is ur turbo shipped already?

 

I ordered it on Friday 5/8 and they shipped it on Tuesday 5/12. Fedex tried to deliver it on Friday 5/15 but I wasn't home to sign for it. They should try again today but I might not be here again. If so, I'll go pick it up on Tuesday.

 

Call out of work or something! I want pics! lol

 

turbo > work

 

Watching, ebay and turbo kits usually don't mix. But we shall see..

 

watching!

 

OMGosh whats the hold up? lol

 

Its a ebay kit he got it and cried lol i kid i kid lol

 

I finally got the kit today and I didn't cry... but I didn't jump for joy either. Here are some highlights of what I got... and didn't get:

1) 304 SS log manifold - sloppy POS will take hours of dremel work if I decide to use it at all. It appears to also need some bracing and some minor welding to be safe.

2) 304 SS downpipe - Looks okay but v-band coupler is smaller than the coupler on the turbo housing. Waiting on Kevin at CXR for remedy.

3) Oil kit - 4' of stainless braided feed line (only ~18" needed). Return line and oil pan adapter missing. Waiting on Kevin at CXR for remedy.

4) SMIC - Best part of the kit. Bar and plate IC looks decent enough. Mounting brackets may or may not fit well. Too soon to know.

5) Chinese T3/T4 T04E turbo with internal wastegate. Looks decent but side to side shaft play on compressor side seems excessive for new. Balancing alignment marks on wheels/shaft and evidence of attempted balancing on both wheels. Gonna have a local shop look at it.

6) BOV - Greddy RS knock-off. Disassembled, dremeled, wet-sanded and tested for smooth operation and sealing. Seems okay now.

7) Air and charge piping - At least the ends have cold-rolled ridges for better sealing. Other than that, pretty standard AL pipes. I'm more concerned with the fit than the finish. I can always wet sand and polish them easily enough or even have them powder coated.

8 ) Lots of blue silicone pipe couplers (too many?). Looks like I may lose some boost with so many 90 degree couplers.

9) Hardware - Lots of SS T-bolt band clamps and a few SS hose clamps for pipes, oil return line, etc.

10) Missing stuff - Air filter (not pictured or included), turbo oil return line, oil pan fitting, turbo oil return fitting bolts, 2 of 4 turbo-mani bolts.


Decision time... Send it back and fight with Paypal for a refund or run with it. What I got today is far from the bolt-on kit promised by CXR but it's not too far off if they send the missing parts and fix the downpipe v-band problem. Photos to follow soon.

 

man, what a let down.. This is really unexpected from Kevin.. he's usually on top of things

Keep us updated!

 

All the parts were in one cardboard box and Fedex really beat it up. It's possible that some parts fell out of the box during transit. I tried to open the box and check the contents before signing for it but the Fedex guy said I couldn't open the box until I accepted delivery. There was some minor damage to some parts but nothing more than nicks and scratches.

I spoke with Kevin today about the problems and he said that he would ship me some of the missing parts including a shorter oil feed line. Apparently this "bolt-on" kit doesn't include an air filter or oil return line! He was skeptical about the V-band issue on the DP and asked me to email some pics. Right now that's by far the biggest issue. If I have to mod the DP I may as well get a much better cast mani and then the kit wouldn't be worth even $1200. I started cleaning up the sloppy log mani tonight and went through several stone dremel bits to get 25% of it done. It still needs a lot of work to meet my standards. The cut-outs in the log pipe for cylinders 2&3 are ridiculously undersized and sloppy. It would work but cyls 2&3 would have a lot more back pressure than 1&4 which bothers me.

I'll update as things progress.

 

Bummer man. Well I hope you get this worked out buddy. Stay hopeful!

 

wow, that kind of sounds terrible. sorry.

 

I sort of expected this result, but I hope everything works out.

 

Update: I found some missing stuff in the bottom of the boxes. I found the T3 gasket, BOV gasket and hardware and the oil return fitting gasket. I edited my previous post to reflect this.

Kevin has been very helpful so far. He offered to send me all the missing parts but he hasn't said how he plans to fix the mismatched v-band issue.

Here are some pics of the kit:

 

the log mani looks horrible! I'm afraid if u try to grind all those metals out, you're gonna run out of metal on the manifold!

 

Yeah, the log mani is very sloppy but the flange is perfectly flat and the welds look strong (if not very pretty). I'm just gonna remove the excess log pipe from cyl 2&3 ports and leave the 1&4 ports alone except for a little smoothing. The mani ports are 2" and the head ports are only 1.5" so the mani should flow pretty well for a log.

Kevin just emailed me to let me know that he is making me a new DP and will ship it and the missing pieces in a few days. All I need now is to order an air filter and finish installing my gauges and tranny cooler. I still don't know which lines are feed and return. Any opinion on Tenzo-R filters? $30 vs $50 for K&N or AEM.

 

AEM DryFlo all the way. Convenient, good at filtering, good at flowing, and durable.

K&N is overrated, Tenzo R is probably crappy. At that point, go buy a 10 dollar Air Filter.

 

I am confident you will be able to fix that manifold. Pretty poorly designed put together though. They should definitely have put more effort in putting it together. Everything else looks ok though. Best of luck!

 

I ordered a 3" x 5" conical AEM dryflow. I agree about K&N but not so much about Tenzo-R. IMO most oiled cotton gauze filters are about the same whether the name on it is K&N, Accell, Tenzo-R or ebay special.

I'm working on it. The problem so far is that there is so much extra metal to remove and I only have so many cutting/abrasive stone bits. It ____es me off that someone would consider that POS a finished product but I expected to have to do some cleanup work on such a low budget kit. A machinist friend suggested trying a 1/4" dia extended shaft carbide burr bit with a high-speed drill. I'll try that soon since I ran out of stone bits and my dremel hi-speed cutting bits will take forever to remove that much metal. I'll get there soon.

BTW, I've decided to use the POS mani but plan to brace it with two 304 rods welded between the T3 flange and the head flange for extra support. That should make the mani last but I'd really prefer to have a cast mani if it didn't change the turbo orientation so much and require a custom DP and intake/charge plumbing mods.

I got my gauges installed today, but not wired yet. Tranny cooler and WB O2 bung are next and I'm hoping to install the turbo within the next 2 weeks.