You got some nice parts there glad to see you back on the site, your gonna love the manifold and setup, those are a great couple really nice and to chat with. Always good to see them in ohio, let us know how the xona turns out for you.

I love this car so much, I was one that worried you didn't have the car anymore. Glad to see an update, and of course you leave the new Turbo and hot parts kit update for last.

Nice! I’ve thought about going down to 61-57s.

Vegas Smith said:

Nice! I’ve thought about going down to 61-57s.

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Yeah, I think I'd get more fun out of 3rd gear with one of these. As it is I use 2nd gear a lot, maybe too much. This is on our country roads around here, like the Volcano Evacuation road.

How does that 61-57s compare to the FP3052. IIRC from your other thread their wasn't much that FP could do with upgrading the 3052, is that correct? I am still on the 3052 and at some point will have to make a decision.

Car looks absolutely amazing, looking forward to the next round of updates.

Christo said:

How does that 61-57s compare to the FP3052. IIRC from your other thread their wasn't much that FP could do with upgrading the 3052, is that correct? I am still on the 3052 and at some point will have to make a decision.

Car looks absolutely amazing, looking forward to the next round of updates.

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I had FP convert my 3052 to an HTZ76. I don’t think they can add the new s turbine that Brett has though. The 76 is the same as Brett’s just with the older 30r turbine. Still an awesome turbo.

Good to know.

Christo said:

How does that 61-57s compare to the FP3052. IIRC from your other thread their wasn't much that FP could do with upgrading the 3052, is that correct? I am still on the 3052 and at some point will have to make a decision.

Car looks absolutely amazing, looking forward to the next round of updates.

Click to expand...

Vegas Smith said:

I had FP convert my 3052 to an HTZ76. I don’t think they can add the new s turbine that Brett has though. The 76 is the same as Brett’s just with the older 30r turbine. Still an awesome turbo.

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It's a completely different turbo. Literally no parts in common, to include turbine and compressor specs. The HTZ 76 is still a Garrett (or FP specific) CHRA as well, not a Xona. Upgrading by slapping a new compressor in an old 3052 turbo doesn't justify the cost and effort, IMO, so I upgraded completely.

The Xona is a whole new animal. They use new bearing technology, which when paired with all the other fancy turbo engineering FP has built in, is supposed to be the shiznit. In my case specifically, the Xona turbo is going to be using a new TiAL T3 v-band turbine housing, which should perform more efficiently than the old FP30 unit.

Well, it's been a interesting couple months with the Galant.

I don't drive the car much, but a few weeks back I started noticing the car was running funny as boost started coming on. I didn't think much of it at first, but soon realized the problem was getting worse. I loathe wrenching on the car these days, so some irrational part of me just hoped the problem would fix itself...But of course, that didn't happen. Since I rarely ever have issues with the car (it's been years at this point) I just think I got a little too spoiled.

So, into the garage I went to start troubleshooting.

I initially thought it was an ignition problem. I swapped out my COP for a OEM coil to no avail. On to my next suspicion, fuel.

After much dicking around, I found increasing the fuel pressure at the regulator made the car run better. My initial thought was my A1000, which are notorious for wearing out prematurely on E85 exclusive cars, was failing. Since I've been wanting to take my fuel system from way overkill to something more reasonable, I figured now was the time to make some changes. I decided to ditch my A1000 and dual 340 in-tank setup for a single Bosch 044 and Bosch Motorsport BR540 in tank fuel pump. Now, what I didn't realize is that finding a NOT f***ING KNOCKOFF 044 pump these days would be nearly impossible. So much so in fact, that I had to order my parts from EFI Hardware in MoFuckiN AUSTRALIA.

WAT?





Anyways, after some waiting for parts to get shipped around the entire world, I got the new pumps and did a quick clean install, ditching the Aeromotive stuff for all new German engineered Bosch greatness.










Annnnddd...Naturally, all my new parts didn't fix anything and I was left back at square 1 troubleshooting again

By this point, I had also added a fuel pressure sensor that I could log with ECMlink. I used that to grab some logs, which didn't really lead me to any definitive conclusions. Fuel pressure (and the regulator) seemed to be working fine.

I went back to the fuel pressure regulator, and once again found increasing pressure made the car run better. At this point, I started to think my injectors were the culprit. In retrospect, this should have very obviously been my first check, but I digress. Can't be great all the time I suppose.

I pulled the lines, fuel rail, injectors, and fuel filter, and confirmed some of my suspicions:






The filter was full of this moon dust shit. When wet, it was solid. As soon as it dried, it crumbled into nothing. At this point, I was convinced my injectors had ingested a metric shitload of moon dust, and needed a good cleaning. So, I sent them off the FIC, who confirmed that suspicion:




Once FIC sent me the flow sheet confirming the injectors were likely at fault, I started putting the pieces together:

1) The car sat while I was on deployment with E85 in the tank for nearly 8 months (f***up #1)

2) When I got back from deployment, I upgraded the fuel feed line with a 6an tank to rail, and swapped from a 10 micron paper element to a 40 micron stainless (f***up #2 and #3...you're not supposed to use paper elements with E85 and 40 microns doesn't filter out all the particulates).

3) The combination of stagnant fuel coupled with the 40 micron filter element let debris in the system pass into the injectors, clogging them up.

Somehow I couldn't put all these things together until this point in time.

So, got the injectors back from FIC and installed them in the car, crossing my fingers and hoping my issue would be fixed.




Additionally, I wised up and decided to run a dual filter setup to try and minimize any future occurrences of this happening. Probably overkill, but whatever. The 818 filters are cheap insurance. I decided to fabricate a Fuel Lab 818 dual fuel filter setup with a 40μ stainless element feeding into a 6μ fiberglass element (all E85 compatible this time...). The dual pass filters just before the rail should take care of any crap heading toward the injectors.






Put everything together, and used ECMlink to activate the pumps and check for leaks. With everything dry, I cranked the car up and went for a drive. SMOOTH AS BUTTER. In fact, this thing hasn't ran this good since I had it out at Streets of Willow.

With the car finally fixed, I kinda fell in love with it again. I wonder if I'm ever going to be able to let it go, or if this thing is legitimately a forever car...

Lastly, I don't get everything right. I share with you all in hopes you don't f*** up the same stuff I do. Live and learn. But please, do learn

Thanks for following along

Glad you figured it out. I wouldn't worry about using the paper filters. I've been running a stock type dsm filter on my car since like 08 and ever had issues with them. Drill the bottom so the inlet matches the stock hard line id, and they good enough for 800ish hp.

bastarddsm said:

I wouldn't worry about using the paper filters. I've been running a stock type dsm filter on my car since like 08 and ever had issues with them.

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Agreed. I know it's not "recommended" but my 10 micron paper element held up just fine. In fact, I definitively proved it works better than the 40 micron stainless filter I changed it out for.

The 6 micron glass element should certainly do the trick, and it's E85 compatible.

All said and done, it's now very clear to me the filter selection at the rail is critically important.

I've been moving around for work a lot and have had zero time for the car. On the rare occasions when I get back home to San Diego I at least try to pull it out of the garage:

Been a while since youve been on .

iugrad92turbo said:

Been a while since youve been on .

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Yeah, regrettably, I have had no time for the car, or the forums. Hoping that will change in the next year or so. Life takes up all my time right now. I miss the forums, helping with tuning advice and delving into the car and the DSM world. Hopefully it will still be around by the time I have time for it again...

You will be life happens.

Hell, I was in on the initial buy for PiLink from @TSiAWD666 and still haven't installed it yet. I have a brand new Xona turbo and hot parts to boot from @MorrisonFab sitting in the garage in boxes waiting for some action. Hopefully some day I'll get back to wrenching on the car...Either that, or someone is getting a deal on a huge parts hoard.

GST with PSI said:

Hell, I was in on the initial buy for PiLink from @TSiAWD666 and still haven't installed it yet. I have a brand new Xona turbo and hot parts to boot from @MorrisonFab sitting in the garage in boxes waiting for some action. Hopefully some day I'll get back to wrenching on the car...Either that, or someone is getting a deal on a huge parts hoard.

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If you have questons on the PiLink install - I have some experience with that.
;-)
Justin

Justin DuBois said:

If you have questons on the PiLink install - I have some experience with that.
;-)
Justin

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Yeah, been following your build. You've done some amazing stuff to really push the capabilities of that thing!

GST with PSI said:

Yeah, been following your build. You've done some amazing stuff to really push the capabilities of that thing!

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Its a lucky moment in time when everything is working together.

The Race Capture folks are messing arround with their software. They are making it harder to do with it what I have done with the multi-screen setup.

GST with PSI said:

Yeah, regrettably, I have had no time for the car, or the forums. Hoping that will change in the next year or so....

Click to expand...

Well, nothing has changed in a year and I still have basically zero time for much outside of work. I was able to take the car to a local meet this past summer. Other than that, it rarely leaves the garage.

Here's to hopefully having more time next year