I've just verified without question that what I have is the 6-bladed compressor, which apparently is inferior to the 5-bladed compressor in this configuration.

 

Welcome to the club :\ I'm waiting for the wheels to come in so I can get my swapped to the 5-blade.

 

At least BR is swapping the wheels for free....even covering shipping.

I give him mad props for that.

JJ

 

Keep us posted Ted. I'm curious to see if there is really much of a difference.

 

That's very true! It just sucks taking everything apart again.

 

Are you going to retest/ tune your car with the 5 blade? I'm interested in the results. Hopefully everything will work out.

 

I don't know what I'm going to do yet, as I find myself feeling quite down about this experience.

The biggest issue I am facing at this point is pure financial fatigue. Already I've endured downtime, the cost of installation, and the cost of entire day of dyno time, trying to figure out where the power went. I cannot help but feel reluctant to repeat this exercise, which exposes me to taking a serious financial beating for what this is realistically worth. It's too bad because my car has been an especially strong example until this point, and I was hoping to improve upon that theme.

I have a slightly used ATP GT35R kit that I picked up months ago on the cheap. I was going to sell it, but I'm thinking that if I have to go through another turbo installation and tuning, I may just go that route and be done with it. Unfortuntately, that still leaves me holding an expensive turbo for which I'll no doubt take a(nother) bath.

 

You know Ted, you can just send your TME to Forced Performance and have a STOCK Evo 9 compressor wheel and housing installed in it. That way you can combine the already improved power of the IX turbo with the quicker spool of the Ti wheel. Hopefully the lighter turbine wheel would counteract the lag induced by the larger compressor. I wouldn't be suprised if that gave you your low end back and netted some top end gains.

If not, I would say just stick with the TME until you're ready to go with a better turbo solution than the ATP kit.

 

If nothing else a new 5 blade and respec will allow you to increase the value of your turbo if you sell it.

 

Has anyone actually PROVEN that the 5 blade is better than the 6???? I mean, Dave's probably mad at TC.com for selling his "old" 20G so cheap... what better way to undercut their sales then by telling everyone it's not as good.

You all do remember a month or so back the Dave was telling everyone that the 5 blade and 6 blade 20G's performed EXACTLY THE SAME.

As far as I'm concerned Ted won't solve ANYTHING by getting the 5 blade 20G-9.

 

LOL ... shiv what do you mean ?

Mark
Turbotrix

 

That may be true . . . or it may not be. That's the dangling question at this point. The problem I'm having with this picture is it won't be answered until a consumer resolves it with his time and his money.

The only hard fact at this point is I'll have to ante up again to find out, and I am having trouble finding a reason good enough to convince me to do that. Consider that with a second installation and dyno time, that puts me approaching $3000 in total for this 'upgrade'. Even IF I were to gain let's say 30whp and 30 ft/lbs, is it worth the sum that I've had to shell out in total? Why shouldn't I install something worth another 100whp for the same cost? If I reinstall my TME, that still leaves me holding the bag for over $2k and nothing to show for it.

There's no easy way out of this one.

 

You gotta start wrenching on your car yourself man

save some money....

All joking aside, I totally understand where you're coming from. My vote goes for a real turbo upgrade, like you said, even if the 20G-9-5 gives you a marginal power gain over the 20G-9-6 you have now, is it worth it? And will it really take you to your true power goal?

 

Doing serioius wrenching on my own car was no problem before Hurricane Katrina destroyed my home.

My power goal isn't overly optimistic, but if I'm faced with paying out the wazoo to remedy a situation that I didn't create, the route that guarantees results seems to be the least painful way out of this mess.

 

I feel for you man. That's why I'm always 6-8 months behind the average Joe on mods. I cannot afford to stick something on the car that doesn't "really" work especially if its expensive and even more so when the prices are artificially inflated to begin with. The price reduction on turbos like the TME are simply reduced profit. Prices are dropping hundreds of dollars which basically means customers were getting raped a few months back. Now they are getting raped on the newer products. Sometimes in more ways than one.

According to BR the 6 blade tends to heat the air charge more than the 5 blade.
I'm not sure I buy any of the propaganda at this point. Hell I think its laughable that the 20G now has a WR wheel in it! I also think its great that in the last three years no one could produce a part better than the good old OEM stuff from the EVO9. I'm almost willing to bet that the 20G is barely better (if at all) than the stock EVO9 turbo. For the kind of money people are dropping on install and tune you could have applied that money to a brand spanking new EVO9 and in the long run probably come out much better off.