Keeping with the recent election activity, and calling the winners and losers based upon early results, I’m going to weigh in on the Turbo Concepts Stage 1 turbo versus the BorgWarner K04. In terms of low end boost response the BW K04 has hung on against another challenger and remains the response champion of the K03 alternatives I have evaluated.
2-11 Time with Turbo Concepts Stage 1 turbocharger
With a recent drop in temperatures, and some refinement to the ECU tune, I’ve logged some additional data and added it to the chart shown above. With temperature in the mid forties the Turbo Concepts Stage 1 turbo is comparable to the BW K04 in temperatures in the mid eighties. This is shown by comparing the green diamonds and red diamonds.
The BW K04’s in cooler temperatures, more like what the Turbo Concepts have been evaluated under thus far, clearly is more responsive, especially at lower engine speeds.
The Turbo Concepts turbo is shaping up to be more responsive than the other K04-hybrids that I’ve recorded.
After checking that the wastegate settings were good on the Turbo Concepts Stage 1 turbochargers, and then swapping out a damaged o-ring from a fuel injector, I moved forward with taking some initial readings on the street.
For the base tune I am using a profile that was built for the FrankenTurbo F21 since the wastegate pressure on those turbo’s is close to the setting I have for the Turbo Concepts turbo’s. The tune was intended to operate the F21’s at a boost profile close to what I would operate BW K04’s at. The tune will be refined for these turbochargers, but the results below are probably a good indication of where these turbo’s will rank relative to the other turbo products.
Outside air temperature during this logging session was 58 degF.
Here are a series of several brief accelerations to capture the boost onset.
Turbo Concepts Stage 1 Turbochargers – Boost
In order to observe how the turbochargers responded to a tune that is designed for a lower wastegate preload, the TTE550’s, I loaded the tune that I used with the TTE turbo’s.
Turbo Concepts Stage 1 Turbochargers – Low WG preload tune
The boost onset rate is roughly the same, but clearly the initial boost spike level is not. 30+ psi is not likely where I will operate the Turbo Concepts “Stage 1” turbocharger at.
Finally, with a handful of data points I can begin to see how the Turbo Concepts Stage 1 turbocharger compares with the other turbochargers that I have previously logged.
Turbo Concepts Stage 1 Turbochargers – 2-11 time
The Turbo Concepts results form a curve that is similar to the BorgWarner K04’s (red points) under warmer ambient temperatures. The Turbo Concepts were logged in 58 degF conditions and the K04’s with temperatures around 85 degF.
The coldest conditions that I logged the TTE550’s in were 41 degF, and the Turbo Concepts Stage 1 turbo’s spool up more quickly, even with warmer conditions.
As more data is collected under different temperature conditions I would expect a data ‘cloud’ to form for the Turbo Concepts turbo’s similar to that of the other turbochargers, indicative of how the boost onset is affected by the ambient temperature.
There is also the possibility that once the tune is tailored to these turbochargers that the boost onset results will be affected, though probably only slightly.
I got the engine back in and spent several hours hooking things back up again. I was happy not to have any immediate leaks upon starting the car.
I took it out for a drive to check how the wastegate settings were taking. This was about what I was expecting, based on my efforts to set the preload I figured around 12-13 psi would be where it steadied out at.
Turbo Concepts Stage 1 Wastegate Pressure
Unfortunately on the way back I smelled gasoline and thought one of the injector O-rings was leaking, that appears to be the case, so I’ll need to look into correcting that problem before I can hook the N75 back up and take a log with a more appropriate boost profile.
