2G Running with no boost

[John Miller]

hello fellow dsm addicts,

I have a quick question that hopefully someone can answer. I have a 1997 eclipse gs-t that I am currently building. I am currently running the stock t-25 and side mount intercooler. The hose that connects to the intercooler is a bit mangled, but I plan to get a fmi eventually. but I can not afford it currently. I am wondering if it would damage anything if I started it without having the intercooler hooked up. Basically the turbo would be charging the air, but there would not be a tight seal to have an efficient force induction. Will this damage anything at all or should I wait? Also I will not be driving it this way, just a start up so I know it will run.

Thanks

 

[randman2011]

Yes. The ECU will have no idea how much air is entering the engine and, as a result, will have no idea how much fuel the engine needs. The engine may idle like this but under any load at all it will be running so rich that it will struggle to ignite the fuel at all.

You MUST fix this problem before driving the car.

EDIT: Now that I have read your last sentence. What are you hoping to learn from this? I don't see how starting the engine in this state will add any value. And it's so easy to just fix the leak.

 

[John Miller]

Yes. The ECU will have no idea how much air is entering the engine and, as a result, will have no idea how much fuel the engine needs. The engine may idle like this but under any load at all it will be running so rich that it will struggle to ignite the fuel at all.

You MUST fix this problem before driving the car.

EDIT: Now that I have read your last sentence. What are you hoping to learn from this? I don't see how starting the engine in this state will add any value. And it's so easy to just fix the leak.

I appreciate your quick response, I just dropped in a new engine and replaced a bunch of items. I want to know if anything leaks and if it will actually run.

 

[ErikTande]

I appreciate your quick response, I just dropped in a new engine and replaced a bunch of items. I want to know if anything leaks and if it will actually run.

Starting it just to see if it runs without the charge pipe hooked up isn't going to hurt anything.

 

[John Miller]

Starting it just to see if it runs without the charge pipe hooked up isn't going to hurt anything.

Awesome, thanks

 

[JusMX141]

If you need to drive the car on the street under load for any reason but do not want the turbo to build pressure, unhook the wastegate actuator from the flapper lever.

 

[spyderdrifter]

If you need to drive the car on the street under load for any reason but do not want the turbo to build pressure, unhook the wastegate actuator from the flapper lever.

Or building on this, I had to do similar with rigging the wastegate flapper open with a 10mm wrench. It was slow, so slow it took a minute to even reach 40mph, which luckily was the fastest speed limit in the area I needed to drive. A paper plane could have won a drag race with that car in that situation.