Turbo boost

[hatters]

Hi All
I went out in this lovely weather with the roof down of course and when I gave it some welly I could only get the Turbo Boost Gauge up to 11,o'clock ,is this the norm or is something imminent ,I tried the waste gate wiggle some time ago and everything seems free in that area, comments please
R.H

[theelanman]

I suggest you haven't got an SE if you've got a clock where the turbo gauge should be....
if it was about 9am then Id wait a couple of hours and that should sort it....

its an NA.....

[theelanman]

sorry.....

where did it boost to before this morning?....0.75...0.8....0.96?
how often have you given it the full beans recently.....just might be getting a bit sticky at full on...

[rip]

What do you mean by 11.00 on the boost gauge? Mine is marked at 0, 0.5 & 1.0 bar.
The angle I would associate with 11.00 is about 0.8-0.85 bar which seems a bit high for a stock chip to me.

[hatters]

I have absolutely no idea if the car has been chipped but it does pick its feet up when you give it some, and the Boost needle almost goes up to 12 oclock almost vertical I always wondered if it had been chipped sometime in its life how do I tell ?

[theelanman]

never mind the references to the clock....
what is the actual figure......somewhere between 0 and 1 bar

[rip]

never mind the references to the clock....
what is the actual figure......somewhere between 0 and 1 bar

We all have the same gauge & they are marked 0 0.5 & 1 bar. This is much more descriptine than trying to describe your needle's angle by comparing it to a clock face.

Most gauges are not very accurate so are only useful as a rough guide. A poor electrical connection will have a significant effect on what your gauge tells you. If you have acces to Elanscan, this would be more accurate.

Target boost for a standard Elan is 0.65 bar. If you have a mountain chip fitted, a Kilimanjaro boosts to 0.8 & Everest to 0.9.
If I got into a different Elan, I would not try to determine what chip was fitted by what I saw on the boost gauge. The easiest way to find this out is probably to have a look at your ECU. If it appears to have an unbroken seal, it probably hasn't been chipped. If the seal is broke, take the end cover off. A mountain chip is a board with the standard Memcal plugged into it so this should be immediately noticeable.

[mfriel]

Hey Hatters,

Glad you're out and about enjoying the weather! I was out yesterday! I do have a question re: the turbo too. I read that in general it's good to let the turbo cool down after a run, i.e. don't turn the engine off right away, but my question is: Do we just idle for 2 mins or so, or do we have to wait for the cooling fans to kick in, wait for that to cycle then turn off?

Thanks!

Mike.

[roy666]

Hey - Good question... which I´d like to know a bit more about. I was told recently that it does not matter that much if after a normal 40 min commute drive (no high boost use) you do not let the engine run for a bit to cool the turbo down. I do sometimes... but not routinely... big mistake or not??

BTW.. my old SE with 160K miles... the turbo use to peak at 0.7.. but I did have a BSS exhaust with only one baffle in the rear box..!

Roy

[Russ_16v]

The idea behind the idling thing is 2 fold:

1st reason is to let the turbo spin down - a turbo spins at massive rpm (think in the hundreds of thousands rpm) and leaving the car idling for half a minute will let the blades slow right down - this means when the engine goes off, the blades are not left spinning with no lubrication (oil lubricates the turbo, once the engine goes off, it is no longer pumped around the engine, and can damage/wear the turbo)

The other reason is after a fast run/lots of throttle, the engine oil is very hot, and what you don't want is boiling hot oil sat in the turbo - this can also cause damage to bearings and seals - if you were to leave it running for a few minutes then the oil has a chance to cool a bit before being switched off.

As a rough rule of thumb, I have always done the following with turbocharged cars:

Normal driving - allow 20-30 secs of idling before switching off.

Fast driving - allow 1 minute - 1 1/2 minutes of idling before switching off.

Very fast driving (ie on a track day) allow at least a couple of minutes idle before switching off (I usually go for 3-4 mins)

[mfriel]

Thanks for the help and info!

Mike.