osiris
///Member
ok Update time:
I have gotten my car back a few times and sent it back due to it being in an unacceptable condition.
the clamp was moved out the way of the actuator and no more engine lights were being thrown and everything seemed to be good on Friday last week, I started the car in the workshop and it sounded good, I revved it to see if the turbo rattle was still there and to my HUGE surprise it was gone! My suspicion to this is that while trying to narrow down the problem of rough idle and engine light coming on that it could be a bad vacuum line so I was fiddling around in the engine bay with the vacuum lines and when I touched one of them the car suddenly started idling properly so I asked him to replace those lines all the way to the brake booster vacuum line that they both plug into. Since then the turbos no longer rattled, obviously wasn't pulling the wastegate closed properly.
Anyways I had him move the clamp off my turbo actuator arm as shown in previous posts, and went to fetch my car on Friday afternoon, all seemed great, I drove the car back to work and it was driving ok, the power I was used to was not there and it sounded like a windstorm, I thought it must just be a loud spool on the new turbos being amplified by the down pipes. But was told it might be a boost leak, it seemed to get a bit worse, I then went to visit my dad and revved the car for him and BAM the fucken rattle was back but BAD! worse than even the old turbos.
Took the car home and got my trusty torch out and started searching and to my disgust I found the clamp they had moved was completely loose and dangling on the turbo outlet pipes ("This was the cause of all the ugly rattling sounds which I thought was turbo wastegate rattle"). I found another clamp that was also completely loose, and when I say loose I mean the clamp was almost falling off, a few more minutes of driving and the nut would have vibrated off.
I spent the entire friday night busy tightening these clamps and sending photos back to my mechanic of all my findings of his shit workmanship from hell.
Thought ok cool, boost leak must be gone, take the car for a drive and its even worse! :skit:
Spend Saturday evening searching under the bonnet till early hours of the morning for more loose clamps or something that must be loose or cracked etc but found nothing. I gave up and thought let me take it to the car wash on Jan smuts that has a lift and see if I can check if maybe the intercooler inlet and outlet pipes are loose and this is what I found:
As you can see the entire clamp is missing FFS :RedNo::skit::smashScreen:
Am I even surprised...NO
This clamp that is tight in the pic is the other clamp I found that was completely loose:
This is the other downpipe
Mechanic tells me that his guy that fitted this for me assures him that the clamp was on the car, so my theory is that he didn't bother to tighten it and it fell off the damn downpipe because he had to order a new one for me yesterday!
anyways I collect my car today and everything seems hunky dory, so I look in the engine bay and check the clamps that I can get to with my hand and they are all tight, I ask my mechanic if he has driven the car to see if the boost leak is gone and he said no so I said right lets go around the block, and low and behold the boost leak is still there. even louder, so now that the clamps are all on and tight the air is pushing even harder out of where ever the hell its escaping from, so I goto work without my car again and come back later and he tells me he found a hair line crack in the inlet pipe by the firewall and fixed it via plastic welding, cool so we test drive the car and boost leak is still there sounding like a tornado.
We take the car back into the work shop and i pull my sleeves up and we both start searching this car for this leak, unfortunately he didn't have a boost leak tester. We failed to find it other than to find that its coming from the inlet side of the car, so I took the car home and said I will look around and see what I can find and the car is booked into BMW tomorrow so they can also have a look.
So this is what I found an hour or so ago:
I took the charge pipe off and was going to put a boost leak tester on that I had built for my old volvo to see if maybe this clown put a hole in my intercooler.
The o-ring is completely mangled.
I tried to save the thing and do a temporary fix but to no avail, the o-ring just wont seat correctly in the groove on the charge pipe so I will goto my mechanic and get an o-ring from him which I am sure he will have and then fit it myself lol.
While I was at it I asked my mechanic while I was at his shop if he has any more of that vacuum line that he gave me last time and he did so I took 4m of the stuff and decided to replace all the vacuum lines in my car as they feel pretty hard and old and probably prone to cracking like the others did:
old vacuum lines:
The new, This stuff feels very solid and doesn't collapse on itself under pressure which is why I wanted to use it:
I also had the car last weekend when I was tightening all those loose clamps and I decided to give my engine bay some much needed love:
So this is the before, notice how scratched and tatty it looked:
and here is after some TLC:
Then the engine after some cleaning and scrubbing with clean green, still going to do this properly once everything is sorted, get the missing clips all over the place for wires and pipes and move my water bottle to the correct side. It is starting to take shape and is starting to look good.
I attempted to paint my rims with a white paint pen, but it lasted one day and started cracking so I have since bought another paint pen with what seems to be a much more flexible paint but here is how it looked anyways:
Oh and my car had this horrible what felt to be a rough idle once the car went down to around 500rpm and it worried the shit out of me but this is the cause:
He put the exhaust back wrong so the tail pipe was touching the body of the car, fun times. Gotta love this workshop long time:
On another note, I got my D-can cable from Chris on Sunday and he helped me take the MHD rattle fix off the car to see if the turbo rattle really was gone and wasn't just being hidden by the software and it seems to definitely be gone :=): He also showed me how to use the MHD software to read errors on the car which is pretty cool, car seems to be ok other than the boost leak.
Anyways that's all for now, I will update tomorrow if I manage to get that o-ring and hopefully that sorts this problem out, would love to know why the hell the mechanic removed my wastegate in the first place??
I have gotten my car back a few times and sent it back due to it being in an unacceptable condition.
the clamp was moved out the way of the actuator and no more engine lights were being thrown and everything seemed to be good on Friday last week, I started the car in the workshop and it sounded good, I revved it to see if the turbo rattle was still there and to my HUGE surprise it was gone! My suspicion to this is that while trying to narrow down the problem of rough idle and engine light coming on that it could be a bad vacuum line so I was fiddling around in the engine bay with the vacuum lines and when I touched one of them the car suddenly started idling properly so I asked him to replace those lines all the way to the brake booster vacuum line that they both plug into. Since then the turbos no longer rattled, obviously wasn't pulling the wastegate closed properly.
Anyways I had him move the clamp off my turbo actuator arm as shown in previous posts, and went to fetch my car on Friday afternoon, all seemed great, I drove the car back to work and it was driving ok, the power I was used to was not there and it sounded like a windstorm, I thought it must just be a loud spool on the new turbos being amplified by the down pipes. But was told it might be a boost leak, it seemed to get a bit worse, I then went to visit my dad and revved the car for him and BAM the fucken rattle was back but BAD! worse than even the old turbos.
Took the car home and got my trusty torch out and started searching and to my disgust I found the clamp they had moved was completely loose and dangling on the turbo outlet pipes ("This was the cause of all the ugly rattling sounds which I thought was turbo wastegate rattle"). I found another clamp that was also completely loose, and when I say loose I mean the clamp was almost falling off, a few more minutes of driving and the nut would have vibrated off.
I spent the entire friday night busy tightening these clamps and sending photos back to my mechanic of all my findings of his shit workmanship from hell.
Thought ok cool, boost leak must be gone, take the car for a drive and its even worse! :skit:
Spend Saturday evening searching under the bonnet till early hours of the morning for more loose clamps or something that must be loose or cracked etc but found nothing. I gave up and thought let me take it to the car wash on Jan smuts that has a lift and see if I can check if maybe the intercooler inlet and outlet pipes are loose and this is what I found:
As you can see the entire clamp is missing FFS :RedNo::skit::smashScreen:
Am I even surprised...NO
This clamp that is tight in the pic is the other clamp I found that was completely loose:
This is the other downpipe
Mechanic tells me that his guy that fitted this for me assures him that the clamp was on the car, so my theory is that he didn't bother to tighten it and it fell off the damn downpipe because he had to order a new one for me yesterday!
anyways I collect my car today and everything seems hunky dory, so I look in the engine bay and check the clamps that I can get to with my hand and they are all tight, I ask my mechanic if he has driven the car to see if the boost leak is gone and he said no so I said right lets go around the block, and low and behold the boost leak is still there. even louder, so now that the clamps are all on and tight the air is pushing even harder out of where ever the hell its escaping from, so I goto work without my car again and come back later and he tells me he found a hair line crack in the inlet pipe by the firewall and fixed it via plastic welding, cool so we test drive the car and boost leak is still there sounding like a tornado.
We take the car back into the work shop and i pull my sleeves up and we both start searching this car for this leak, unfortunately he didn't have a boost leak tester. We failed to find it other than to find that its coming from the inlet side of the car, so I took the car home and said I will look around and see what I can find and the car is booked into BMW tomorrow so they can also have a look.
So this is what I found an hour or so ago:
I took the charge pipe off and was going to put a boost leak tester on that I had built for my old volvo to see if maybe this clown put a hole in my intercooler.
The o-ring is completely mangled.
I tried to save the thing and do a temporary fix but to no avail, the o-ring just wont seat correctly in the groove on the charge pipe so I will goto my mechanic and get an o-ring from him which I am sure he will have and then fit it myself lol.
While I was at it I asked my mechanic while I was at his shop if he has any more of that vacuum line that he gave me last time and he did so I took 4m of the stuff and decided to replace all the vacuum lines in my car as they feel pretty hard and old and probably prone to cracking like the others did:
old vacuum lines:
The new, This stuff feels very solid and doesn't collapse on itself under pressure which is why I wanted to use it:
I also had the car last weekend when I was tightening all those loose clamps and I decided to give my engine bay some much needed love:
So this is the before, notice how scratched and tatty it looked:
and here is after some TLC:
Then the engine after some cleaning and scrubbing with clean green, still going to do this properly once everything is sorted, get the missing clips all over the place for wires and pipes and move my water bottle to the correct side. It is starting to take shape and is starting to look good.
I attempted to paint my rims with a white paint pen, but it lasted one day and started cracking so I have since bought another paint pen with what seems to be a much more flexible paint but here is how it looked anyways:
Oh and my car had this horrible what felt to be a rough idle once the car went down to around 500rpm and it worried the shit out of me but this is the cause:
He put the exhaust back wrong so the tail pipe was touching the body of the car, fun times. Gotta love this workshop long time:
On another note, I got my D-can cable from Chris on Sunday and he helped me take the MHD rattle fix off the car to see if the turbo rattle really was gone and wasn't just being hidden by the software and it seems to definitely be gone :=): He also showed me how to use the MHD software to read errors on the car which is pretty cool, car seems to be ok other than the boost leak.
Anyways that's all for now, I will update tomorrow if I manage to get that o-ring and hopefully that sorts this problem out, would love to know why the hell the mechanic removed my wastegate in the first place??
