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duxthe1 · #14 11-21-2018, 01:07 AM

I pulled an all nighter Monday, after work and finally in the wee hours, it was alive. Every. Damned. Thing. ... was a fight.

Here's a tip. The Mercedes 5 bolt turbine housing DOES NOT MATCH the common Ford 5 bolt housing. (Which BTW is the only version commonly sold) First hurdle, bolt my wastegate housing to a turbo that has 3 out of 5 bolt holes in the wrong position and 30% of the flange not even matching up.

Undaunted, I pressed forward. About 1/4lb of mig wire later, I've added enough meat to the wastegate housing to move the bolt holes and seal the perimeter. My 12" disc grinder was invaluable in that endeavor. Smoothed with a burr, the flow through the modded housing looks pretty good. Tiny sharp shards of steel now everywhere, but mainly in my hands and fingers.

Alright I can bolt the turbo together. Yay! In my 4matic engine bay the .48 turbine housing was a really tight fit. Trial fit the .63 housing, damn. Needs a lot more room. Numerous pie cuts, hammering, and welding (swearing, bleeding, and moments of self doubt) and I can finally lower the engine onto the mount with minimal clearance between the body and turbine housing.

The 4matic hydraulic lines run through the rear corner and one had previously rubbed through on the downpipe. Now its even tighter so I decided to re-bend the 3 lines to run straight down to the motor mount and then straight back. This actually ends up giving more room than I had with the downpipe on the .48 housing. Too easy? Yes. The compression coupling used to fix the previous damage decided to leak. Tightening it revealed that one of the nuts was split and wouldn't tighten. At 2AM no parts to be had, bodge a fix until a new coupler can be acquired.

Time to actually start assembling the turbo onto the car. Lets bolt up the drain flange/adaptor. Hmmmm, the bolts aren't tightening. Oh, they're one thread larger than the feed, or any other Garrett turbo I've ever futzed with. Timeserts were the only fix I could manage and even then I wish the larger threads had left more meat to thread the insert into. At least its the drain. The oil feed threads were correct and match my oil feed line. Can't explain why I still had to tap them when the original bolts started to seize before tight.

Downpipe to exhaust system has a 3" band clamp. It's moved far enough that it won't quite seal despite a nearby flex joint. It is easily the biggest exhaust leak. F*** it! Its far enough under the body that it'll be ok for now. I'll probably get another flange and just drop it off at the exhaust shop.... eventually.

Wastegate. New actuator was expected to be customized to the install. Only by this point I've emptied the spool of mig wire and its after midnight. Make do I guess and get creative. Cut, thread, grind. Eventually it mounts. It does need a boost source to operate the wastegate, only the T04B housing has no bung to thread the nipple into. Not wanting to drill a hole into the thin part of the casting to try and thread the nipple into, I looked to the steel intermediate pipe. Could weld a nut and drill and pipe thread it. No wait, out of mig wire. I have a flange welded to mount an EGR valve, (only for show for emissions) and that weld is the only meat to drill into on this half of the engine's cold side plumbing. Get to drilling, threading, it ain't pretty but the wastegate boost source is done.

The rest of the heat shield and air filter and plumbing went back without too much fuss. My K&N needs cleaned and re-oiled pretty bad. Wasn't happening at 2:30 in the morning. They say specifically not to clean them with compressed air. F*** that too, just blow it out.

With everything all together and running without anything worse than a hyd fluid drip, I loaded the new tune I prepped for it. Pretty close, at least at idle. Start autotuning the VE table on the drive home. Noticed that it only boosts 5-6 PSI. Gonna have to go in and put more pretension on the wastegate. Damn it. It was a fight just to get it where its at. When I go back in and shorten the rod it won't be under the weight of the rest of the project.

So that's where its at. Needs more wastegate spring tension to get to my 7PSI baseline. Needs some tuning, and exhaust pipe work. Need some sleep. Bad.