VitTuned Drop In Turbo Upgrade -- Initial Results Sneak Peak!

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LilToTo17

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@VitViper is this why you took off your turbo upgrade?

4B023A3A-976D-4895-A643-9BFE63025149.jpeg
Well even if this was the case, with the Type R turbo swap you would need to get the type R downpipe as it looks like it is different from the SI or other base models.
 


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VitViper

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@VitViper is this why you took off your turbo upgrade?

4B023A3A-976D-4895-A643-9BFE63025149.jpeg
No. We were aware PRL was doing this ages ago and have supported them in the move. I can't speak for their pricing, but our turbo upgrade was meant to be entry level (as far as cost). A Type R turbo at retail is $1500. Add in the work needed to make it fit the car and you're probably looking at a $3k+ turbo upgrade. Our was $850. Emphasis was. Unfortunately we were jerked around on pricing after we agreed on terms and ordered a batch of upgraded turbo wheels be made for our drop in upgrade. They are also taking 3 months or more to get us a batch back... unacceptable, and we are likely never going to do business with this company in the future (we used to buy a fair volume of product from them). So aside from the few individuals that already had cores sent out to get the upgrade done, we're cutting our losses and scrapping the turbo upgrade for the time being.
 

charleswrivers

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Sucks man. This seemed like a great bang for the buck upgrade for those wanting to stay on stock internals but want to chase after 300 hp.

Thanks for the update. Here's hoping you get another supplier who will play ball.
 

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This is super disappointing to hear. This drop in upgrade that would have looked OEM and cheap would be perfect. Hopefully something else similar will come to pass in 2018. Thanks for the update Vit.
 

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Well this has been in the works for some time and we finally have a decent "drop in" turbo upgrade for the 1.5T! The goal was to have something quick and easy to install and pick up 10-15% power and keeping the powerband from dropping like a rock after 5000 rpm.

Mission accomplished.

Get it here: http://www.civicx.com/threads/vittuned-1-5l-stage-1-turbo-upgrade.19564/

Foremost, it's sad, but I have to put this disclaimer in: my dyno is not very generous. A car that dynos 270-280whp here will trap 108-109mph (@maddmatt02 's car made 230-240 here and traps 103-104mph). None of this sub 300whp and 104mph traps. However if you need your glory #'s, just multiply by 1.15 on what you see.

First -- we have the results w/ the turbo upgrade on 92 octane vs E40 fuel. I did also go up as high as E60 fuel and NO MORE POWER WAS FOUND. The motor, yet again, for the countless time, was happy in the E40 range. What WAS found at this power level on E60 fuel were misfires and aircharge blow out due to the injector pulsewidth being too high (not enough time for the fuel to tumble/mix). We also target a conservative 11.2-11.3 AFR on 92 octane and 11.8-12.0 afr on ethanol blends, not 13.2-13.5 (which some people do to reduce the fuel demand on the D/I fuel system -- this doesn't make power, creates heat and doesn't make you "faster" when you put the motor through it's paces -- turns the ethanol into a blow torch).

For the stock turbo graphs you can see I extrapolated the dyno chart with a line -- we don't dyno the car past 6500 on the stock turbo as power loss is DRASTIC up there.

pump_vs_e40.png
312whp on E40 and 276whp on 92 octane. And the best art -- power carries to 7000 rpm! No more cliff dive after 5000 rpm.

How's this compare to E40 on the stock turbo?
turbo_vs_stock_e40.png
This is going all out on the stock turbo -- as you can see we removed the huge torque spike below 3500 rpm (harder on the rods). Torque comes in smoother and power from 3700 to 5000 rpm is basically a wash -- but then the upgraded turbo continues to carry. Anywhere from 20-40whp gained and now it's got some legs!

How's this look on 92 octane? Let's compare a conservative tune first.
pump_gas_conservative.png
Plenty gained over a conservative tune.

How about a really aggressive 92 octane stock turbo tune that pushes the knock limit (which people like to do for "glory" numbers, but unrealistic to run as it gets crunchy and can hurt the motor. Hey we do it for fun too!)
pump_gas_aggressive.png
Similar results as the eblend.

Overall the results are satisfying and the car pulls MUCH better instead of just being a peaky torque hit. This should also allow you to make more power however you chose to run the motor -- pump gas, corn, conservative, aggressive, whatever. As it sits now the restriction is in the turbine size of the turbo -- which I chose not to change as I did NOT want to impact spool drastically (and as you can see we didn't lose much). Upgrading the turbine wheel may be in the cards as well, but to make more power with it we'll have to look at moving away from ethanol based fuels and step up to race gas to lower the demand on the fuel system -- something most people don't want to do due to the increased cost of the fuel.

so this will blow my CVT right?
 


LilToTo17

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so this will blow my CVT right?
Vit shutdown this turbo upgrade project but yeah anything over 250 to 260 wtq for your cvt is catastrophic
 

kshawn

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I didn't grenade my CVT thank God. But I did trade it in as fast as possible. I was so paranoid that it was going to start slipping. But gotta say 16k and I was testing with ktuner since the first oil change.
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