Hey guys-

So I installed my RMW head, header, cam, and ported intake manifold with teflon gasket.

Started right up and I have about 50 miles on it. Going in a few weeks to get a tune, but I wanted to make sure it was reliable beforehand.

car runs great, idles smooth, compression is identical on every cylinder. obviously it’s not optimized because it hasn’t been tuned yet, but drives OK.

but the weird thing is... I have a 15% pulley and 2% crank pulley. I used to see around 14.5 psi at WOT below 3500 and a peak of about 16 PSI at higher RPM’s. I thought this was normal.

Except now I’m getting 17-17.5 PSI at WOT... even at 3K rpm. Could this be purely from it needing a tune? Will the PSI change once tuned? I can’t imagine how that makes sense but higher boost with a BVH doesn’t make sense either.

Obviously I could have had a leak before, but 17.5 psi still seems high for my pulley setup, not to mention the BVH which allegedly lowers boost.

Any thoughts?

 

My RMW head, Dominator cam, ported intake, Mynes V2 header, Miltek, TVS900/55mm pulley and 2% ATI setup was completed last week. I had a Thumper TPR2 head and NS1 cam and the TVS900 had a 70mm pulley before we went the RMW route. I was getting 14.8 boost and now with the head/cam/55mm pulley and same everything else I’m hitting 22.5 boost and it is a whole different animal. It is tuned with Bitetronik FA now but I may go to Link.

 

Hmm... interesting. I wish you would have kept the same pulley so we’d know what just the head/cam did to your boost levels. Going from 70 to 55mm is a big change and is obviously the most likely thing to be responsible for the huge boost increase.

Perhaps my valve seals were tired and causing me to lose boost? The Engine only had 80k on it before the head swap though...

anyone else?

 

Yeah it would have been interesting. Just comparing the two heads the ports were a whole lot bigger on the RMW and driving it seems to be a lot smoother if that makes any sense. I’m sure the 55mm adds a lot.

 

are you absolutely sure you kept tension on the timing chain and it did not shift a tooth? I had this problem with my latest cam swap and it was from the timing chain being off a tooth

 

Oh dear god... Don't even say that lol. I also have a P0172 (system running too rich) code that's been popping up recently but I figured that was due to running the dominator cam/header without a tune.

I used the bungee cord trick and put paint on the cam sprocket and chain. I'm 99.9% sure that the chain did not slip a tooth on the bottom, but I suppose it could have happened. I've done about 5 swaps without issue but I always kept the chain zip-tied to the sprocket and it was easy to keep tension on it. This time, having to remove the sprocket from the chain for the first time, I suppose it's possible it slipped while I was fiddling with the chain trying to get the sprocket teeth back into the chain.

Mind if I asked how you figured this out? Or how you went about fixing it and knowing which direction to adjust the sprocket?? I thought there were no timing marks or relevant markings.

Oh man, now I'm freaked out. Ive got a dyno tune setup in less than 2 weeks so I've really got to get this figured out if that's what happened!!

 

I pulled the timing cover off and verified the timing marks, I was off a tooth, also the compression was low but leakdown was perfect so I figured it was off a tooth.

 

Oh boy. I was hoping to be done wrenching for a while, but I'm getting the feeling that I might need to do this. This sounds exactly like what I am experiencing.

Out of curiosity, how low were your compression numbers?

 

80 psi, car ran, but badly and only had 3% leakdown loss

 

Hmm. I tested compression at about 125 PSI +/- 3PSI in every cylinder... which seemed low but I read the cam can cause lower readings. Car runs very smooth and idles smooth. Seems a little lower on power than it did before, but not by much, and backfires occasionally when I let off the throttle but I attributed that to the new cam/head and lack of tuning. Otherwise it is very drive-able.

Haven't hit WOT much or revved past 4k as it's apparently running rich and I don't want to damage my new cat.

I'm freaking out right now... About to order everything to change the timing chain and do another teardown. Am I going crazy?

How bad did your car run? How much boost increase did you see? Were there any other CEL's or issues?