I finally noticed an increasingly strong smell of exhaust in the engine bay. To be honest, I think I have been in denial for the last few weeks, but the harsh sounding engine note and the fact the air conditioner started to pull in exhaust fumes at an alarming rate made me take the car back to my tuner. The reason I never saw it was my manifold and downpipe are tightly heat wrapped. The tuner pulled off the wrap and revealed a huge crack right down the center of the manifold all the way from where it contacts the engline block all the way back to the turbo.

We have already contacted Greddy and it "looks" like they will send me a new manifold but they have to wait to hear back from Japan first. The tuner took a few pics and emailed them to greddy, and you will find these pix below. I only had the turbo on about 3 weeks of daily driving and never did anything particularly foolhardy with the car. I just treated it like I usually do, which is granny driving punctuated with random vtec runs. I am very disappointed that they sent me an obviously flawed manifold. The kit even comes with heat wrap, so its not like I put heat wrap on there against their design recommendations. The car has been driving like crap for a few weeks, and it has been getting steadily worse. The heat wrap kept most of the exhaust from escaping through the crack which is why it took so long for me to finally realize what was going on. I believe this is a tubular manifold and they plan to replace it with a cast manifold. Is this is a common problem with this type of manifold? This is my first experience with a turbo car and I'm very, very annoyed that something like this happened to me. The whole reason I chose the greddy turbo was to have a mildy boosted "reliable" car and not have any turbo "horror" stories to share with anybody.

Guess I failed.

That being said, when the car was running well it was a great experience so I have no intention of giving up so easily. The car is out of service for a few weeks until I can get a properly constructed manifold from Greddy but I just view this as one of the risks of being an early adopter. Stuff like this can happen with new product. I just never thought it would happen to me though.

 

Unfortunatly thats not all to uncommon for tubular manifolds.

 

 

Subscribing....

This thread should blow up.....

 

dam 3 weeks, I'd be pissed, and i thought that tubular one from greddy looks pretty nice(guess not), get that cracked mani pic up on here, good luck

 

wow.. I had a lot of faith in Greddy, and all I hear is issues, problems.
I guess it's something that early stage kits have to go thru before Greddy solves all these little bugs.
Hope they send you a revised manifold.

Dan

 

This is the reason why I Bought the Comptech SC instead of TURBO.

 

You wouldn't be saying that if you ever road in a turbo'ed S.

One thing you never want to do with a tubular manifold is wrap it. The wrap holds in too much heat and the steel soaks too much of that heat up which can cause cracking. If you want a good heat barrier that will help the life of a good tubular manifold, your best bet is to go with a good heat coating like Jet Hot 2000. The inside and outside are coated which helps keep the heat from soaking into the steel.

 

Thanks for your Adviced.
Yes I did.Infact,I bought a brand new BMW 335I coupe in Sep 2006 for my wife daily beater.
Most Turbo S2000 will be faster than SCed,But not All.
I'm sure that With my current set up with AEM EMS,650 Injectors and 3.5" pulley.Hopefully,I can smoke all stock Greddy Turbo.

 

I think he said turbo'd s. not bmw. anyways, comptech cars are really fun too. can't say which I like better though cuz my greddy kit is making 201 whp right now.

def a lot of bugs to work out in these early stages.