Forced Performance Turbochargers

In our quest to build the best possible turbochargers on the market we have learned a couple important lessons about the EVO 8/9 platform that may surprise a lot of people.  We at Forced Performance have always been about educating our customers and pushing whatever platform we support to the next level. This article will cover what effect sustained high g-forces have on the oil in your pan and subsequent systems relying on a clean, steady supply of oil.

At power levels above and about 500WHP (double the factory HP,) or with some suspension wizardy, the car suddenly becomes capable of pulling 1g sustained during the launch and during hard cornering.  So you may say to yourself “that’s friggin awesome” but the engineers at Mitsubishi did not design our oil pan and pick up with 500WHP+ in mind, same with the factory exhaust, fuel pump, injectors, cams, intercooler, etc.  We outfitted our own test vehicle with accelerometers and monitored oil pressure a thousand times a second at a few different locations and set out to find at where exactly it becomes a problem.

We found out at around .7g’s during a launch or a hard right hander we would partially uncover the oil pickup tube in the EVO and would affect oil supply.  At this point the oil is still being fed but it’s mostly aerated oil that just can’t support the high thrust loads and shaft speed of a journal bearing turbocharger.  So instead of nice clean oil the turbocharger and other components are being fed bubbles and foam. This can cause instant and irreparable damage to a journal bearing turbocharger. It may not destroy it right away but the turbos days are numbered.

The real aha moment came when we reached   1g the oil pick up tube was completely uncovered stopping oil flow during the most critical moment for the turbocharger, high shaft speed and thrust load.  The majority of people won’t have any problems but some do. 

So you might say “well I make 500WHP and I’ve never had a problem” and that might be true but again it’s not the HP figure that matters, it’s the G-forces that the car is capable of due to that power level.  So while you might make the power you may never see the G’s necessary to cause damage.  You might also say “well I’m sure plenty of people are pulling that kind of G’s why aren’t their motors blowing up” and that’s an easy question to answer, their cranks aren’t turning at 70,000-140,000RPM and rod and main bearings have a much larger surface area than turbochargers.  Journal bearing turbochargers have a relatively small surface area when compared to a main or rod bearing and cannot tolerate inadequate oiling in the same manner.  Typically a journal bearing turbocharger capable of exceeding 500WHP is spinning around 20X’s faster than the crank is which makes for some interesting failures if you suddenly interrupt its oil supply.

The turbocharger is not the only victim of pumping foam. The EVO 9 MIVEC system uses oil to hold the camshaft in position.  When data logging actual camshaft position compared to the target position, it is easy to see that the foam has a huge impact on cam location error.  The camshaft is not held in position well at all, making rapid high frequency erratic movements during these oil pickup issue events.  It should be no surprise that MIVEC camshafts also fail under this abuse. People have observed the results of oil pickup issues for years, perhaps not connecting the cause to the effect. Broken turbos, oil pumps, and MIVEC intake camshafts are not a mystery, they are a result of physics.

To illustrate our point we setup a bit of a test to show you what it looks like in your pan at .7g’s. To simulate your oil pan and pickup at .7gs we filled an oil pan with water and corn starch to make it easy to see and photograph.  We then filled the pan with 2 quarts of liquid to simulate 7000RPM we set it to 30* and the below pictures show what’s happening during a hard launch.  The oil pick up would be partially uncovered allowing for the oil to become aerated.  It gets worse at 45* the entire oil pick up is uncovered and oil flow is interrupted to critical systems. 

The next question is how do you fix it? Well from our point of view it’s put a ball bearing turbocharger on the car. Ball bearing turbochargers can live with intermittent oil supply without any damage.  From the complete systems perspective the answer isn’t so obvious. Baffle the oil pan, relocate the oil pick up towards the middle/back of the pan, install a dry sump, or operate at 275hp so that the oil system can operate as it was designed , but that’s no fun.  

We have a long history of making innovative products that push the market beyond what people think is possible. We did it with our billet compressor wheels back in 05/06 people said "It won't make a difference it's just as shiny compressor wheel" yet our wheels have produced more HP per MM than any of our competitors. We heard it when we released the stainless housing for the DSM models, people said "people aren't gonna buy that they'll just buy a T3 manifold instead and get a lot more options" but yet here we stand with a ton of units moved and breaking records.

Then again when we released the BB CHRA for the EVO 9 platform again the nay sayers were quick to say there was no way anybody would want that. "It's too expensive" yet again here we are with almost a constant back order on those models because of high demand.

Now we're doing it again with our Stainless Steel FP Housing for EVO 9 turbochargers, we're once again blazing the trail that others are sure to follow. They'll hate on us, say it won't work, do everything to discredit it but we've never been about talk, we've been about action, and with this housing it'll be no different. We've already tested this new housing with a BB FP Green w/ a 67MM turbine wheel and the results were spectacular. The two charts above show boost response with the new housing on a FP Green w/ a 67MM turbine wheel. On a previous dyno session using a FP Green in the old MHI housing with a 65MM wheel this car made around 545WHP max and boost was around 32PSI peak and spool came in around 3600RPM. With the new housing the car made 599WHP max boost was 28PSI and spool cam in around 3800RPM. That's a 54WHP increase at 4lbs less boost and only picking up 200RPM of spool using an undivided housing and a larger turbine wheel. Let me repeat that spool only increased 200RPM with an open housing and a larger turbine wheel!!!!

In the coming weeks we will be testing a Red and Black and sharing results and also our upcoming turbochargers the Zephyr and Zero. The first batch of these turbos are shipping to customers and we'll start seeing what this turbine housing is truly capable of very soon.

Took the time over the weekend to get her cleaned up and see what we were really working with. Paint is all there but the clear coat is mostly gone at this point, we we'll have to be careful until we can get it resprayed. As you can see the interior is completely gutted at this point and most of it is in random boxes, we've accounted for most of the interior pieces we need though.

The car seems to be pretty complete after going through most of the boxes. There are some specific bolts missing like the motor mount bolts and oil filter housing bolts but that's not that big of a deal. Our biggest hurdles are the head, transmission, wiring harness, and drive shaft as the boxes do not contain those items.

Tonight we began the resurrection of a car with a little bit of back history with the company. This car has no ran since 2001 and has been in certain states of assembly since then. Upon picking up the car it is completely gutted and we mean completely there is no dash, no heater core, no blower motor, nothing just a shifter base and roll cage.

The rest of the car is literally in boxes, and who knows if it's actually all there. So we began the task of putting in a mock up motor and tranny in the car and along the way digging through the random boxes to fix the many pieces it takes to accomplish this. In a little under 5 hours we went from a car scattered into 12 boxes to something that resembles a vehicle again.

Things we hope to accomplish in this state before the real motor and tranny combo go in.

Fab up intercooler piping and setup.

Work out Fuel lines and mount FPR

Work out a catch can setup and mount it in the engine bay

Sort out a battery location

Over flow bottle mounting

Exhaust setup

This Wastegate Actuator (WGA) is for DSM's using stock frame MHI turbos with 6CM or 7CM stock housings. If you are using one of our 8CM cast housings this WGA is not for you and will not fit properly.

Installation is pretty straight forward remove your old WGA and bolt the new on in place. Rotate the arm so that the hole on the arm lines up with  the wastegate flapper arm. See the picture below. 

Here at Forced Performance we get a lot of people asking us to sponsor their projects; unfortunately many people don’t have what it takes. Here are some general guidelines we use when choosing projects to sponsor.

We appreciate enthusiasm and dreaming but it only gets you so far. In order to qualify for a sponsorship the vehicle you want sponsored must currently be competing. Exceptions may be made for people who have a history of working with us or a track record of backing up their talk with building race proven machines.

No show cars, we may really like your car and you might make good numbers on the dyno but if you’re not racing, we’re not interested.

We do not do 100% sponsorships. If you’re expecting a free turbo we can’t help you, we offer small discounts to newcomers and build a relationship and go from there.

We don’t care what forums you post on or your status on them while we recognize the power of the internet we do not factor your clout on any particular website in our decision.

If you’re a shop and you want us to sponsor your private race car a working relationship with us is a must. If you aren’t selling our product currently then why do you want it on your personal car?

We do most of our own testing in the event that we are unable or unwilling to test a new or existing product we will generally reach out to a trusted person. So if you’ve never tested anything from us before it is unlikely asking out of the blue will change that.

In order to be considered for sponsorship you need to have some track record showing that you can perform. If you’re “planning” on racing that’s not what we want to hear. Show us what you’ve done, if you’ve done nothing we aren’t in a position to fund your learning experience.

With that being said if you think you got what it takes and can prove that you’re a solid investment send us a sponsorship request. Here are the important things to include in that e-mail.

Who you are.

What car are we sponsoring?

What have you done?

What are you planning on doing?

What sponsors do you already have?

What’s done to the car?

A “Call Type” that we get a lot of is people who have ordered our product from anyone other than us calling for a status update on their order. This usually proves to be a very confusing situation as the person calling is unknown to us. When a vendor places an order, unless it’s being drop shipped we have no idea why or for whom this turbo was ordered. So 9 times out of 10 we have a very awkward conversation that typically goes as follows.

Customer: Yeah I’m calling in to find out why my turbo hasn’t shipped.

Us: Ok no problem what’s your name?

Customer: John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

Us: Well I’m sorry we don’t have an order in the system for that name did you order it directly from us?

Customer: Of course I did where else could I get an FP Turbo.

Us: Well how did you place your order over the internet or did you call us maybe?

Customer: Online with (Insert vendor name here).

Us: Oh we’re sorry we can’t discuss another persons order with anyone but that person. If you want a status update on your order you’ll need to call whomever you ordered it from.

Customer: This is ridiculous I’ve already paid for the turbo, it’s my turbo and I want it now!

Us: Well we don’t take anyone’s money until we have a turbo ready to ship. So if you ordered this turbo from someone else and they took your money for something they weren’t able to deliver you’ll have to take that up with them.  

Customer: WHAT?!?!

Us: All of our turbos are built to order and we strive to build them as quickly as possible but we don’t take any money until it’s built and in a box ready to leave. So if you want more info on the status of your order you’ll need to contact the person from whom you ordered it.

Customer: Thanks for nothing! This is the worst customer service in the world I can’t wait to tell all my friends how much you suck! *CLICK*

There are lots of reasons why we won’t discuss other companies orders with a 3rd party. The biggest reason is that we don’t know you. We’ve never done business with you and we have no way of verifying that the order you’re calling about even belongs to you. This means we could give you completely incorrect information and not even know it.  

When you buy our product from another place that makes you their customer, they know who you are, we don’t. So before you call us and get upset that we can’t tell you the status of an order that you haven’t placed with us remember that we don’t know who you are and we don’t have your money if we haven’t shipped you a turbo.

This has been a very popular subject of late with each market pushing the envelope of what these small displacement motors can do. More often than not when we receive these calls people are convinced that their turbo has failed and will need to be repaired and 99% of them are mistaken. We receive at least 1 turbo a month from a person who is having issues with "blown seals" and we have to give him, the good or bad news depending on your outlook, that the turbo is fine and there is a deeper issue at play here.

First and foremost understand that your turbo does not have seals give it a second to sink in. What people refer to as "seals" are actually gas control rings (see the gif posted below for a visual) and these sit in grooves on the turbine shaft and the compressor side seal plate. These act much like piston rings their main function is not to keep oil in, they are in place to keep pressure from the turbine and compressor housings out of the center cartridge of the turbo. Seeing as how these rings ride in metal grooves there is no way for these to become damaged without a significant amount of shaft play. So the rule of thumb here is if your turbo doesn't have excessive shaft play your "seals" are fine.

So you're asking yourself well if the rings haven't gone bad how could oil get out? Well remember how we likened these gas control rings to that of a piston ring? Well just like a piston ring these have small gaps in them and there are a few reasons how oil can be forced through these gaps into the housings. We'll cover them from simplest to the most complicated in that order. Just to get the ball rolling here is a link to a GIF giving you a visual reference.

Your drain tube is not up to par.

What we mean by this is that normally most TC's we sell have about an 1/2" orifice to allow oil to drain out of the bearing housing. This is 100% gravity fed and has no pressure to push it through. So any sort of obstruction can throw the balance off and allow oil to back up inside the bearing housing and seep through the gas control rings. It could be something as simple as a kink, too much RTV, or just inferior tubing that is starting to collapse internally. A less common cause and is usually a problem on cars that weren't originally turbocharged is that the drain flange on the oil pan is below the fill level.

You're feeding the turbo too much.

This particular issue can be a little harder to diagnose as it usually requires a oil pressure gauge metering from the same place the turbo is feeding from. Most of the turbos operate under the assumption that they will see max pressure of 70/80psi. The restrictors we sell for our ball bearing units operate under this understanding as well so if you're running super high oil pressure a different restrictor might be required.  If the car is supplying more than that there is a chance you can over run the turbos drain ability and will cause the bearing housing to back up and seep oil out of the gas control rings.  

Your PCV system is not up to par.

This is a tricky one and is by far the hardest to diagnose but fixing it is relatively easy. Your stock system is typically a two vacuum system on vacuum pulled through the PCV valve on the valve cover through the manifold and another pulled off the valve cover to the intake of the turbocharger. The one of the PCV valve is used to control PCV during idle and cruising and the other is used under boost. A lot of people making 400+WHP ignore their crankcase or make it worse by removing these vacuum sources and this is a big mistake.

The fact is at stock power and stock motor a lot of people are able to skirt by without any issues and never know that they are leaving power on the table by not sorting it properly. However a lot of people just band aid the issue when they see their dipstick come out they put a vent there. Or they remove the vacuum and run a catch can in line vented through a mesh filter. These do not alleviate crankcase pressure they just give it more room to fill and possibly a little less resistance in certain places. If you were to measure the pressure in the crankcase you would see you still have some and it being in there is not helping you any.

The proper way to run this setup if the stock setup is no longer working for you is to enlarge the diameter of the hoses connecting to your system. Personally on my own car I ran 2 -10 lines via fittings welded to my valve cover to a catch can then another -10 line from the catch can to the intake. This allows for greater volume through the lines and still pulls a vacuum to ensure that all crankcase pressure is being alleviated. Is this over kill for a 400WHP car? Maybe but it guarantees that you'll never have to tinker with the PCV system again.

We also have people convince themselves it's the turbo from swapping from on turbo that does not smoke to one that does. Unless it's the same exact model of turbo charger this is not a valid test. Each turbo has a different bearing housing design some with giant valleys for the oil return like the Journal Bearing Red/Green/Black because they require a lot of oil to be properly lubricated. Some have much smaller cavities like the their ball bearing counter parts because they require much less oil to operate. When talking about this little of pressure 1psi or more it doesn't take much one way or another to either not have an issue or to have an issue with oil being forced out.

This was written in response to a post on a forum asking people who had experienced an FP Turbo Failure.

Well thanks everyone that shared their comments about how much they have enjoyed using our turbos over the last decade, we have sure enjoy building them and always dig pushing the envelope to see how far it will bend. And I think this poll is awesome despite the very unofficial and inaccurate nature of these numbers, not quite Gallop quality stats, but who cares the internet is for anonymous talking anyway right!

I know some of you guys are worried that a thread like this is just going to get used to bash FP, but we have been at the top of the hill for a long time and welcome any constructive ideas regarding our products! We love our customers and that is why we fix your turbos under warranty so long as we dont find parts of your engine stuck inside them. NOBODY IN THE BUSINESS DOES THAT, not Garrett, not MHI, not Borg Warner, not IHI, not anyone. All turbos fail, FP turbos get fixed - and thats different.

I'd like to comment that when we build a turbo, we dont really think it will last forever no matter what happens to it, know what I mean? But we offer a 12month warranty on it anyway. There isnt a way to make a turbo that cannot be destroyed, that cannot be made to fail. There isnt anyway we can limit the RPM of the turbo like you can on an engine. There isnt any way we can limit the temperature of the turbo. There isnt anyway we can ensure a constant supply of oil to the turbo either. There isnt a way we can be sure that clean oil makes it to the turbo at all. And these things can kill a turbo pretty easily.

Over speeding is a killer, not just for a turbo but for anything that rotates. On an engine, you can set a rev limit to keep the engine from self destructing - no such feature for a turbo. Would you think that running your 8500rpm engine at 10,000rpm is a good way to "get a little more power" or a good way to blow it up? Running a turbo rated at 60lb/min at 68lb/min is a good way to have a problem as well. I know it’s popular to try and set dyno records on our small turbos, but operating them too far outside their intended flow rate will lead to a short life.

Exceeding temperature limits is also trouble. Most guys stopped measuring EGT a few years ago, once wideband O2 got affordable most guys tossed the EGT gauges in the trash. What most guys dont realize is that a lot of evolution has occurred with engine tuning over the last 5-10 years and often EGT are well above 1750F/950C which is going to take a toll on standard turbine material such as Inconel 713C which simply isnt intended for sustained temps above 1750F, flash to 1750 or 1800 is not a problem, but steady state 1800F+ is asking for trouble on a 713 inco turbine head. On top of that the turbine housing material is not very strong at these elevated temps and some drooping/creeping has been observed in applications where the turbo support bracket has been deleted and the entire weight of the exhaust system is transmitted into the turbine housing and manifold during 1g braking and 1g cornering (very common due to poor O2 housing designs which delete the support bracket mounting position), if this creep is severe enough it can result in a turbine rub and bearing failure and turbine blade failure.

Most if not all RR failures of Red model turbos occurred on cars operating at EGT above 1750 for 30 min sessions 4+ times a day without support brackets for the O2 housings. Its also useful to note that we observe blade erosion/failure on Garrett 713 inco turbine heads as well when operated in this manner. Most street/drag guys just cant drive hard enough, long enough to ever get near these temps - there just are not places can you run at a sustained 500+whp for 30 min straight and achieve these heat soaked conditions, besides a road course.

Loosing oil pressure is a killer, and having the correct oil supply line doesnt mean there is oil inside the line all the time, having a garden hose isnt the same as having water. Thru datalogging some problematic road race cars, we learned that as the car graduated from greens to reds and the power levels went up, the lateral g-forces increased as well. This was resulting in the oil pickup in the pan sucking air instead of oil for a brief period during cornering. This loss of oil pressure can kill a turbo very quickly if it happens during a period of heavy load and RPM within the turbo obviously. I like to use the analogy of the air hockey game you might have played as a kid. The puck floats on air, but if the air is off, then the puck no longer floats. This is what happens to the thrust bearing inside the turbocharger when it loses oil pressure, it no longer floats. If that happens while you have 30psi of boost and 155krpm, then the bearing dies, then the blades rub, then the turbo pops.

The road course cars are doing fine with the addition of proper oil pans and windage trays to reduce oil pressure loss during high G cornering, of course helping the turbo isnt the only reason you would make these improvements. People observing that Garrett BB CHRA dont “seem” to have this problem are in fact making a valid observation since those turbos are ball bearing and dont have the same requirement for keeping the "hockey puck floating" like a conventional thrust bearing does and intermittent loss of oil pressure isnt as damaging to a ball bearing as it is to a floating bearing. The Gen2 full flow oil feed line does a great job of carrying the oil at high pressure and volume to the turbo, but if the oil pump is sucking air, the line just carries the air of course. So you might want to deal with your oil pump sucking air problem by switching to a BB turbo that can tolerate it better, or you might want to just fix your oil pump sucking air problem because you don’t like the idea of your oil pump sucking air.