The link to the video:
Okay, so...
Couple of weeks ago I finally found my boost leak. There was a hole in one of my stock intercoolers. Fine.
Bought a front mount from Madness. Installed it, all is good.
Take it out for the first drive and the boost fluctuates wildly at WOT. It'll go from 21psi (mechanical guage) to 15 to 20 to 17) over and over. My car has a high flow downpipe so you can hear the wastegate being opened and closed while it does.
Annoying, but I figure it's the wastegate solenoid because the car is a 2013 with almost 100k miles. So I order a new one, replace it, and there is a small tear in one of the boots on my old one, so I figure that was the problem. Drive it for a day and it felt mostly fine, though it did overboost a few times by a couple of psi, it didn't go crazy pulling it back. It would spike 20 or so, pull it back to 18, and hold.
Yay!... Or not...
After another drive, I noticed it do the boost fluctuation just once. So I reset the ECU by unhooking the battery for hours. Put it back together and it was just as before, mostly fine with some spikes to 20, but nothing crazy, again.
Yay! Again! Or not... Again!
Tonight I took it out onto the interstate (in Mexico) to really run through the gears. The video clip is from tonight.
The first clip is right after I pulled onto the highway, the second is maybe a minute later.
Now it's intermittent. Some pulls it fluctuates, some pulls it holds right at 18, some pulls it over boosted then pulled it back in. Tonight is also when I noticed that the factory boost gauge, at times, is showing something like 22psi. My mechanical gauge isn't agreeing.
So I'm at a loss. I need help. I've dumped so much money into this car and it's killing me. I just want it to be right.
The car is a 2013, manual, Multiair with 99k ish miles.
It has a 500Madness front mount, ATP high flow downpipe, Sila short ram intake, and Turbosmart Wastegate actuator, adjusted to 2mm preload. I did the diy version of the EC boost leak fix, and other than that the car is stock. I don't believe it was tuned as the ECU appears stock, and the previous owner seemed cheap/lazy.
The only thing left really is either the TS wastegate is faulty, or the turbo is faulty. I can't afford a turbo right now, or an actuator for that matter, but if we all agree it's the actuator maybe I can rebuild it?
I don't know.
Help.
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