The Street Brawler kit is in and a piss-off of a story to go along with it. I don't mind doing minor things to the car myself, but I felt I would leave the turbo swap up to a reputable tuning and performance shop because I wanted it done right. My mechanic friend who used to work on the car for free has fallen ill so I wasn't able to have him do the work. He is the best mechanic I know...moreso because he is very picky and takes his time with things. Anyhow I dropped the All-Trac off to AFI Performance, with the kit, and gave them the links to the
BGB and the KO site for the instructions on the
SB kit install and the
DP bracket install. I assumed it would be a quick thing and I could pick the car up the next day. Well, 2 days later the car was done. They didn't even bother to read the instructions at all and went to town on the car. It took them over 8 hours just to get the stock turbo off the car. Overall it took them probably close to 16 hours to do the whole swap. I was charged 8 hours labor at 100 bucks an hour so I was not too pleased considering ATS Racing charges 375 for the install. I could have gone on a nice road trip to the US with the wife, gave them the car and chilled in a motel for the night and driven back for the price it cost me to get the kit installed. Anyhow all that aside the kit looks awesome. So I start up the car after giving everything a quick look-over and drove it off boost until it was up to temperature. My manual boost controller was backed all the way off so I should have seen 10psi of boost, but instead the thing rocketed to 16psi, which is where I have my fuel cut set to, and I hit the wall. I was confused so I pulled over and double checked everything to find out that they had installed my boost controller backwards so my wastegate was not even seeing the boost pressure. Good thing I didn't disable my fuel cut feature or I would be looking at doing a rebuild right about now. Hopefully I didn't fry anything.
I cautiously turned up the boost to about 13psi and noticed no sign of knock so I'm going to keep it there and not get greedy and try for more boost on the stock fuel system. I'm going to back down my fuel cut to 14psi just to be safe because I don't want it boosting up to 16 again before cutting out. The car definitely hauls a lot more ass with the T3/T4 kit installed, but the difference in turbo lag is more than I expected. It's not too bad, but I have to keep the engine revving a bit higher. At 10psi with the SB I was pulling just as hard as I was with the stock turbo at 14psi. I especially like how the car keeps pulling right to 7000rpm. The exhaust note has changed as well. It's a little deeper.
I was debating keeping the car as it is now or going a bit further and getting either an ATS ROM Tune or go for a stand-alone ems and upgrade the fuel system. I would like to run around 17psi if I do go with an ems(I'm thinking AEM at the moment). Anyhow the next step is to get her on an AWD dyno to see what I'm putting down at the wheels and debate whether I care to sink a lot more money into the car to get to around 300awhp. If I'm around 250whp right now I won't bother because I don't care to spend 3-5 grand for a fuel system, ems, tune etc to gain 30-60 extra whp.