A Stuffed Turbo Journey

My buddy Gabriel wanted to really step up the performance on his 124 Abarth… He ordered a long list of performance parts and had them installed by the experts at NGEN. Here’s what he got:

EC Phase3 Tune
NGEN Performance Turbo
NGEN Performance Exhaust Manifold
aFe Momentum GT Intake
EC Intercooler
Forge Recirculation Valve
Forge Wastegate Actuator
SportCat Downpipe
Goodwin Crosspipe
Goodwin System One Exhaust
4C Ignition Coils
Wilwood Front BBK
HR Springs
Karcepts Front and Rear Sway Bars

He was extremely excited when he got his car back after having everything installed, but that excitement did not last long. The car started to “sound like an old airplane” and wasn’t making boost. Turns out the turbo studs were falling out! We installed some bolts to hold it together until the car could get back to NGEN. You can read about that fiasco here: Turbo Stud say BYE

Apparently there was an issue with the studs the turbo supplier installed. NGEN of course corrected the problem, and the Spider came back with the proper turbo studs and everything buttoned back up nice and tight. While we were testing the car out, several issues cropped up. The car was constantly throwing error P0137, randomly going into limp mode from “underboost,” and experiencing misfires.

Although we were disappointed in the turbo performance, we were still able to test out the suspension and brake upgrades. In short, they are fantastic. You can watch that test-drive in the video below.

So the car was sent off to NGEN for the third time. Bryan at NGEN was completely committed to getting the car all sorted. He kept the car for awhile experimenting and making sure everything was running smoothly. He found that the car worked best with the stock downpipe and EC crosspipe. The theory being there’s an incompatibility issue with the SportCat downpipe and GWR crosspipe. When we got the car back, there were no further issues. In fact, I think it delivers power more smoothly than stock.

The car really rips! There’s a noticeable bump in power all through the rev range. I did some timed 40-100mph runs in the video below, but we’ll need to throw it on a dyno to really see what’s going on. Stay tuned for that.

So what’s next? Well Gabriel and I have a theory that the issue was really with the SportCat. We’re going to reinstall the GWR crosspipe with the factory downpipe and test it again. This will also give us a comparison between the GWR and EC crosspipes.