Category Archives: Misc.

Fluidampr crankshaft pulley

February 3, 2016 Jeffrey Jones

Soon to be installed on my S4 is one of the Fluidampr engine dampers.

I’m not expecting to be able to detect any difference from the driver’s seat, but hopefully it will help with engine longevity, especially at higher than stock horsepower levels which I expect my car to be operating at.

Here’s it is on a bathroom scale, weighing in at 7.2 lbs.

And a couple more angles of the product.

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Today I removed the stock crankshaft pulley and weighed it on the same scale to compare with the Fluidampr weight.

Stock: 4.6 lbs
Fluidampr: 7.2 lbs

Here’s the two parts side-by-side:

fluidampr_stock_damper — (L-R) Stock, Fluidampr

Installed on the S4.

Finally, some additional information about what these viscous dampers do to help mitigate the affects of torsional vibration.

Misc., The Turbo Engineers, Turbo Selection

TTE550 First Look

January 12, 2016 Jeffrey Jones

A set of TTE550’s has arrived for evaluation. The turbochargers came well packed and even included a balance sheet for each turbo, a nice addition for turbo’s that have been rebuilt to upgrade the BorgWarner K04’s to a hybrid using a variant on the RS6 center.

pair of tte 550 turbochargers — TTE550 RS4 K04 Hybrid Turbochargers

Looking them over it dawned on me that the ring that goes around the wastegate canister increases the effective diameter of the canister, and I have encountered problems fitting the TiAL turbo inlets past the BW K04 wastegate canisters. This could lead to future headaches when I start installing these turbo’s. The ring can be loosened and rotated, hopefully that will be enough to avoid problems fitting them alongside the inlets

I next turned my attention to giving the TTE550 a turn on the flow bench, something I have done with the BorgWarner K03 and K04 products in the past. First though I’d have to remove the turbine housing studs so I could fit the turbine housing flush to the flow bench.

I’ll just twist this first stud out, or maybe not. Vice grips, nope. Penetrant oil & heat, nope. F*******ck. Not coming out. Looks like I’ll be making a trip to a machine shop to have the studs removed.