20g And Turbonetics Manifold, Pain On The

[nestamon99]

Finally after 3 days and who knows how many hours, I got my brand new turbonetics manifold on.

The problems I encountered were damaged threads on the head where the studs go and 20g turbo hitting block. I had to helicoil 5 out of 9 holes on the head due to overtightening by previous owner or cross threading.

Here's what I had to use to make this work. I am only posting to help others who are probably wondering how hard it would be to installed this manifold on a 20g HRC turbo on a 90 talon tsi awd. I had to use the adapter/shim/spacer plate supplied in the kit from HRC, you can buy this seperately. I used two exhaust gaskets, one between the head and shim plate, and one between shim plate and manifold. I also had to use the longer studs provided in the kit or you can probably get away by using 8x1.25x50mm bolts. I tried the bolts to see if it work and they did. Only thing is I don't know if their will be any reliability issues using the bolts instead of studs.

Anyway, turbo use to come alive around 4000-4200 pms, now it hits by 3800 rpms. I used the stock manifold for a while but it just kept getting worse. I had some pretty nasty cracks. Bottomline, there's a huge difference with the new manifold. Once you go turbo, you never go back. It's awesome!!!!

 

[DSMJim]

Did you take the time to port our your turbonetics manifold by any chance? The casting is not that great and huge improvements can be made with a few hours and a die grinder. I took a lot of material out of my collector and each runner and re-shaped the ports quite a bit.

I just wasn't happy with the fit when I originally looked at it, maybe it's better now?

 

[nestamon99]

Yep, I took the time to port match to gasket. I took a carbide bit to grind, then a sand stone to even out surface, followed by 120 grit roll to produce a mirror surface. I didn't really port the runners that much, I just made them smooth.