet so i'm going to use some hondabond gasket sealer which should solve the problem until i get the replacement feed fitting.

 

Wastegate flapper? If I remember right its the TSi stuff so its internal. All of this happened after the exhaust shop fabbed the downpipe which is right there at the wastegate and flapper.

 

sweet good to hear. now tidy things up and happy boosting.

 

Yup, thanks for the help guys. I'm making a run to sears/home depot tomorrow to pick up some plumbing fittings (rubber 2" tee, 1.25" hose fitting, 1.25 rubber hose) to put in betwee the maf and the turbo as a custom recirc port. should work well. THen i'll hook the BOV back up and see if it works fine. If not, then i'll just pick up a cheap greddy bov and tighten it up

 

Good to hear fixing some of the problems.


If it was a WG flapper problem, you would experience something along the line of boost creep. Vfaq explains it and shows an expensive mod for it.