Overheating with TD05 turbochargers

ETS piping and Treadstone TR12 core FTW! FWIW, Treadstone core is 30% bigger than the ETS FMIC core. You can buy the ETS hot pipes individually for $80 each from them direct. Best way to do it, buy the pipes you need to convert to a 3" FMIC inlet/outlet and to also re-route the front turbo charge pipe. Buy theTreadstone core and use it with the ETS piping kit. Treadstone manufactures a bolt on core that's direct swap. Dimensions are 4.5" X 12" X 30". That's 1" taller and 1" thicker than the ETS 3/S core.

The very basic thing here is that no matter what you do, the FMIC will always force your radiator to run at a far lower efficiency, that's why very few cars come with it as standard, it gets worse when there is no air bypassing the inter-cooler to get to the radiator.

in basic thermal theory behind it, no matter what FMIC you run, the fact remains that it's dumping the heat it contains (that does not go back into the inlet tract) into the air that has no choice but to go through the A/C core and then into Radiator, so sure there are cars running with FMIC's...sure they have not found an issue, YET but I bet each of those cars will overheat a considerable amount before a SMIC car.

I do wonder if the cars that have the fans controlled by the ECU have the fans forced not to come on past a certain speed, and that certain speed is the point where normally there is a good amount of air coming through the radiator, yet with the FMIC blocking it there is very little air...so as opposed to the ECU expecting x amount of CFM to flow through the radiator at x speed, so no need for fans, but with FMIC it's not getting the same airflow till double the speed.

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Originally Posted by J. Fast

ETS piping and Treadstone TR12 core FTW! FWIW, Treadstone core is 30% bigger than the ETS FMIC core. You can buy the ETS hot pipes individually for $80 each from them direct. Best way to do it, buy the pipes you need to convert to a 3" FMIC inlet/outlet and to also re-route the front turbo charge pipe. Buy theTreadstone core and use it with the ETS piping kit. Treadstone manufactures a bolt on core that's direct swap. Dimensions are 4.5" X 12" X 30". That's 1" taller and 1" thicker than the ETS 3/S core.

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I don't think I can run the ETS piping with the external wastegates in the 3sx td05 kit.

Does your front wastegate run under the car or something? Pretty sure a "U" j pipe is all you need to adapt to the ETS piping. I'd hate to say it but ill be "that guy" that tells you straight up and says, surprised you're having several issues with that kit. 3sx TD-05 turbo kit was the cheapest kit ever made and sold for a 3S. I've installed a few kits and quite disappointingly eventually saw every last one fail. Oil line failures, headers cracking, lots of rework, and china turbos exploding on dynos. All ties back to the cheap thing.

I don't know if you realize only two people have ever put down legit numbers on that kit. Ninja and some guy with BFT's. I don't think they sell it anymore either because of QC. All the big hitters have moved to a better collector design, V-bands, and just an better overall design in general. Surprisingly the only guys with issues with this or that are always the ones with that kit. Seems ironic.

ETS piping was jigged off of my car and I have IPS manifolds! Here is the front hot pipe.

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So you car runs fine ideling and driving under boost and driving with aircon but if it's sitting with aircon it overheats? the aircon doesn't put enough load on the car to cause anything major so the only thing left is the condensor. I suspect that the condenser is getting very hot because it's sandwiched between your hot radiator and your hot intercooler which in turn is making your radiator even hotter. Maybe get you AC checked. Could be low on gas. Or look at relocating the condenser etc?

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Originally Posted by J. Fast

Does your front wastegate run under the car or something? Pretty sure a "U" j pipe is all you need to adapt to the ETS piping. I'd hate to say it but ill be "that guy" that tells you straight up and says, surprised you're having several issues with that kit. 3sx TD-05 turbo kit was the cheapest kit ever made and sold for a 3S. I've installed a few kits and quite disappointingly eventually saw every last one fail. Oil line failures, headers cracking, lots of rework, and china turbos exploding on dynos. All ties back to the cheap thing.

I don't know if you realize only two people have ever put down legit numbers on that kit. Ninja and some guy with BFT's. I don't think they sell it anymore either because of QC. All the big hitters have moved to a better collector design, V-bands, and just an better overall design in general. Surprisingly the only guys with issues with this or that are always the ones with that kit. Seems ironic.

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The front wastegate on the 3SX kit sits down next to the front motor mount. I've heard of a lot of issues about the kit long after I had it put on my car, but right now I can't afford to buy a different kit. I haven't had anything break from the kit yet, although I don't put many miles on this car. I do have MHI turbos though.

I can't blame the kit right now for any issues that I'm having. If I didn't have a FMIC, I definitely wouldn't be having any issues right now. Maybe I should consider putting some header wrap on it. I guess I will just tackle it a little bit at a time.

Edit: Looking at my kit, all of my welds look great, and I don't see any cracking. From all of the things I have read, it was the later kits that seemed to have the problems. I believe mine was a batch that came from around Christmas time in 2008.

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Originally Posted by GTOJOE

So you car runs fine ideling and driving under boost and driving with aircon but if it's sitting with aircon it overheats? the aircon doesn't put enough load on the car to cause anything major so the only thing left is the condensor. I suspect that the condenser is getting very hot because it's sandwiched between your hot radiator and your hot intercooler which in turn is making your radiator even hotter. Maybe get you AC checked. Could be low on gas. Or look at relocating the condenser etc?

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I just fully recharged my A/C, so that system works fine. There really is no where else to relocate the condensor, but its obvious that the added heat coming off the condenser is making the difference.

First and foremost you have to get outside of the mindset that everything has to go where mistu put it from the factory. Made sense for a stock car but not one with double the power. That will be your biggest compromise hurdle with your car. Where do I move or pout this and that? Who says you can't put a different style condensor on there and relocate it to the passenger side front? I'm pretty sure setrab makes a cooler that you could implement by just adding more line-set. You're not restrained in any way in moving things. Heck, I bet you could move the condenser under the car and parallel with the road. That's part of growing with these cars. Coming up with soultions to problems and fixing/improving. AC doesn't have to go, the condenser just has to go somewhere else. Move it, and plumb to it.

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Originally Posted by J. Fast

First and foremost you have to get outside of the mindset that everything has to go where mistu put it from the factory. Made sense for a stock car but not one with double the power. That will be your biggest compromise hurdle with your car. Where do I move or pout this and that? Who says you can't put a different style condensor on there and relocate it to the passenger side front? I'm pretty sure setrab makes a cooler that you could implement by just adding more line-set. You're not restrained in any way in moving things. Heck, I bet you could move the condenser under the car and parallel with the road. That's part of growing with these cars. Coming up with soultions to problems and fixing/improving. AC doesn't have to go, the condenser just has to go somewhere else. Move it, and plumb to it.

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That would work fine if you are good at custom fabricating parts, pipes, welding, etc. I am not, and need things that can bolt on.


Edit: I just realized I do have a tube and fin atx transmission cooler wedged between the FMIC and condensor. I'm sure that doesn't help any lol. I will remove that and go with a stacked plate on the sides and see if that helps.

So things to try, remove tranny cooler from condensor and have a single cooler feeding from the side of the bumper, switch to an ECS core, heat wrap or ceramic coat the headers, and make custom ducting. Other things I could attempt to try is switch back to an OEM radiator, or even try a small pusher fan (I have two of them sitting on the shelf in the garage right now.