got money and decided to blow up my car

[bob stone]

hey all got some money and decided to fix all the stupid small things with my car, also seeing as how I only need it to last a year or 2 decided to up my boost, I do not want to do anything fancy just up the boost to a little below the max safe range.

I got a 89 mr2 turbo, the only mods are air intake and a hks cat back exhaust and boost gauge. what are my choices here, keep in mind dirt cheap, I dont care if I can not adjust the boost later, just want it higher in general.


someone told me that I might be able to just have my ecu reprogramed / flashed with a new boost lvl and fuel map n shit from a tuning company. others told me that I can manualy adjust the boost and just either get a aftermarket fuel boost ( or whatever it is called) or manualy adjust the fuel also.

what are my choices here, also is .9 bar a safe boost on my car, it is low milage about 60k miles on it and the only 2 real problems currently is that my afm is going bad or I got a boost leak. and my syncros are shot in the tranny

[JekylandHyde]

.9 bar is 13 psi which should be no problem for a healthy engine.
You should be safe up to 15 psi.

All you need to up your boost is a manual boost controller.
You can get one from www.twosrus.com.
Tell them I sent you

[bob stone]

so I wont have to worry about adjusting anything for the ecu like fuel and stuff ?

pluse one more thing, when i worked on all the small problems with my car we noticed that while it is running I get black water comming out of my exhaust, it is like a spray of water, after ideling for about 10 mins I will have a almost solild streak of black about 1.5 feet long behind the exhaust tips ( it might seem like a lot but if you hold your hand infront of the exhaust it still takes a while for it to get really wet ) but after driving for a while it seems to stop doing this. I have 2 awnsers about this, one guy said that it is typical for small i4 to do that. another said I might have a blown head gasket :O . so I wanted to get a 3rd opinion on this.

keep in mind I only have 100k km on the car and other then that and a small boost and idle problem I am tracking down, it runs fine ( I was able to check the turbo and it seemed in fine condition ) and we are narowing down the boost problem to a boost leak and or a bad afm.

p.s. of course I plan on getting all this up to spec before I up the boost.

Thanks
Bob

[JekylandHyde]

To raise the boost you will not have to do anything with the ECU or fueling.
The factory fuel pressure regulator is a 1:1 unit.
For each 1 psi of boost added, it adds 1 psi of fuel pressure, so all is well.


As for the water in the exhaust, that is normal.
It's just condensation in the pipes that is blowing out.
Most cars do this.

[bob stone]

one more thing, it is water but it is also kinda greasy, is this just soot / carbon build up from the exhaust mixing with it then ? also it is not just sometime when i start the car, it is every time I start the car, is this in line with it just being condensation ?

[JekylandHyde]

Exhausts are dirty and grimy ... lots of carbon, soot, etc ... deposits in there.
If you forcing out water, it is bound to pick some up.

If you had a headgasket problem, you would most likely be overheating.
I've blown 2 headgaslets on turbo MR2s and have not had excess water coming out of the exhuasts.

Besides, it wouldn't be water, it would be coolant and have the sweet smell that goes with it.

[bob stone]

cool thanks for the awnser

[bob stone]

ok ya all telling me that I dont have a blown head gasket or cracked head, but I dont know much about cars and I am about to spend some decent money on my car not to mention that the japenese road tax is comming up soon so I got to make a call here.

I need to know a easy way to tell for sure weather or not my head gasket is blown or cracked. how can i do this to be 100% sure cause we are talking me spending about 1k in the next 6 monthes on this car in small parts and getting it able to pass the jci test and for the jci test it self. cause if there is a major problem with my car, it is getting parted out now and then junked.

I know you are telling me it is not but this is just based on info I have given so I might be wrong or not telling everthing I should cause I dont know what to tell ect...

[JekylandHyde]

There is no way I can 100% tell you for sure, but you have not even remotely discussed any symptoms of a blown headgasket or cracked block.

In either case, you would have SERIOUS overheating - at least under boost.
With a blown headgasket you would see evidence of coolant in your oil or oil in your coolant.

You can always gets compression test and a leakdown test down.
They are your best bets for determing the health of your engine.

[bob stone]

ok thanks for thoes tips, I will try to get thoes tests done asap, should I do a wet and dry compresion test ( I think that is what they are called ) where I add oil to the cilinder for the "wet" one