Well... Sunday night, and this lil sucker goes on Thursday. I had to take some pics this weekend, so I'd figure I'd take a few of the toys laying in my garage.


Unichip and harness.


Tapped oil pan.


Piping.


Exhaust manifold/turbo/downpipe assembly.


Neat lil pic up the end of the turbo.


Miscellaneous items.

 

nice. Looks like the kit came pretty quick. Hmm. do i hear a DIY stage 0 turbo kit? haha

good luck with thursdays install.

 

^^ I'm actually writing up quite a long post on it... humongous actually lol... talking about the pros and cons of the kit, results, even a little guide to the installation as Alpine's guides really aren't that wonderful.

 

awesome! there's a guy on elantraxd which has that same kit. you might want to find him in case you come to any problems.

good luck on the install and hope the tiburon likes it!! how much PSI are you aiming for? i hope just a kick. who will install and tune the unichip?

 

Stock spring in the 13G is set to 8 pounds, which is what I will be running. Sometime later on, once I get a nice front mount intercooler, I'll run the 15 pounds intercooled. By that time it probably won't be daily driven so I'd run a 93/108 mix or something of that sort so I can keep stock compression. I have Dave's and John's number if I get into any problems, but I shouldn't.

I'm installing the Unichip, its actually quite an easy install. It runs off two sensors (MAF, camshaft position sensor) which you splice into and divert away from the ECU. There is also a separate Unichip module (as you can see) which controls the 5th injector which wires into the common power wire for the stock 4 injectors.

The Unichip comes pre programmed to run at an acceptable level of safety. The tuning won't be as precise as a dyno tune, but it will still be pretty good. Come time when I run the 15psi intercooled, I may put it on the dyno to see if there is any room for tuning a bit better.

Should run perfectly fine, hopefully. tongue.gif

 

The unichip is gonna give you all sorts of problems with the supplied mapping, you gonna be hella rich and have alot of dead spots in the power band and you will most likely be getting some misfires and check engine lights because of it, I have the Alpine kit and most other people with it are gonna tell you the same thing about the unichip, the unichip is actually a great piggyback the supplied mapping just sucks, it will make your car run but nowhere near it's actual potential.

I went with a standalone prs-8 and the car ran so much better but do to emission reasons I had to go back to the stock ecu along with the emanage, it's not as good as the standalone but much better than the unichip was, there was a unichip dealer not to far from me but they wanted $700 to put my car on the dyno and tune the peice of junk, they think they have you by the balls since the next place that could do it was 400 miles away.

The 13g will most likely not be able to supply you with 15lbs of boost and still be efficent, at that pressure the turbine will overheat and kill the bearings since the exhaust can't flow fast enough through that small turbo, the most I can see you getting out of it is about 12psi with an intercooler and that might be pushing the limits, i would'nt try going any higher than that on the stock compression anyway even with higher octane fuels, you will melt your pistons with 108 and 12psi with the stock cast pistons.

Best of luck with your install, it's should be a peice of cake, the hardest part for me was getting that stupid plug out of the head for the oil feed, and for the oil return I refused to drill the block so I welded a fitting at the top of the oil pan, if you run into any problems let me know and I should be able to help you out since I installed two Alpine kits so far and had no problems except for that dam unichip. And one more thing, I don't know if your kit came with the fuel pressure regulator or not but that thing is also a peice of junk, the two I installed went bad after two weeks and the fuel pressure was all over the place so keep a good eye on that.

 

^^ Nah no FPR. When did you install the kits? John told me I'm running a newer version of the Unichip, however I don't know if the maps are any different.

 

I installed my kit in 2002 and my unichip did look differant than your pictures but I gotta say the kit has been holding up great and has been very reliable, I put about 50,000 miles on it and drove it fron NY to GA several times with no problems at all and the turbo is not yet showing any sighns of oil usage at all but I have been running synthetic oil since the car hit the 3,000 mile mark.

The second kit was for some guy that showed up at my freinds shop with an elantra about six months ago so he called me to see if I wanted to make some extra cash and do it for him, since I was moving to GA and needed whatever cash I could get I did it, it only took me about 8 hours to do with head spacer and all but I did it in a shop with a lift and air tools, his kit had the same looking unichip as yours and after the install was complete the guy complained that he was getting misfires when going up hills and under light acceleration. I took the car for a ride with the wideband and it was going so rich at some points that it was out of range on the wideband and killing the spark causing a missfire code, i told him i had the same problems with mine when I put it in and he will either have to find somebody to tune it or get another piggyback that I can tune myself.

Both kits I did where whith the intercoller so you may get lucky with the base kit, they may come with a better tuned map for that application, i hope they did cause it really sucks when your done with the install and ready for some fun and the car runs like a bag of crap, they tune it to the safe side but alittle to far to the safe side. Otherwise the kit is very good and will hold up for years but I really beleive the unichip is a waste, it would be nice if it came with the software and cables to tune it like every other piggyback does, unichip needs to get their heads out of their a$$es and start giving people the option to tune the ecu themself, if they did the unichip would be great, it's one of the few piggyback ecu's that can actually control timing on our cars.

 

Yeah, there is a shop that can tune the Unichip about an hour and half drive from my house, they specialize in Mini Coopers I think though. lmao.gif So i might call up and get a price on some time if its way off.

I have a month of no college so I gave myself a lot of time for aggrivating problems.

 

I doubt you'll have any major problems, Alpines kit's are great, you won't get 500whp with it but it's a great set up for a daily driver that wants some extra power, like I said the only bugs where with the tuning, it's not Alpines fault since you really can't make one map that will work on every car, you would think that two identical cars with the same turbo kit would be able to run the same fuel maps but it just won't work out that way, the car gods must be crazy. Any kit you buy for any car will have the same problems when it comes to the tuning.

Just wait till you try to get that plug out of the head for the oil feed, its like the worst part of the entire install, I had to drill it and use an easy out along with a torch to get that dam thing out, tell everyone to stay away from you when you get to that part cause you will be tossing wrenches all over the place and putting you head through a wall, everyone that ha sdone knows what I'm talking about wink1.gif .