This is about 4 years late but I figured I would post it anyway :P

Back in Jan of 21 I reached out to Tyler asking if he had a turbo that could give me stock like spool but just a bit more oomph than the 9 turbo I had on my 03. I told him that I was only driving the car on road courses and that I valued spool and reliability over high hp. At this point we were making exactly 300awhp on RRE's dynapack running 91oct with about 2-3 gallons of 100 added to each tank for safety. Motor was pretty much stock with just typical bolt ons. To be honest I was completely happy with the 9 turbo setup until I was at Laguna getting passed by a ND miata down the front straight. To be fair when that happened my car was pretty heat soaked and it was the hottest air temps I've ever felt even to current at Laguna. I also mentioned to Tyler that I intended to travel a lot and hopefully cover most major tracks from west to east coast over the course of 12-18 months so I really wanted to have as reliable setup as I possible. He recommended his 55/54 11 blade and stated it would spool almost as quickly as the oem 9 turbo. So I sent the money and soon after got my shiny new turbo. This was all just before the RA GTA event I attended in spring of 21. We put the turbo in with some Kelford 272's and went back to RRE for some tuning. After about 20 mins on the dyno it became obvious that the car was pushing coolant and we had a head gasket issue. I was told it wasn't severe but that it was only going to get worse. This was literally less than 48 hours before we needed to head out of town for the RA event and my friend who had just done the turbo install was already fed up with working on the car and I could tell he had no interest in trying to replace the HG. He was actually so pissed off after installing a clutch and the cams/turbo that he was calling the car a piece of **** and a waste of time to try and compete with it. So it was decided the car was set with a 340/380 @ 25psi with the hope it would last the event. They did have a 400 map but it was recommended start off on the 380 map. 340/380 was a big jump from the 9 turbo #'s so it felt night and day to me.

The rest of the story is during the second event after the turbo install at Buttonwillow it started pushing all the coolant out the overflow in just two laps. So I decided to ship the car out to B&M in Minnesota for a 2.2 engine build/install and it sat there for over 2 1/2 years. Mainly because I just became more focused on my business and had little interest and absolutely zero time to think about tracking or cars. So finally picked the car up this last may got some break in miles on it and just recently took back to RRE over 4 years later and finally have some results. This very inexpensive turbo ($1,400 all in shipped with coating) is doing everything Tyler stated it would and honestly its exceeded my expectations. Turbo lag? What's that :P

Anyways, here are the results on 100 octane. Also put the before Road Atlanta dyno and after 2.2 break in tune comparison. I know we could get more on E but I honestly have zero interest in running E as it's always seemed like a hassle to me. Every track I've ever been to has 100+ octane and there are stations around where I live that sell it. I don't ever commute or drive this car on the street so the added cost of 100 isn't that big of a deal.
Tuner at RRE said I could bring it back and probably squeeze a tiny bit more out of it but I'm good with it as it sits. This thing really rockets out of the corners and for reference at Laguna a couple weeks back a FBO E85 1LE only pulls about 2 car lengths on me down the front straight and I was dead even with a 991 GT3. Gonna focus on putting Dallas's knuckles and arms back on now that I don't intend to compete anymore and try and work on chassis/suspension. I want to note that Tyler was really amazing to deal with and was always responsive to help whether it was late at night when I was at RRE or when I would send random DM's at 3am.




Before Road Atlanta 21 & after 2.2 break in and re tune

 

Forgot to mention that I am running a high flow cat and a 2.5" exhaust from the trubo back with a chambered muffler. Had to run the cat per GTA rules and wanted a quiet exhaust because I'm old but mostly because I don't want to get black flagged at Laguna or Sonoma.

 

Very nice! Late update but better late than never. Glad to see you enjoying the car again