Electronic Boost controller
Well I decided that I would get an Electronic Boost Contoller (EBC). I made the decision when I was considering using a ball-spring Manual Boost Controller (MBC) to help my turbo spool more quickly. I was also interetsed in being able to increase the boost when I am running on the track (and using race gas). The options were pretty clear, either spend the money to get a very nice fuzzy logic EBC or go cheap and get something less. I cheaped out, mainly b/c I was owed a favor and could get this unit at cost.
Did I do the right thing? Maybe... It cost less than half as much money so I still have some dollars to put into headers. The donwside is that the unit came with instructions only in Japanese and it was drop shipped and I was afraid it would not get to me in time as the vendor was not doing a good job of communicating with the distributor. The EBC I have is nice and looks good but has no boost display and you have to tune it blind (settings have no calibration).
For the extra $200 I could have a digital read out, and all sorts of other cool stuff, I could also have the guys from Imagine helping me to tune it safely. Neither the distributor nor the vendor have expereince with my type of car so can offer no special advice. I expect the end result to be functionally very similar but now I realize that I should have used the favor to get something for my other car and bought Porsche parts from a Porsche specific vendor. YMMV!
UPDATE
Now I have driven it and... it is incredible! I took the car out to get the sound bytes for my dump pipe page and fiddled with the settings a bit (carefully b/c I was running pump gas) The result was that boost came up quicker and was more consistent. The car is faster SOP even at the same max boost levels. You can hear the car loose traction as I hit full boost in second gear in the one sound byte. The fancy EBC may be better but this one will do!
The install was really easy. The EBC I bought is a Blitz SSBC. It has two modes and dials to tune the two modes individually (this is the part I liked). The head unit is small and attractive and the main control box is mounted remotely. The final piece is the electronic valve that is in charge of all the actual work.
This is the head unit "installed". I have it tied in place b/c I am going to change over my AC and install a center console. That will be its eventual home.
This is the "brain", installed in my front compartment. I did my best to run lines trhough existing holes.
This is the valve in place. I noticed a really lousy adapter piece used for the vac line that carried the boost to the gauge (and now to my controller as well) so I did my best to make a temporary repair. That is the ugly adapter in the pic at the top of the page. I will run to the autoparts store to remedy that as soon as I get a chance.
In order to tap into the boost signal I used the t-adpater that came with my ebc and pulled boost off near the gauge. I was then able to run the semi-rigid line to the controll box by routing it past the HEAT/AC hardware into the front compartment.
The harness that runs from the control box to the motor was JUST BARELY long enough. I may reroute it per Rennlist member advice to run back through the cabin. This will probably wait until the interior is torn up doing my ac work. The reroute should give me almost a foot of extra line, and get the wires out of my rocker (that is where they currently are).
Here are some other pictures of the work.
