ECS Jack Pad Kit

December 3, 2016 Jeffrey Jones

I decided to make an effort to save the pinch welds on the Avant. With the S4 routinely being jacked up I want to use something better than a piece of 2×4 to blunt the contact between the jack and the car.

The ECS Tuning Jack Pad kit looked like something that would help with protecting the car. I installed the grommet’s and the companion snubber’s.

There are four locations underneath the vehicle for installing these pieces.

The jack pad adapter seats in the center of the snubber, although I’ve found the adapter isn’t needed with my floor jack.

I’ve used the jack pad kit a few times now and have found it easy to use and successful at achieving it’s purpose of safely lifting the car while protecting the underbody.

Go to top

The instructions ECS Tuning supplies states to put the snubber into the grommet and then push into place. I don’t recommend following these procedures as it’s more likely that the snubber will be pushed into the grommet BEFORE the grommet is seated in the hole it’s to fit into. If that happens it becomes more difficult to get the parts into place.

I found it worked better to use a wide socket along with the floor jack to push the grommet into its hole, at least partly, and then to put the snubber into place and use the adapter to push it into its final position.

Turbo Selection, Turbocharger

A different look at boost onset

December 2, 2016 Jeffrey Jones

A question was posed to me about how the turbocharger boost onset data might look if the range being compared was expanded from 2 to 11 psi to go from 1 psi up to 20 psi. The 20 psi top end results in the BW K03 data being lost on account of the boost profile that I used with the K03’s stopping short of 20 psi of boost.

For the remainder of the turbochargers the data that I have collected produces the following results with a 1-20 psi range.

The general trend is similar to before, although the FrankenTurbo F21 and TTE550 are now harder to distinguish differences between. The differences between these two products now appear smaller than with the 2-11 chart, below.

Subjectively I feel that the 2-11 chart captures the differences in feel from the driver’s seat better, but in terms of practical differences the data on the 1-20 chart suggests that at least in one comparison the differences may be less than those I have perceived.

Tuning, Turbo Concepts

Still tuning the Turbo Concepts

November 28, 2016 Jeffrey Jones

I’m continuing to work on replicating the boost profile that the car operated at with the BorgWarner K04’s. In this effort I am mainly concerned with the top end boost so that I can compare the pre-turbine backpressure produced by the Turbo Concepts Stage 1 turbochargers with that from the other logged turbo’s. The current state of the boost profile is shown below:

This tune started from a FrankenTurbo F21 tune that I used with the same hardware, aside from the turbochargers. The wastegates on the Turbo Concepts turbochargers are set about 1.5 psi less than what the FT’s had, so I was anticipating some adjustments needing to be made. The first few revisions were not generating the results I was wanting, so I went back and logged the boost developed at a variety of fixed wastegate duty cycles. A sample of some of these are shown below:

Turbo Concepts Fixed Wastegate Duty Cycle Boost Levels - 50, 60, 70 — Turbo Concepts Fixed Wastegate Duty Cycle Boost Levels – 50, 60, 70.

I suspect one of the reasons this effort to modify the tune is proving a bit more of a challenge than I had anticipated is on account of the unsteady boost curve. I’d have expected a fixed WGDC to produce a straighter line. I was concerned with the wastegates when I was trying to set the pre-load and was having trouble, the variations shown above further my concern about the wastegates on these turbochargers.

Audi B5 S4 Information and Testing