DIY Electronic Boost Controller Install

In this special episode of Mighty Car Mods we head to New Zealand a country that lies in the southwestern Pacific Ocean with incredible landscapes and some of the best driving roads in the world this is a road trippers dream enter that a huge automotive culture and cars that cost less than half what we pay in Australia and you’ve got our Giro paradise there’s a sheep there unrestrictive import laws mean they get all sorts of cards that we’ve never seen Australia like this die had two midget ass 660 CC single cedar truck direct from Japan modifying your car in New Zealand is not a crime hug filters turbos and blow-off valves it’s all legal in fact they’re so liberal you can register almost anything you like such as this bike plane built by a guy called mad Jordy I’ve not had an experience driving a plane on the road before it’s a very interesting and somewhat frightening experience and just when you think New Zealand couldn’t get any crazier because a homemade plane is allowed on the road they don’t even have to have insurance here it’s crazy want to register a motorbike that’s welded onto the front half of a mini it’s totally legal so you can pretty much register whatever you want there’s amazing scenery everywhere you go and the condition of the roads is just amazing no wonder the Hobbit loves this place add to that one of the friendliest automotive scenes we’ve ever experienced cars that cost less than half what we pay in Australia and mods that are totally legal this is automotive paradise so we rushed back to our hotel room and jumped on the second-hand websites to find our own little slice of heaven and for 1,800 Australian dollars this is what we found the smart thing to do when you’re in a country for just five days is hire a car so we decided to buy one this is a Toyota Starlet GT with a liter turbocharged engine that pushes out around 99 kilowatts from the factory this one has a few mods both good and bad including a Mitsubishi Evo body kit our plan is to install the electronic boost controller by GFB to squeeze out some more power from the little liter engine and then do some road tripping around the North Island of New Zealand the flames and the wheels are pretty horrendous and it probably looked pretty stylish 15 years ago but for the money we can’t complain we’re about to go for our first drive in the Stalin we’re leaving our hotel and we’ve packed the car we’ve got mechanical Stig and rake in the backseat but as we take off we realize we have a problem that sound you’re hearing is the body of the car eating through the tyres because we’re too low at Bennigan’s and check out Marty’s face Toddie that’s a lot of strobing inside though when we go over a bump and probably tackle at one guard because we’re about to head onto the highway in the rain in an unknown City and with no insurance because it’s not mandatory in New Zealand we’re going to have to fix it great again fresh off the plane we don’t have any suitable tools but we found a tire iron in the boot there you go we’re trying to roll the middle lip in the guard because we don’t want to hack through the tyres once we’re on the highway in the rain we’re back on the road and we fixed it no we have it at once they’re both hammered dude this is what I can’t have nice things mechanical stick takes the driver’s seat because money’s just realized the brakes don’t work the pedal travel needs to be adjusted and there’s a little bit of air in it so she got to bleed it up yeah and then adjust the length of the push rod because otherwise she drives nice apart from the bright side don’t you really like breaks that don’t you just the brakes and the scrubbing biggest issues so there break is not loving it at all in a break very hard okay I’m not as it doesn’t break uh now the guys from platinum wheels of lent us their hoist which is easier than working on the side of the road and we set to work fixing our style at Evo thing which we’ve affectionately named steve-o the Charlotte Evo with the back wheels off we gently massage out the problem but hammers aren’t enough we need to get rid of some metal that Toyota put in the way of our massive mad cronies safety first in New Zealand hey we’re putting on some secondhand tires not just to replace our one that’s been matched by Stevo but also when you’re running more boost you need better quality rubber and the ones that came with the car are just not up to the task you you tires are balanced and now it’s time to fix the brakes even though there’s plenty of meat left on the old brake pads there’s air in the system and the fluid needs to be replaced somehow so we can bleed the brakes may work I think we actually bought our own stuff from Australia that will fit better than me Christopher and rape feels reasonable about it mechanical sting shows us a tricky look when he was a teenager so you can believe breaks without making a mess the old fluid is pumped out by the brake pedal along with any air that’s in the system we’re going to keep going until the color changes to the new colored brake fluid milk it like a cow right look it like a cow on your foot he loves it man next up adjusting the pedal make that it’ll feel a bit better let’s just go into the floor too much to be sure if you lengthen the right effectively it shortens the length that it has to push yeah so building boats it’s really important if you’re increasing the performance of your car that you’ve got good brakes and good tires the wheels go back on and we head out for a test drive maybe the cars no longer scrubbing so we’re not going to be blowing out tires on the highway next up we test the brakes more boost means more load on the ignition system our spark plugs up old and crusty and not up to the task it’s a cheap and easy swap so we’re putting in new ones we carefully got the new plugs on the ground and then install them we also found out why the car was only running on three cylinders the plugs are changed and the fluids are done we’ve upgraded the ties and fixed the brakes the car already has a front mounted intercooler and an exhaust so now it’s time to add boost but first is this car red or is it pink our body seems I think it’s pink I’m convinced that it’s red expected odds that’s I think it’s a it’s already red it’s on the red side of pink Martin it might have been red ones but it’s fated to be pink apparently it was gunmetal gray originally because the inside some of the panel’s taller now the previous owner for whatever reason thought it was an awesome idea to paint these flames on it and they’ve also got a pretty incredible suspension setup we’ve learned a few lessons have we mo what have we learned about suspension we’ve learned that suspension that is that low is absolutely useless for anything other than sitting in the car park and yeah it looks great you know that right heart looks great but as soon as it’s on a country road or there’s some bumps in the road or even a driver or a tweak or a stick or a leaf you feel it and you break your back everything has been compromised so that the car will look good on its massive 17-inch cronies I reckon 15 years ago this car probably would have been awesome but as it is now it is pretty rough ah there’s a few things that aren’t really that cool about it it’s loose in terms of the panels inside fuel economy is not awesome we’ve got to check engine light on at the moment which arm the steering wheel is kind of pointed out this way but we’re still going in this direction so that’s interesting beginnings missing a few stickers yeah but you know overall it works I mean you can put it into gear you can drive it you can steer it has no handbrake at all zero are you need to park it in gear handbrake doesn’t work we can’t do any dough he’s no handbrake ah there’s no stereo there’s still speakers in the back but you know what it does do it does turn heads it does something that’s been surprising me people will actually look at it I don’t know why they’re looking at it I hoped because it has one of those ridiculous block blower fouls it’s a Sarah Winchell I think that’s super sequential mixed with the flames and the bright red / pink paint job is enough to get people turning heads I think the thing is that people don’t often kind of qualify my tea though is why our heads turning yeah they’re turning because you and I look like a couple of dickheads okay back to the boost so the cars currently running 6 psi but we want more so we’re installing an electronic boost controller okay so we’ve got our mad little car now suspensions already done it’s got some super ugly chrome wheels on it and it’s got an exhaust a front now and ridiculously outrageously embarrassing super sequential blow-off valve so the supporting mods are already there we put on some mighty car mods tickets for the kawatche but we need more power mark that’s right for our MADD New Zealand roads we’re going to install a DSP electronic boost control that means we can adjust everything from inside the car power that’s right we can adjust everything from inside the car meaning with maximum power lots of different boots maps and it’s gonna be mad we’re going to get extra power it’s gonna be yeah let’s do it I love that okay so the car does already have some kind of boost control in it it’s got a bleed valve but it’s either not installed probably or it’s broken because it doesn’t work so we’re going to pull that out and our plumbing our EBC in here will be fully controllable from inside the car more power so this is what we’re installing this is the boost control solenoid that comes with the GFP kit there’s basically a little motor in there that opens and close the valves and decides how much air gets through now this gets installed between the wastegate actuator and the boost pressure source now that is connected to this which sits inside the car and this is where we make all of our settings which adjust the little motor in this which is opening and closing the valve inside there we can put lots of different boost maps on there lots of different settings so you can try different things day to day driving or driving settings and all of this control inside the cabin which is mad a blue valve has one setting an electronic controller on the other hand samples and adjust boost pressures hundreds of times a second meaning accurate boost you can control from inside the car the EBC replaces the factory boost control system or in our case the bleed valve that has already been installed so port three goes to the boost pressure source on the front of the turbo and port two goes to the wastegate actuator you don’t plug anything to number one because that’s where it bleeds the excess shizzle out of the factory boost control is usually dumb and doesn’t know if it’s being used but it’s a good idea to leave it connected to the ECU so it doesn’t throw a code screwing the nipples with the vacuum lines and find a spot to mount the solenoid in the engine bay use hose clamps to make sure there aren’t any boost leaks so the kit comes with heaps of vacuum line as well so if you want to remote mounted then you can hide it somewhere else in the engine bay now if this was my car in Australia I would most definitely be mounting it properly with this and hiding it somewhere for the Superstock thickness of it because we’re only gonna mean use on for a couple of days we’re just going to go a cable tie of course and just cable type to something up here in the entryway that’s not going to get too hot that way when we’re finished up we can take it out and take it back with us to our next destination with the solenoid plumbed in next you have to connect the controller to a vacuum source it needs to know how much boost the inlet manifold is getting so it can adjust the pressure coming from the turbo use a tee piece on a vacuum source on the inlet manifold avoid putting too many T’s on the same source so that you get accurate readings it’s also a good idea to avoid the vacuum source that goes to a fuel pressure regulator you do not want that signal compromised New Zealand if it’s really warm one minute and then the next minute really really freaking cold with that done run the vacuum line through to the inside of the cabin through a grommet make sure it can’t rub on any bare metal on the firewall the wires that run between the control unsilent can be routed through the same hole in the firewall make sure it’s neat and can’t get caught up in your pedals the rest of the install is really really simple we’ve got this unit which mounts up on the dash this only needs two things needs power and ground and it also need a pressure and vacuum source from the engine so we’ve found that directly to the inlet manifold that comes in through the car along with the wine to control a little solenoid then we just plug in a power and an earth and this also becomes your boost and vacuum gauge connect up the vacuum line you ran through and then mount the controller somewhere that’s easy to access before you get angry about me not soldering we’re in the middle of a car park in the middle of nowhere with no soldering irons and you can’t take gas soldering irons on airplanes so today we twist and tape for our temporary install they died a pretty good job of that considering I’ve never twisted and taped anything in my life before ever except for that hamster ah connect up a power source that comes on when the keys in the on position and a good ground and then fire it up yes what color suits a car dude I think it has to be pink alright so we’ve tied it up under there so we don’t get our feet cording and either wiring now let’s take it for a drive Dennis yes miss talent friends now see International bonding vibe dirty dirty ball fell out okay so when you’re setting up your boost controller ideally you need a dyno if you don’t have one of those you do need an open bit of road preferably a highway high speed limit something like that something like we’re on now the reason is you’re not going to get the most accurate idea of what boost level your cars out if you’re in first or second gear third or fourth is ideal as long as you’re staying on the speed limits and stuff like that before you set anything up the first controller set to a default value which is pretty much a waste gate pressure so if we give it a bit we’re not going to get over nine or ten pounds that’s what the wastegate set to that’s what the car wants to do by itself and we basically go from there so we’re going to start it on nine we’re going to slowly increase the duty cycle until we get a higher boost level and find what lever we can get to that stable alright so to turn the boost up we’re going to go to duty cycle it’s a number out of a hundred we’re going to start on around twenty five ten percent is the default value we’re going to put on twenty five we’re going to see what kind of boost we get and then go from there in the third year what do we go on right some rocks all about you’re just touching ten all right here we go to another 30 run from about 3,000 rpm we go there we go and now we are we’re staying stable on 10 Jack the Judi psych up a little bit more alright here we go third gear slow down a little bit 3,000 rpm here we go it’s really good if your boots cut there we go so it’s only going to let us get to about thirteen ten pounds stable it’s important to remember that some cars do have a boost cut when the ECU senses that it gets to a certain amount of boost pressure it’s going to cut the ignition to stop us going any faster which is not very nice of them but it does protect engines so now that we’ve found our peak boost which is around about 55 to 60 on duty cycle we now go through and set our other settings which is gain and sensitivity to get that boost curve nice and solid I noticed one thing you can do with an electronic boost control that you can’t do with a bleed valve and this is where it comes into its own oh wow it comes on heap stronger well let’s proper fire jeez me so what it’s doing is so we’re getting it up to us and that’s fast and we’re getting up to the 13 pounds per square inch and now we want to keep it at 13 psi through the whole red range it just comes on though so quickly and just holds it that’s great that’s all you’re going to get a little turbo like that anyway yeah I mean if you own one of these in Australia body the trick would be put a t do for right exactly ten year for different manifold big boost earth like a computer where you go it’s funny that we just removed the T do for for my Forester saying that it’s too small but it’s actually a big turbo for this cause he used to though for this it’s all relative isn’t it not totally just like Einstein told us that’s good man the cup is amazing and we’ve dialed it in nicely man two disciples about 45 percent gain at about 22 brings it on really quickly and we actually need to adjust the sensitivity or the boost tape because it holds on all the way the red line which is exactly what you want twelve and a half sweet spot yep and a boon of that this crazy little car with its flames and Evo bodykit didn’t miss a beat during five days of solid driving around the North Island of New Zealand on sealed roads end on dirt roads the truth is that for under 2000 Australian dollars you just can’t go wrong but when I’m led to bring these cars from New Zealand back into Australia which is a real shame otherwise we’d have access to some amazingly affordable performance cars so we’re gonna have to say goodbye to Stevo and leave in here in New Zealand you know one thing I have noticed about this car yeah girls love it know all the girls I’ve driven passing like I’m the Cutie to blow off noise yeah there are a lot of their old ten years old man you should have got arrested for that now do they like a proper like older ladies not like mature ladies and I don’t know mum yeah minute they all hated it mate and I don’t know if I’m more relieved to actually get rid of this car or if my relief actually stems from the fact that I don’t need to ride it would you use it ain’t much hip or that I don’t have to ride out I have to write it with you anymore every time we go past old lady old man anything tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu to embarrassment ma’am it’s brought out a side of you that is so sutherland shire oh I know devalue last life maybe about the Parker hey love it no makes you happy dude it makes everyone smile don’t you I’m not gonna smile everybody makes me love my first drove more than I thought I didn’t that’s it name sold on by like bye-bye car oh you’re an embarrassment and an eyesore but you work you work you make you tea tree noises you got a mad lose control of my screwdrivers on the ground that’s it is that an analogy fuel pinch my screwdrivers on the ground hanging on the ground would be faster first dude I really like this car really do you like it one day it would have been awesome but not now what I can tell you about it Marty because we did the check on it it’s had ten where the tenth owners of it and you can get photos here you know like when you go and look for a second-hand car and you do the test you can like on the online you pay 15 bucks you get all the photos of it throughout its history yeah and it used to look awesome ah the clock has been wearing back twice that it’s got two hundred and twenty three thousand K’s on it yeah three hundred and twenty five years ago as well three thousand thousand five years dude that’s low kilometers in my book yeah do I like it it worked it got us around it did what it had to do I reckon it’ll be a mad car from factory just we’re the turbo on a some suspension some wheels as it is it’s an embarrassment it was purchased as an embarrassment and I don’t know you actually want one don’t you I do are you going to buy one destroy I’m going to try it’s little and turbo and front wheel driving a bit of a nugget I don’t know I kind of like that oh speaking of nuggets Martin can you order me a veggie burger oh what’s that chicken wrap thing well can you ask them if they got veggie burgers dude do you have any veggie burgers hello