Denzza's Lancer RX 2.0 4B11T swap. **2015 UPDATE**

[R4LLI4RT]

damn... that really sucks dude.
hope you get it back on the road asap

[JaZira5]

OMG.. Denis.. NNOOO!! I give my regards man. I hope you get it fixed soon. Or shall we give it a ceremony to celebrate the achievements that were accomplished during its time.

[Beeble]

I haven't read through all this, but here's the tuning side lowdown for those that understand all this stuff :

Stock evoX actuator, was making approx. 13psi in 2nd/3rd/4th that we tested. plumbed straight from the boost source to actuator with no controller or bleed valve.
AFRs set around 11 (quite rich) as this was just a bit of a shakedown tune to get it all settled in and sorted.
Timing at peak torque of 1-2* (yes, one!) and maximum of about 9-10* from memory - again, very lazy.

We ran through all kinds of throttle/loads, ranging from roughly 30% through to WOT to set the fuelling and ensure there was no knock counts anywhere.
I did encounter a few counts up to about 5 during tuning which were quickly fixed up (mostly due to a bit of a lean spot just as it came on boost). certainly nothing horrible.

where we left it, we had somewhere in the vicinity of 145-150kw and low 200ft/lb torque. in fact without somehow making the boost lower, this was almost the lowest torque I could achieve!

So yeah, I am sure the failure was a rod. looked like #2 from what I could see. Rods generally fail from too much torque. Torque was not particularly high (in fact lower than the other NA-turbo cars I have done) so I can only guess that one of the rods in this motor wasn't quite up to the spec we have generally seen in these motors.

Either way - the situation sucks for all concerned. I feel terrible, I know Denis feels 100 times worse than I do. I kinda wish it happened while I was in the car so I would have caught it on a datalog.
Anyways, onwards and upwards.

[merlin]

Not your fault Adam, just part of the crap we have to wade thru to achieve anything worthwhile in life.

[Beeble]

yeah I know.
I'm feeling shitty, but not guilty, if that makes sense. Stuff like this happens, and I'm sure it happens to every tuner - and if it hasn't happened yet then it is probably because they haven't tuned enough cars or they are God-like
You do everything in your power to make things as good as you can, and the customer has done everything they can do to make their project as good as they can.... and then something like this happens.




I think Denis and I both thought this would happen one day. but like maybe quite a long time down the track!!
New plans now for the car I believe, it should be great when it is finished.

[LiX]

Beeble, I know you are a very good tuner and I'm sure you gave your best.

The concerning thing here is whether this boost spike of 21 psi was real, cause if it is its definitely the cause of the problem. I had boost spikes before only on 2nd gear, but they were only + 2-3 psi above which is not a big deal.
Stock internals won't handle such high boost and I'm pretty sure the car has not been tuned for such high boost for obvious reasons, had ran lean, detonated badly and we know the result of this.

So I wouldn't blame the engine internals, they are not designed to handle boost of 21 psi. The issue here is boost control.

Denis, do you remember what I advised you? To replace the Evo X actuator with one with lower spring rating and use a boost controller.... whatever it doesn't matter now, just learn from your mistakes to not repeat them.

[sleeper]

boost spikes arent normal erin, tuned or untuned

[squala]

It's a shame that all the time, effort and money resulted in catastrophic damage. Unfortunately, there are risks in getting an engine heavily modified. At least no accidents happened. There should still be light at the end of the tunnel.

[tencents]

Did the tune cause it to blow?

[Beeble]

yeah the boost spike I can't figure out.
I am sure this may have caused an issue - but when run after run shows 13psi (which was the very upper limit of what I was happy with, but I thought acceptable with low timing to reduce cylinder pressure) , and we don't use a bleeder of any sort...

my first thought was is the boost reference has popped off the actuator nipple, or the boost source nipple.
but nope - still there. it was dark but I could not see any split or hole in the boost line either.
The only other reason I can think of is if the actuator or flapper got a little bound up, sticky and didn't open quite as fast as usual. But why would this change so suddenly? I can't say.
Did the boost reference line freakishly become blocked with debris? so unlikely.

In the tune itself, I set it very rich and no timing in the areas "off the chart" just in case boost was higher, but obviously this can not defend stock NA rods against big boost.
Denis said he saw 21psi or something like that, which I tend to believe must have happened as it explains the failure. But I am unable to explain WHY we saw boost like that all of a sudden.



LiX - I agree, in retrospect a softer wastegate actuator would have been useful. This was good advice. There are a few NA-> EvoX turbo cars around Australia now and all however have used the stock evo turbo and supplied oem actuator as far as I know. Boost typically seems to have been a 12-13psi maximum falling to 9psi or so. I did assure Denis that the stock actuator would be ok so I will take that one on the chin.

[Beeble]

Did the tune cause it to blow?

Ha I was waiting for someone to say that

[sleeper]

has to be a mechanical problem, i wont even guess at which one.

[sleeper]

prbably a stupid question but it wasnt the intercooler pipe popping off Adam?