I just installed one of the AGP wga's and I must admit it gives a pretty significant power boost, but I have some questions I was unable to find answers for here on the forums.
Car runs great except if I try to go WOT at anything much under 3k RPMs. If I try to do this it kinda stumbles and misses a few times then takes off like nothing is wrong. I was just curious what this might be.
I installed the gate per the instructions with the vac line ran off of the green line on the rear of the compressor with the supplied bleed. When I preloaded the spring I ran it up to finger tight then went an additional round on the adjustment nut. After the first test drive like this my boost was a little low so I preloaded it an additional 1/2-3/4 of a round and that is when my miss started to appear. Boost is spiking out to around 17-18 and holding around 14 to redline which is about where I wanted to be, but the miss/stumble at low RPM w/ WOT concerns me a bit.
Any suggestions would be helpful perhaps I need to run a larger diameter vac supply line from the compressor housing to the WGA? maybe turn the boost down some? or could all of this be caused by having stock plugs? Or maybe this is just that part throttle boost thing I here about? I do not know but if anyone has ever seen this please help me out. Thanks
The arm on the WGA flops around, is it broken?
No, there is nothing wrong with the wastegate actuator. It is perfectly normal for the rod to move when not under tension.
Which line do I use to hook up the wastegate actuator?
We recommend using the source on the compressor housing where the green line was connected.
I heard from a friend that you get more horsepower with the blue line and more torque with the green line, is this true?
You need new friends. A pressure source is a pressure source whether or not it comes from the throat of the compressor housing or the outlet of the compressor housing. You do not get any different power output from either source.
I didn't use the bleed when I installed my WGA but my car boosts to 18 and holds 15 at redline, should I install the bleed?
Your choice, it seems as if you're getting the most performance you're going to achieve without the bleed. Personally, I wouldn't change anything.
Why can't my WGA hold 19psi to redline?
Dodge made a turbo that is too small for the engine. You simply cannot get enough air through the turbine to generate "more boost". Even if you welded the wastegate door shut, you will still only get 15-16psi at redline.
Can I hook up the WGA to the stock lines?
Yes. We don't recommend it as the car will eventually learn the higher boost, but it's your car and you can do what you wish with it. If it works for you and you're happy with its performance, I wouldn't change it.
I just hooked up the WGA and now I get a flutter at part throttle, is this normal?
Yes. The WGA allows the turbo to spool up faster and will give a lot of part throttle boost. Sometimes you will get a lot of flutter at part throttle and at low RPM full throttle. This is just a by-product of having a turbo that's way too small for the car. You will learn to drive the car differently.
Do I need to cap the solonoids where I removed the green and black line?
No. No matter what your friend tells you, as long as you remove the lines from the solonoid, there is no need to cap them anywhere.
I installed my WGA, and now I get a Check Engine Light. What do I do now?
If you have stage 0, you will need to remove the red TIP sensor line that goes from the upper intercooler hose to solonoid #1. Completely remove this line from the car and cap the nipple that is left on the upper intercooler hose. If you have stage 1 or 2, you do not need to do this.
NOTE FOR 2005 USERS. You may get a P2074 code with stage 0. The first step is to make certain your vehicle has had the reflash 18-042-04 performed at the dealer. If you have already removed the red line and you have had the reflash completed at the dealer, you may need to purchase stage 1 to rid yourself of all check engine lights for your 05.
I just bought an AGP Wastegate used and it didn't come with a bleed. Is it safe to hook up without one?
Certainly. The bleed is there to help equalize the pressure in the line going to the wastegate and should make for a more smooth boost curve, and holds boost a little longer. If you don't have a bleed, try hooking it up without one. You're not going to hurt anything. If you want one, drill a .045" hole in a fitting and you're good to go.
How do I get rid of PTB (Part Throttle Boost)?
This is one of the drawbacks when upgrading your car with an AGP WGA. Because the turbo is so small, it spools up too quickly is a lot of situations. When you install the WGA, you have more tension holding the wastegate closed longer, which results in higher boost, and holding that boost to redline. PTB occurs because the exhaust energy, created with just a small amount of combustion, speeds the turbine shaft to a point where the compressor creates "boost". This "boost" is unable to make it all the way into the engine because your foot is only opening the throttle plate a little, and the extra "boost" only has one place to go, and that is back to the compressor wheel, causing surge.
This PTB that everyone talks about sounds much worse than it actually is. You will learn to drive your car differently so you don't experience it all that often. The benefits of 15psi at redline definitely outweigh the drawbacks of occasional PTB.
Don't let someone sell you a spring "upgrade" for the wastegate by claiming it's going to hold more boost at redline and eliminate PTB. It will not, or we would sell it.
I can't boost past 10psi, my diaphragm must be torn. Can I get a replacement?
If your diaphragm was torn, you would not be able to control boost at all. Boost would be way too high, not low. You have a boost leak, or multiple boost leaks which is preventing you from running higher boost. Fix them.
What size hose should I use for connecting my WGA?
Since you'll be eliminating a lot of the factory vacuum lines with the installation of the WGA, you can certainly use leftover hose from that. If you wish to use new hose, we recommend 7/32" vacuum hose that can be purchased from your local auto parts store.
I have Turbo Toys from my stage 2 setup. Can I still use DAB?
If you hook the WGA up using the factory vacuum lines, you'll still be able to use Dial A Boost. If you hook the WGA up like our directions state, you will not.
Since I've decided to keep my DAB because I run Turbo Toys, should I still use the bleed that was included?
Although we do not recommend running the wastegate to the factory lines and solonoid, we do understand that people with Turbo Toys want to keep the DAB function. Most likely you will not need to use the air bleed when you connect the wastegate to the stock vacuum lines. You can certainly try it both ways.
You could be getting spark or fuel cut. You may want to try shrinking the gap on the plugs if you haven't already done so. Blow out is common in high boost, stock gap situations.
Sorry Jon for not waiting longer for your reply, I figured I would bring my post public to see if anyone had some ideas, I appreciate your interest in helping me though, much appreciated.
I have no mods to the stock ignition system. The plugs are the stock Champion gapped at w/e stock is .50 I belive it is. I have never messed with gapping them anything other than what they were originally. I was considering tossing in some NGK Iridiums 1 range colder and gapping to around .30-.32. I figured I would come here first before I just started tossing parts at it, but I think it may be a viable option.
I have not done a boost leak test since this past summer, but I have since changed some things like upgraded to the Mopar CAI and the AGP wga. It held fine then at 20 psi when I checked it. I will try this again this weekend when I get a chance.
The BOV sounds fine I don't here anything sounding like a leak. I have the Mopar blue plate(yea I know it's not the best) but it held up on that boost leak test I did this summer just fine.
I am not sure if it is a fuel or ignition cut, but it just falls flat on its face for just no more than about 1 second right after I go WOT, then takes off great. I don't perceive any kind of spark knock either.
I did remove both of the lines from the solenoid involved with controlling the stock WGA, I doubt that has anything to do with it though seeing how the AGP gate is controlled exclusively by the line ran directly from the rear of the compressor right to the AGP wga with the bleed inline.
I have some background in auto repair so I know what a challenge it can be to try to diagnose something without having the car directly in front of you, but I appreciate all the help that everyone has given so far and may continue to add.
Last edited by CurtSRT4 : 12-01-2008 at 08:06 PM.
Reason: edited, for refering to someone by the wrong name (sorry trying to make posts in a hurry while at work)
To further add here I did have a scantool hooked up during the test runs due to the fact that I don't trust the stock boost gauge. While watching the reading directly from the TIP it also showed the boost was around the 18psi spike mark fading down to the 14ish around redline, so I was not making my determinations based off of the stock gauge alone.
Also, the temperature outside was probably around the 25-35 degree Far. mark. I am not sure if this amount of boost pressure at those air temps could cause an unsafe A/F ratio on stock fuel system causing the PCM to cut fuel or ignition. I just don't know, trying to toss out there all of the ideas I can think of off of the top of my head.
Not an expert here or anything but I have very similar mods to you except I'm running a Stage 2 wga instead of the AGP...spiking 18 and hold 15. Anyways I agree with Dimarini....other than 1st and maybe 2nd gear you don't need to go WOT under 3000 RPMs. In 3rd and 4th gears wait till your RPMs are above 3000 to go WOT and see if the problem is still there....
I really appreciate all of the suggestions here everyone. I have not had a single moment of time all week to go mess with the car, but that will change tomorrow (weather permitting). I will give you an update with how I come out.
I took out the stock champion plugs that have roughly 5k miles on them since I put them in and gapped them down to .35 and screwed them back in.
Took the plug wires off of the coil end this time, I don't remember if I did this when I replaced the plugs this last summer or not. I noticed that the #4 wire output terminal on the coil had a little bit of a black residue built up on it so I cleaned all of it off back down to a nice shiny finish.
I loaded up both ends of each wire with di-electric grease.
As a matter of personal preference I replaced the vacuum line that I had ran from the rear of the compressor housing after realizing I had at first installed a 5/32". I replaced it with a 7/32" line still keeping the supplied AGP bleed in the line. This time instead of of zip ties for that particular vacuum line I put some small diameter worm screw clamps. This was probably a bit overkill as far as the clamps are concerned, but I had them laying around extra and decided what the hell.
Now for the part that matters, the test drive. Unfortunately I was unable to get a great deal of testing done due to the weather turning a bit wintery and slick today. I was however able to get a couple of decent 4th and 5th gear pulls with the engine under a bit of load without having to worry about traction quite so much. Before if I was cruising down the interstate at 70 mph in 5th gear and climbed on the gas anything much past half throttle it would start to miss and run like crap. Today after messing with the items listed above the car never missed a beat. I believe this to be mostly due to the things I repaired on the ignition system and not so much changing out the vac. line, but hey who knows.
I will do some further testing this week after the weather and road conditions clear up a bit and report back with my findings after having access to 2nd and 3rd gear again. As for now the car appears to be fixed, but I am not going to get my hopes way up until I am able to fully recreate the conditions that caused my intial concern.
Yes I understand that it is much easier on the car. I was just trying to do what I could today with the weather conditions to try to get the engine under some load and see if the problem still existed. If you feel like making a hard pull in 2nd and 3rd to get the engine under load with a couple inches of snow on the ground and slick road conditions by all means be my guest, but I wasn't about to go there.
From what I have ran into doing searches this is a common problem that plagues a lot of our cars. The main problem being is that everyone in their requests for help fails to come back here and post a reply up to reveal what the cause of all their problems really was. They just take all the info that other posters have provided, find a fix somewhere with all the help, then forget that part where they come back and report in with the news good, bad, or otherwise. I fully intend to keep this thread alive until I am 100% certain I have cured the problem so I can give credit where it is due to those that helped me and give people in the future a thread to come back on that has some sort of closure from the original poster.
If you want to entertain yourself do a search on blowout and check out all of the threads from posters with problems just like or similar to mine that just die off with no closure. This provides absolutely no help to anyone other than the original poster that is sitting with a fixed car.
Anyways back on topic, as I stated in my last post I will update further, I was just trying what I could today with what mother nature dealt my way. This will be a thread that I share all of my final results with the community, it is the least I can do for the help and suggestions I have received from the responders to my original post.
I am kinda resurrecting my own thread here since I had been so adamant about OPs not coming back and giving the final word on what got their car fixed so here it goes.
I noticed after gapping the stock plugs down to around .35 that I had pretty poor idle quality and even worse the car would stumble and run awful at my normal town driving range which is around 40mph in 4th gear running right around 2k-ish RPMs. The car did seem to perform decent at WOT, but since most of the time driving the car as my daily driver it doesn't spend a whole lot of time at WOT but does spend a lot of time at that 40mph range so something had to give.
I was so disgusted with the car at this point I was seriously considering changing it all back to stock just so I could have a car that didn't need worked on or tweaked every other day.
I took the plugs back out and gapped them back out closer to the stock gap range about .48-.50. I wadded the wires back up with another healthy dose of di-electric and went for a test drive. The drivability was instantly better, and it also seemed to perform quite well at WOT as well.
I noticed the boost seemed a little bit lower than when I first set the wastegate, possibly from changing the supply line to the AGP gate out to that larger size hose like AGP reccomends. When I first set it up it was around the 17-18 spike range falling off down to around 14-15 where as now it spikes no higher than 16 usually and falls to around the 14 range at high revs. I know I can do more than that safely, but I really don't want to push it without a wideband or anything to monitor EGTs so I am content with the lower levels right now. Not to mention traction on street tires now that the car is running healthy is already a joke.
In conclusion I believe my initial problem was either a spark plug wire firing off occasionally under WOT or that smaller line ran to the AGP gate making it not open quick enough giving me just an instant of overboost fuel cut. In trying to repair the issue I created another issue by gapping the stock plugs down which gave me horrible drivabilty and idle quality. I can now for the first time since I started modding the car say I am truly happy with how it runs both for easy driving(once you get used to driving around part-throttle-boost) and under a little more spirited driving instances.
Thank you all that gave me ideas and advice along the way, it was much appreciated.
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AGP wga questions
I believe this to be mostly due to the things I repaired on the ignition system and not so much changing out the vac. line, but hey who knows.
This provides absolutely no help to anyone other than the original poster that is sitting with a fixed car.
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