hows the inlet temps Rob?

heat shield looks nice
 

Hey Rob,
I think you will be pretty happy with the seat of the pants 'feel' of the new turbo. Its very similar to mine.
Did the guys who fitted the 'turbo box' mention anything about increased radiant heat from not releasing the hot air?
The heat damage you are experiencing in the engine bay is what I saw in the Wakefield 300 and have been trying to sort it out too. I had a problem with the wiring for the coils had melted and the coils had failed due to the heat.
I rewired the coil wiring, replaced all the coils then triple shrink wrapped the wiring for protection. Everything has been ceramic coated and wrapped in titanium heat wrap. This did make a big difference to engine bay heat. The next step was to create a shield between the headers and the head with the radiant heat expelling out through the engine cover. The same product you have used does the trick. All the coolant and oil plumbing received the 'red high temp sleeving and there is a reasonable amount of gold leaf to top it off. After this, a undertray with ducting was added to improve the air flow from under the car. This created a huge amount of air flow into the engine bay. s a test we ran a fan at the front of the car which was then blowing a noticeable breeze out of the engine bay. This may be worth looking into for your application.
I have to say the 'turbo box' is a concern to me as there is not where for the air to flow out of the turbo operating region. This will only stall the air around the block/head/oil filter/fuel lines which will create more issues including too much heat directed at the cylinder head.
The water to air looks great. Its something which I will do to mine in the future. Looking forward to seeing the results of the new IC.
 
 

robk
I could install a pair of engine lid fans, but I've never liked the idea of exposing the engine to even more water during heavy rain.

You really take this car out if there is a cloud in the sky?

Pat: Once I get the car back I'll get some datalogs and graphs like I did with the old A2W setup.

Steve: I'll just wait and see how it goes, I'm not going to stress about that at the moment.

Highlander

robkI could install a pair of engine lid fans, but I've never liked the idea of exposing the engine to even more water during heavy rain.

You really take this car out if there is a cloud in the sky?

You're right lol. I never intentionally drive it in the rain. You know how it is though, sometimes you get to your destination and it's sunny, but it starts raining unexpectedly before you leave. Car washing is another issue.

any update Rob?

stuka
any update Rob?

I would've had the car back a few weeks ago, but there seems to be an intermittent issue at high RPM (electrical interference and/or something else), and I haven't had time to diagnose or fix it yet. I chose to do all the electrical wiring work myself, so it's my responsibility and MRC can't finish the tune in the mean time. Note: we've already concluded that it's not spark breakdown.
 
MRC said that they have still seen it reach 294rwkw on 98 fuel with about 24psi of boost, but there is more tuning to be done because the aforementioned issue is preventing them from consistently doing dyno runs to the redline at full boost. My 290-300rwkw target has already been reached, but the final result will depend on the boost level that we settle on (I was intending to run no more than 23psi, but I'll wait and see how it goes).

*EDIT*
I visited MRC last week and fixed the electrical interference problem, but the high RPM issue was still there. Anyway, using the awesome built-in oscilloscope in my ECU's tuning software, I was able to diagnose what appears to be the actual problem. The teeth are only a few degrees wide on the RacerX 60-2 trigger wheel, and at high RPM after filtering is applied in the ECU the teeth appear to be so narrow that they (very intermittently) get miss-detected. My particular ECU actually does the crank sensor filtering in code rather than in hardware, so it may be fixable with a simple firmware update.
At this stage I think I might change my 60-2 trigger wheel for one with wider teeth. The issue is marginal/intermittent at the moment, so the teeth only need to be slightly wider to fix the problem.

thanks for the r&d for the rest of us mate. hahah, bl though

funny you say that about the 60-2 wheel, my tuner had my car for a few weeks lately as the actual wheel wont sit perfectly on the crank pulley and has scored my sensor which I had to get hold of a new one.
 
The wheel has a dent or lining up circle on the back to assure it should be aligned properly but isnt quite perfect.
 
They kept getting misfiring up higher, so put it on the hoist and turned the engine whilst watching the gap between the sensor and wheel. 
 
They have done their best to get it as close as possible and seems to have sorted out the problem.

I had the same issue with the 60-2 wheel on mine. It caused a big gunshot like backfire at I think 4200rpm every time. I was just able to solder a resister inside the Autronic to solve the problem