Hi,

This Saturday I dropped off Hayley (SWMBO) at work, originally then planned to go to Bracknell for a bit more of my work. However, had to go past home first and spotted Stu online.

Unfortunately for him we agreed to have a crack at fitting the hybrid turbo, meant to be a 'straight fit'.

Decided to bring the Blueflame exhaust as well, so we could store it in his garage or fit that too, time permitting.

A bit of history here is that last time I visited Stu it was late, cold and SWMBO needed picking up (as well )

The apparent fitting time was down as 2.9 hours, so we felt 4 hours should be enough. Unlike last time where I was able to do a few bits and pieces to help, this time it was pretty much all Stu doing the (hard) work.

To get the turbo off is not all the easiest, some of the bolts are blimmin hard to get to and there is a load of pipework etc in the way to make it even more interesting.

Had gaskets for manifolds but not one for the turbo inlet IIRC. After a good number of coffees etc later the turbo was eventually off.

At this point we decided the BF should go on as well. Then found no gaskets were supplied with that at all, and with it being a custom exhaust that was a royal PITB. Chrissi kindly drove me around a lot of shops/garages. Ended up with some kinda copper-based manifold paste as no-one had the right shapes in stock. Appears to be fine though

On return Stu had made great progress and was finalising the fit. I had a go with an angle grinder to get the exhaust cut so it could be removed. Extremely tight under the car as the front was jacked up & on axle stands, rear wasnt tho.

I ended up cutting about an inch out for 3/4th of the depth of the pipe, as the cutting disc wasn't big enough to get through. I could not believe how strong the pipe was, it's VERY thick metal.

At this point bad noises were coming from the front of the car, where Stu spotted the pipework on the TurboDynamics was 90 degrees out on the original turbo. This meant a very frustrating removal of the turbo, slackening the bolts off and rotating the pipework, retightening the bolts. Then refit of turbo. It was dark and cold by then.

Junior hacksaw plus me hanging off the exhaust etc finally saw me win over the metal's strength. We had to jack the rear up very high to get enough angle to remove the backbox. Fitted the BF to the car and took it out for a very short test drive to make sure it was ok.

Some smoke came from the front of the car, oil burning off. VAGCOM'd it to make sure no errors showing etc.

Oil went away (probably caused by having to tip the car so far forward) and drove it home after saying thanks and fitting the undertray on again.

Gave it some welly a few times & parked up/accelerated up to NSL twice to get max boost etc but all was well.

The exhaust seems to have made very little difference in noise, which is great, although I am not sure how much of the noise may be covered up by the wheel bearing thing that's gonna get fixed under warranty on the 20th

Many thanks once again to Stu, we both agreed that Hybrid Turbo fitting shouldn't be done other than by garages/tuners etc as it's a bl*dy pain.

Also we'll be doing more work starting earlier in the day and with warmer outside temps, it was near freezing when we finished.

So when's the tuning happening to make good use of the bits.

I was lucky with my turbo. I had nothing in the way really when we found the turbo outlet was 180 degrees out. Easy to get to when the car is in the air on a 2 post lift. We had it fitted, removed, tweaked and refitted in a couple of hours.

Can't wait to see what you get out of it.

:orb_cold:

It was a bit of a pain to do, fortunately I had taken the opportunity to use my dedicated Skoda Helpline number ( Thanks mate) before hand for some top tips.

The air was blue for a while as were we, thought my fingers were going to drop off. Had I realised, and it was my own fault, that the housing was out of alignment before hand it would have been much simpler. What annoyed me most was that I had actually taken the time to do a side by side check before refitting the new unit but didn't spot the casing problem.

I did say at the time, never again but upon reflection and warming up I quite enjoyed it :P

Big to Blue Flame, the exhaust is lovely quality. For those of you with Xenons thinking of fitting one, it is a bit of a tight fit against the headlight height unit on the rear beam.

Was wondering what that thing actually did - forgot to ask you during the day.

That smilie really sums up the state of both Stu & myself, the exhaust was draining any left-over heat out of our bodies.

You certainly need a good range of tools to get to the different bolts and a word of warning for those who don't get BF to fit their exhaust, make sure you have a means of cutting the standard 'zorst out plus get the gaskets beforehand, as BF doesn't supply them.

Quality of the exhaust is absolutely spot on, fit was v tight at the back but it is a very solid construction etc.

My body is still recovering from Saturday, it was definitely too cold/dark etc when we finished it, but the end result is excellent again

As for the retune, I've got a CC1 on at the moment, 20th March for the wheel bearing and then trying to find time to get to JBS again for a 2 day session. It's gonna be tricky to get that done before April, plus I'm kinda tempted to wait until that rolling road is in & working properly.

The benefit of this is that the ECU has a bit of time to settle with the hybrid and exhaust on the current map, CC1 has really made a massive difference for when I use it, and it will make specifying how I want the custom map a little easier to explain I hope

Good effort, should go well when remapped. Did you manage to get the alloy sump guard on yet.

Sump not fitted yet, we still need to find time to get a bracket measured up and fabricated, work is ongoing on that but kinda ran out of time. It will happen though as I've spent the cash & I want it done

At this point bad noises were coming from the front of the car, where Stu spotted the pipework on the TurboDynamics was 90 degrees out on the original turbo. This meant a very frustrating removal of the turbo, slackening the bolts off and rotating the pipework, retightening the bolts.

I've posted that fact countless times before when fitting Golf turbos to Fabias as I had to do the same thing on mine.

Shame no one listens.

I've posted that fact countless times before when fitting Golf turbos to Fabias as I had to do the same thing on mine.

Shame no one listens.

That must have been one of the posts I glossed over then :P .

In fairness the turbo was ordered for an RS, which was on the invoice so you would like to think they would have set it up correctly.

Being as they dont actually fit them I doubt they know.

Being as they dont actually fit them I doubt they know.

i beg your pardon?

what did you say?

Well they will be getting a call about it as it was a bl*dy pain (mainly for Stu ) and as mentioned, it was specific to the Fabia vRS PD130 engine, not the Audi A3 fitting that the model of the turbo appears to be referring to elsewhere.

Either way, at least it could be rotated without a problem once we found out and I've done about 600 miles since it was fitted Saturday :eek: - following my manager in his Passat V6 TDI Estate on some backroads I tested out the more firmly planted rightfoot to keep up

The exhaust seems to have made very little difference in noise' date=' which is great, although I am not sure how much of the noise may be covered up by the wheel bearing thing that's gonna get fixed under warranty on the 20th

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No difference in sound?? I remember when I heard some of Shifty's samples of the exhaust it had a raspy sound when giving it some!

Does yours have the standard single round pipe?

It sure does - btw it appears to have moved a tad, might have to get that checked

It probably does make a bit more racket when really blatting it, I must be too gentle :P