Ran down the track tonight and am pissed! What is wrong?

[EagleTalonTim]

Finally, for the first time I get to take my car to the track. Before I left, I checked my timing and adjusted my boost controller to 10psi since my car does nothing but black smoke the entire time I am at WOT. I am running the stock 13b that comes on the auto's. The timing is at -7 BTDC. I am running NGKBPR63S plugs or something like that.. I know they are 6 something. They are less than one month old and so are the plug wires.
The track is one hour away, so I hit the interstate and set my cruise at 70. When I got to the track, I popped my hood to check everything again and my manifold and turbo was glowing! I just left it running and let it cool down. That is just one of my problems. When I finally got to go down the strip, I noticed that my boost gauge hit 20psi, then dropped right back down to 10psi where I set it. It only happens when I take off. Since my car is an Auto, the boost should stay the whole time down the track. I got one of my friends to watch me as I went down the track and they said it was black smoking the entire way down. Needless to say, me best run was a 16.1 at 86mph. My N/T was faster than that!!! What should I check for??? What is causing all my problems?

Thanks in advance!
Tim

 

[Icarus]

I had the thermostat break apart inside the housing and have the same symptom. Couldn't tell until I unbolted the outlet.

Another question, you wouldn't happen to have a failsafe thermostat?

 

[TurboAnything]

Ya that is a thermostat stuck open or its missing. the manifold is going to glow that is normal.

 

[EagleTalonTim]

I just replaced the thermostat when I put the motor in less than 2 months ago. I am using a 160 degree Tstat. Would it fail that quickly?

 

[tqmx1]

Thermostats are like lightbulbs. Some will last forever outhers will fail as soon as you scerw them in.

 

[dsm-onster]

You have a 160* thermostat. This ain't no carburated small block Chebby.

The proper thermostat is a 190* or so. You will run on a conservative timing map before your coolant reaches 180*. This is a higher timing retard and can cause the exhaust gasses to be very hot. Also, the ecu won't switch over to closed loop operation, which yields MUCH higher fuel economy, if the coolant temperature sensor doesn't see 180*+ temps for a period of time. This surely accounts for 20mpg. My temp gauge reads at that same line when the coolant temp sensor is showing 160-170* temps.

A cooler thermostat is great as long as you can control the ecu to avoid the above. AND, as long as you don't go too cold, as oil functions best at a particular teperature window.

My exhaust manifold exhibits a slight glow after a normal drive. Again, this ain't no carburated small block Chebby. Your turbo is designed to trap the exhaust heat in the exhaust manifold so that the energy can be put to work. It will warm up that iron pretty good.

I forget. Do you have a logger? You could be getting terrible "phantom knock". This would yank timing causing your exhaust gas heat to soar. This happened to me before I replaced my knock sensor.

 

[EagleTalonTim]

I found that the fan was stuck on and was wondering if that may have been part of my problem. I put a 160* t-stat in it because the temp gauge was going well over the normal mark with a 180*. I used to own a N/T talon and the temp gauge never got to the middle mark unless something was wrong. The turbo talon was going up to the middle mark and sometimes above so i got a colder t-stat. I also tapped on the housing and the temp gauge started to sit around normal again. It is colder now and with the fan running all the time, it probably kept the temp really low. That is my guess.