First ride on Turbo.......Man I got questions!!!!

[lakercr]

Lots of good advice above.

Where is your boost gauge signal line connected?

To check for leaks, pull the seat and rear heat shield, then remove the air filter. You'll need to fabricate something that can bolt to the compressor side of the turbo (PVC close off cap and a piece of silicone hose works good). drill a hole in the cap and put a nipple on it that can accept air from a compressor. Pressurize your intake system to ~10lbs and inspect charge tube, carb T's and caps etc. for leaks. A few drops of dish soap mixed with water can sometime help on the t's.

Exhaust is a visual inspection, but your boost sounds too consistant for that to be a problem. Your performance is weak. You are close to 30MPH off where you should be at 14lbs boost. All things working properly, you should be feeling a little bit afraid of your sled right now.

Your clutching is suspect. Like any trouble shooting situation, you want to go back to a last known good configuration. That's a challenge here since everything is new to you. If you can borrow a stock secondary/spring/helix I'd make the swap - you can rule out the driven pretty quick.

Compression is low, but even with LC pistons and doubled gaskets you wouldn't have this kind of top-end loss.

Best advice I can give you is to be patient and wait for your wideband A/F to show up. Install it and get your fuel delivery correct, and then start tuning. I went through a Bender stage II for a customer a few weeks back. It was a mountain sled that was bought at Hayday's. If it had been ridden around here before I went through everything it would have been a total loss motor on the first trip out. WFO for miles at a time is a no-no for a well tuned turbo. The fact that you could do it (even once) tells me that you are off on your main jetting/pitot jet quite a bit.

Once fuel is correct, you can start to dial in the clutching. Your sled has some issues, but there are lots of guys here that will be able to help you find & fix them.

 

[ProstockBenji]

best advice is to bring it to someone with turbo yamaha expierence and he could trouble shoot it for you !

Anybody from Maine out there that could help him out ?

 

[BigDog05]

One other thing you might look at are the intercooler to carb connectors. If you are taking your boost signal from the rear of the intercooler, from the stock Bender location, your boost guage would still probably read 14 pounds in the intercooler, but possibly be off on one carb.

Most guys on here are getting there boost readings off the carb nipples on the engine side off the carbs.

There have been a few guys having trouble keeping the intercooler on at higher boost levels.

I use hair spray on mine with good results, but only run 12 pounds so far.

It just seems that so many times its something very simple that cause these things to act up.

 

[srx74]

help in Maine

Keith Wood of Woody's performance in (Topsham???)Maine is very familiar with this kit. Not sure how far away he is but I know he could help.
Good luck,
Srx74

 

[Ted Jannetty]

Ted, how do you recommend doing a simple boost test? I would like to check this also before my first ride. Thanks

Go to HOME Cheapo, and get a 2 1/2 plumbing cap, drill and tap for Air fitting.

Remove air filter, cap the turbo, and With a pressure regulator put 10-15 psi in turbo inlet.

Sit back and say HOLY shiznit I have a lot of leaks.

Then locate and fix them.

Ted.

 

[Highmiler]

Turbo

Gentlemen thanks for all the awesome input. I bought the sled a few weeks ago from a dealer in Southern ME. and I watched the salesman check the compression in each cylinder and it was 125psi across the board. Tried sled out yesterday, did a few 1 mile burns and reported my findings here. After reading some of your replies this morning I went out to the garage and rechecked the compression on my own personal gauge. I figured I'd be wasting my time, because I only put about 30 miles on this thing since I bought it, and 25 of those miles were going through town at 40mph. Anyway these are the readings I got.

#1 cylinder 135lbs
#2 cylinder 138lbs
#3 culinder 140lbs
#4 cylinder 125lbs

Although #4 is down from the others, it is still within 10%, is this enough to give me loss of power? Also crankcase vent filter kind of oily and a few drops spitting up onto inside of cab.

Later this afternoon I put a stock secondary with a Yamaha silver set at 60 degrees, and did some more testing. RPM was only at 9700, and unfortunately didn't bring any tools to crank it up. Conditons were 6 inches of fresh wet snow and there was only 1 track in front of me going up the railroad bed. Temperature was 36 degrees and it was definitely not your high speed conditions. On the first cold pull I was able to hit 120, the other pulls I could only run 117. Although I never ran my stock Apex in the same conditions, I can only guess that it probably would have only gotten 107-108.

I've got to work the next few days and won't be around, so I dropped sled off at my local dealer. He's got an awesome mechanic who's installed a couple of turbos, so I let him take a spin on it and see what his opinion is. Hopefully next week I can find the time and perform some of the tests you guys mentioned above. I'll keep you all posted on my findings. I really appreciate the helps here guys.......Thanks a lot!!!

 

[Highmiler]

Ted, how do you recommend doing a simple boost test? I would like to check this also before my first ride. Thanks

Go to HOME Cheapo, and get a 2 1/2 plumbing cap, drill and tap for Air fitting.

Remove air filter, cap the turbo, and With a pressure regulator put 10-15 psi in turbo inlet.

Sit back and say HOLY shiznit I have a lot of leaks.

Then locate and fix them.

Ted.

Ted, will that cap srew on the housing after the air filter is removed or does a man just slide it on?

 

[Skydog]

125 to 140 is not good at all buddy.

Skydog

 

[KnappAttack]

Got to be careful buying used turbos. People have no idea about this sort of thing. They think they can just turn up the boost to go faster. Very easy to scrap an engine quickly! Doesn't sound good at all. May have scraped it once before and that could be the reason for the low compression pistons too, Hard to say. One thing is for sure, its not making good power and needs professional help.

 

[TurboJamie]

Ted, how do you recommend doing a simple boost test? I would like to check this also before my first ride. Thanks

Go to HOME Cheapo, and get a 2 1/2 plumbing cap, drill and tap for Air fitting.

Remove air filter, cap the turbo, and With a pressure regulator put 10-15 psi in turbo inlet.

Sit back and say HOLY shiznit I have a lot of leaks.

Then locate and fix them.

Ted.

Ted, will that cap srew on the housing after the air filter is removed or does a man just slide it on?

You pop the filter and build your boost tester. You will need one of the rubber couplers also available at home depot, use a hose clamp to secure it like you would your air filter.

 

[lakercr]

Have the mechanic leak it down for you and find out where the compression is going. My guess is past your rings...

 

[Skydog]

Got to be careful buying used turbos. People have no idea about this sort of thing. They think they can just turn up the boost to go faster. Very easy to scrap an engine quickly! Doesn't sound good at all. May have scraped it once before and that could be the reason for the low compression pistons too, Hard to say. One thing is for sure, its not making good power and needs professional help.

Yes so so true!! The longest i have every held mine for was 1,000 feet the ice drags on race gas. Other than that just a good fast shot from 70-120mph from time to time.

Skydog

 

[lakercr]

So, tell me more about this motor...

Can you confirm what is installed now for head gasket(s) or shim? Have a look in the coolant bottle for little black flakes. Post back with what you see. Are you able to do a proper leak-down test, or can you find someone who can? If you can post the results (and comments) from this test I can give you a pretty good idea what the condition of your motor is.

Also, How many miles on this engine right now? Have the valves ever been adjusted? If the head has been off and the cams weren't re-timed properly, it is very possible to have low compression even with a good leakdown (tight motor with low compression tells me to look at the valve train).

If you can answer some of these questions I can give you more meaningful information...

 

[TurboJamie]

So, tell me more about this motor...

Can you confirm what is installed now for head gasket(s) or shim? Have a look in the coolant bottle for little black flakes. Post back with what you see. Are you able to do a proper leak-down test, or can you find someone who can? If you can post the results (and comments) from this test I can give you a pretty good idea what the condition of your motor is.

Also, How many miles on this engine right now? Have the valves ever been adjusted? If the head has been off and the cams weren't re-timed properly, it is very possible to have low compression even with a good leakdown (tight motor with low compression tells me to look at the valve train).

If you can answer some of these questions I can give you more meaningful information...

What does the black flakes in the coolant mean hehehe. My apex has had that for 2 season now with a leak down of less then 5% and 140 psi of compression across the board. Still can't figure out what the damn flakes are from!

 

[Ted Jannetty]

So, tell me more about this motor...

Can you confirm what is installed now for head gasket(s) or shim? Have a look in the coolant bottle for little black flakes. Post back with what you see. Are you able to do a proper leak-down test, or can you find someone who can? If you can post the results (and comments) from this test I can give you a pretty good idea what the condition of your motor is.

Also, How many miles on this engine right now? Have the valves ever been adjusted? If the head has been off and the cams weren't re-timed properly, it is very possible to have low compression even with a good leakdown (tight motor with low compression tells me to look at the valve train).

If you can answer some of these questions I can give you more meaningful information...

What does the black flakes in the coolant mean hehehe. My apex has had that for 2 season now with a leak down of less then 5% and 140 psi of compression across the board. Still can't figure out what the damn flakes are from!

Black Flakes are Head Gasket material.