Before I say anything else I must first preface this post by saying that I love this APS turbo and my car hauls some serious bootay.

Anyhow the most aggravating thing with this turbo is that darn reducer pipe they made to mate the downpipe to the stock exhaust. I understand that some people refuse to give up there stock exhaust, but I wish APS would have also supplied another pipe with a 3.5" or a 3.5" to 3.0" sized pipe for the rest of us who want maximum performance in the way of large diameter non-restrictive after market exhausts. Having a free flow exhaust is almost useless with that bottleneck in there, it is causing me to lose 5lbs of boost pressure by the time I reach redline. This problem is however easily fixed at the nearest exhaust shop for about 30 dollars.

I dont know if this next problem is singular to me or not. When I am driving I get a very faint rubbing or grinding type of sound from the front left of the car. When I turn right it gets louder but when I turn left it goes away. At first I thought it was the wheel well plastic kind of outta place causing the tire to rub on it, but when I checked everything was in place and I had plenty of clearance in there. It seems as if two objects in there are resting on one another causing this noise when the engine is under load and there is vibration and movement going on, and then when I turn right the weight shift amplifies it more. Anyone else experienced this?

Next is the white exhaust smoke. I did not have this at first, it was not till the 2nd or 3rd day that I started seeing the smoke. It seems though that I have this smoke only when the car is first started and I have just begun driving, after a short period of time the smoke goes away. I have heard of others with the smoke. Is it the same circumstance as mine or is it constant for some people?

All in all this has been a pain free experience and I am glad I went with APS. Considering some of the major horror stories I have read about from other people I think that I have fared very well so far. My hat goes off to Rich and John at Dyno Comp in Scottsdale,AZ for the excellent install and especially the initial tune. Even with that nasty bottleneck Rich was able to fine tune it and squeeze out a respectable 330whp and 330wtq on the Dyno Dynamics machine. Tomorrow I go back for a retune and a once over on the install to make sure all the clamps and hoses etc... are all still tight and in there proper places. I do expect that we will be seeing 8 to 10lbs of boost all the way to redline and another 20-30whp added now that my entire exhaust is 3 inch all the way from the down pipe to the muffler canister. Wish me luck all!

 

just curious and don't want to ruffle any feathers, but it seems like i've heard about lots more trouble out of the aps than the tntx kit, which also seems to be making more power. can i ask why you chose the aps over tntx?
in any case, good luck with your tune.

 

Awww greeeeat there goes my feathers again.... Gonna take forever to get em unruffled....

You know I just felt better about it and it was immediately available. I am not regretful about it at all. People will argue pros and cons until they're blue in the face about these two companies but I am still happy with my choice.

 

i hear you. i catch **** all the time for choosing the hks sc over the faster kits, but like you, i'm happy with my choice, and that's all that matters.

 

If I was going to go single I would go TN hands down. Too many of these aps sigle kit problems. But thats MY IMO.

 

Yea thats understood. These lil probs for the most part are easy fixes. After that its my opinion that this kit is top notch in performance and durability.

 

ditch the exhaust and reducer pipe. with that alone you should see consistent boost. my initial numbers were 320whp and 360tq. after a manual boost controller, new exhaust and stock tune, power jumped to 370whp and 395tq. i'm looking forward to actually getting the unichip tuned for a little more power. not sure about the smoking, but check your oil levels. people had problems with smoking after adding too much oil. after these small changes, you should see comparable numbers to the t-nectics kit.

 

Hey Bullit I got the reducer pipe problem fixed today. Tomorrow I go back to Dyno Comp for a retune. Should see 20-30 more whp and the consistant boost, I am excited.

 

i am not 100% sure of this if the cause of the grinding noise, but when I went to check out the install on my car, i did notice that a stock bolt is literally 1 mm above the downpipe.

I had the shop grind off that bolt so I could get more clearance.

There are also a lot of stuff that has a very, very small clearacne with the frame of the car. This may be the cause of the rub. I hope to add my experience with the APS ST as well.

I am cautiously optimistic about the drop in boost going to redline, but given the experiences others have had, I am prepared to upgrade if necessary.

Thanks to all who have contributed to these types of threads.

 

Talked to a buddy about the "grind" noise. He has the APS ST in his Z. The noise is common he says. Says it has to do with the knuckle on the steering shaft and also a very small clearance between the body and something else (forget what he said it was). Says they are fixable with a lil hard work. I'll post more when I can get an in depth explanation from him or he or someone else beats me to it and posts here. Drsifu, If I were you I would knock out that exhaust issue immediately while its in the shop and replace that reducer pipe with a 3 inch custom pipe.

 

I believe that was in the instuctions to grind that bolt down.

 

WHat you describe ..I was just going to post that its more than likely your exhaust manifold is rubbing on the steering shaft...glad you figured it out

 

I have that exact same sound but I think that all the APS ST kits have it. It is much more prominent while turning though....kinda annoying bc I don't like taking fast or hard turns anymore. The car seems to be more of a straight line maching now. I'm sure the issue is an easy fix, but I was the first one to have this kit so it was probably overlooked.

 

Correct....that is one of the first steps for the kit installation instructions.

 

That reducer pipe is without a doubt a very large restriction. The reason it's there though is for people that choose to stick with their stock exhaust anyways. The last ST we did we had to weld in a Y-Pipe to mate the exhaust with the downpipe. Everything worked out though. I hope to see you get this sorted out and make some nice numbers George

 

to fix your smoking issue, do what i did. change the oil, and make sure to put in only 5.5 quarts. since i did that last week, no smoking issues at all. and i had the EXACT same thing as you did.
and tell richard if it doesn't go away, he'll know what to do.

 

Well today I went back to Dyno Comp for some tuning. The first thing immediately tackled was the tune. Get it on the dyno and find that it STILL cant hold boost till redline. It holds the boost in mid range a bit longer than before and then begins to taper off again all the way down to 5psi. We tinker for a while and then come to a conclusion that this waste gate sucks, no wait, we finally ADMIT to ourselves that the waste gate sucks.... We ended up making 340whp and 366wtq on the dyno dynamics machine, add in that 10% the dyno dynamics machine is missing in comparison to a dynojet and that is roughly 377whp and 406 wtq. Not bad but it would be better with a functional waste gate.

While it was on the dyno they got to see it smoking first hand. He was pretty sure it was the infamous check valve. He throws it on the lift to have a look at it and to make sure everything else is in good working order. He ends up finding out that the scavenge pump is not working, turns out it was wired incorrectly OOPS... He Wires it up properly and bingo no more smoke. Turns out the check valve is fine, THANK GOD!

All in all it was a productive day at the shop. Got one potentially disasterous and really annoying problem fixed. Picked up 10 ponies and 36 lb foot of torque to the rear wheels. Now its time to get this waste gate squared away and finally get all the boost that is owed to me. Best of all todays services at Dyno Comp were free of charge, thanks Rich! So of my list of problems we/I have cured the exhaust restriction, and the smoke problem. That leaves the grinding/rubbing problem which I know the solution and am tackling it tomorrow, and the waste gate problem which is yet to be eliminated.

 

great news sir. please continue to update us on how things work out.

 

good job, yes in fact the actuator does suck, im making 10 and holding 10 till redline now with my WG wired shut, hell i made 14.0 psi today on the way home. CRAZY! Forge motorsports is making me a WG actuator 9-15 psi spring that i hope solves the problem. that pretty amazing about the sump being wired wrong for that long, im surprised your 02 sensors arent fried, and im willing to bet that your intercooler is full of oil since your turbo has been swimming in oil that long.

all these issues are the exact ones i had, makes me feel better since you had yours installed at a well respected shop and the same problems occured. wheh, i knew i wasnt a dumba55. thanks.

 

Hahaha! I will be checking the IC tomorrow, I was thinking of it but havent had time to get to it today. I sent an email to APS and Rich called them. They are currently trying to come up with a fix for the waste gate, I will keep you and bullit posted.