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Evolve S/C part two

43K views 353 replies 42 participants last post by  mubarak 
#1 · (Edited)
I can now comfortably and unequivocally say that my car with the Evolve intercooled S/C and billet plenum is running correctly. It took roughly 16 months from when the install was first started to today for me to be able to say that.

After countless hours troubleshooting the tune with Evolve, searching for boost leaks, VANOS problems, sensor issues, and myriad other things, it came down to the fuel injectors. The fuel injectors that were sold to me by Evolve were originally 17lb/hr@3bar injectors out of 4 and 6 cylinder Ford engines. They were then reworked to be 42lb/hr@3bar injectors. In the M5, this puts them at 48lb/hr - the same as Bosch Green Giants. I've reached out to Mark at Evolve on these injectors, but have not heard back from them on it.



rao mentioned last year that the injectors could have been the problem, but I was still in my 'lets not throw money at the problem' phase of car/kit ownership. I left them as-is. Fast forward to this spring when I was talking to TTFS, they asked me about my fuel injectors. I pulled the plenum and gave them the part number on the side. They told me to throw the injectors in the trash and put in Bosch Green Giants prior to making the drive out for the tune. I did that last week, and the transformation was immediate.

With the Bosch injectors in the car, my idle issues were simply gone. No more pulling up to a light and having the car drop to a 20 AFR and then struggle to get back to a 14.7. No more having it be almost impossible to start if the engine was hot. It simply ran smoother at all possible RPMs.

I left for TTFS this previous Thursday, and arrived at his shop early afternoon on Friday. After a brief inspection of the car, we threw it up on Franks heartbreaker dyno. He blew away the Evolve tune and put on one that he crafted on the spot for my car. After three revisions to it, we hit these final numbers:



This was a 'hot' pull, the previous run had me at the same WHP but ~405 WTQ. The car is making 8PSI at 7200 RPM all said and done. I have a smaller pulley on order; Frank will be sending me a tune this week for the additional 2PSI of boost it'll generate. I expect to add another ~35 WHP with the smaller pulley. These should translate to fairly decent numbers on a Dynojet dyno.

It has taken a lot longer than I would have liked to get the car driveable. Up until this last week, my plan was to simply get it 'good enough' and then sell it. I was fed up with chasing my tail on issues and fed up with my kit vendor. However, now that I can drive the car and not feel like it's going to strand me, or embarrass me, I will be keeping it. I already have a couple ideas in the works with rao.

A big thanks to everybody who helped me with the car during the last year, and to those who offered encouragement and advice. With out all of that, I would still have a car in the garage that is a complete wreck. I will still be carrying my emergency kit in the trunk ...

 
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#3 · (Edited)
So it wasn't a vacuum leak ??? :eek:

Who would have guessed? hiha

Glad to see it is finally sorted out.

It is unfortunate that so many parts needed re-working and that Evolve's support was so deficient.

The fact is if you hadn't pursued this on your own the car still wouldn't make it more than a few hundred yards down the road.

Good job on being so determined and seeing it through.

I hope the car remains fun for many years to come :)

If people would just listen to me they would be a lot happier :rofl:
 
#4 ·
Funny, because the Bosch Green Giants are not expensive. I wonder what Evolve was thinking.

Glad (but not surprised!) Frank was able to work his magic. Now you know how a supercharged car is supposed to feel. Where are those F10's hiding?? :)

Regards,
Jerry
 
#239 ·
#9 ·
chuffykow said

These should translate to fairly decent numbers on a Dynojet dyno.
Frank's dyno reads lower (could be a Mustang dyno). But it is NOT a Dynojet, which most use to "compare" numbers.

Add about 10% for Dynojet, that puts the number over 500 rwhp.

Regards,
Jerry
 
#7 ·
I would be very interested to see an AFR readout from another wideband on this car. Can you show a screenshot of a log from your Zeitronix wideband?
 
#12 · (Edited)
I didn't have the Zeitronix recording while the car was on the dyno. At some point I'll plug it back in to a laptop and record some data. What are you hoping to see?
 
#14 ·
I have a couple things cooking, but I won't tip my hand until they're closer to reality. I'm excited though, I can finally start fine-tuning things now that the basic functionality of the kit/car is there.
 
#11 ·
I sure hope they do now. I've highlighted every flaw in the kit, hopefully they were listening.
 
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#13 ·
The modified injectors were made by Bosch as well ;)
 
#15 · (Edited)
One word:

NAAAAAWS



:rofl:

A 150 shot should clear up any confusion here.
 
#16 ·
We need to go back to the drawing board if that's what you've taken away from the planning phase of things.
 
#21 ·
Physically, the major parts of the kit are sound. The plenum, charge pipes, air intake, bracket, are very well made and of excellent workmanship. The devil is in the details though, and all the little 'fiddly bits' were left for me to resolve.

Hopefully Evolve is making a concerted effort to fix all of the issues with the kit. Think carefully before spending big money on a kit with a vendor that doesn't seem super interested in making your car run correctly. There's a reason why I ended up cutting Evolve out of the loop and why I had Frank Smith tune the car.
 
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#22 ·
You left several of the most interesting parts out, such as the week your car spent at Evolve's approved shop having the tune "fixed"
 
#23 ·
I completely forgot about that. I dropped the car off at their local approved shop last spring, to have it looked over. I was told when I picked it up that a new tune had been flashed to the ECU and that the issue was resolved. On the 90 minute drive home, it became apparent that the problem was still completely present.

When I got home, I connected to my ECU with MSS Flasher and saw that my remaining flash count was exactly where it was when I dropped it off. For those of you that aren't familiar with MSS Flasher, it can be used to reset the 32 flash limit on our ECU. It has the neat side effect of telling you exactly how many flashes away from locking your ECU you are, so you can reset the counter. Digging deeper, I dumped my program and parameter space, and compared them bit-for-bit to the dumps I had taken prior to the car going into the shop. They were absolutely identical. In other words, no changes to the tune were made while it spent over a week in a shop, and then I was told the car was fixed.
 
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#24 ·
I'm honestly shocked, particularly considering the price point of the Evolve kit, that they were using modified 17#ers to feed a blown+intercooled 5 liter V8. I'm equally shocked that modifying low-flow injectors is still even a "thing". Back 20 years ago, it was the only option as high-flow injectors didn't really exist. Obviously the industry is well beyond that point now. One of the huge drawbacks to modified injectors is often poor flow control at narrow pulsewidths (read: idle). That's not exactly a revelation in the year 2016 and it's a shame that Evolve didn't narrow in on that early in this process....

I've been there in the past - when the car project that was supposed to be tons of fun simply becomes a headache and a chore to deal with. Glad to hear you stuck with it and hope you can get back to having fun with the car!!
 
#25 ·
I really appreciate you taking the time to post about your experiences with the kit. I did read through a good bit of your original thread, but confess I skipped to the end to see how it "turned out." I can't imagine the level of frustration there must have been in trying to get it all sorted. Great work sticking to it, and being willing to move to another tuner when required. I know it can be hard to make that decision. Thanks again.
 
#29 · (Edited)
Excellent news. I too am very happy that your car is finally running properly.

Now, where is the meth?
 
#30 ·
I'll have to get a paper route if I want to install meth this year....
 
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#32 ·
Why a smaller pulley so soon? You should totally negotiate for a regional distributorship of this particular s/c since you're the only one capable of making it work in North America.
 
#33 · (Edited)
I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. But -- I want a smaller pulley because I want more power! $70 for 25 to 35 WHP is a pretty good price to me.
 
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#34 ·
Congrats on getting the car running. I am currently in the mental debate between getting an Evolve SC or just going the ESS route. Based on your experience with Evolve, I had expected a plug and play solution, especially regarding the price. Surprised there weren't any instructions to go with the kit.
One of the main reasons I was thinking of going Evolve was because its supposed to be relatively quiet and it has an intercooler.
Is there any way you could post a video of your car at idle and under boost?
 
#35 ·
The blower itself is fairly silent, at idle. I don't have a hood liner, so the BOV venting all the air into the engine bay is audible at a stop light. At WOT, the sound of the exhaust far exceeds the sound of the Rotrex spinning.

I'd look awfully hard at the RK Stage 1 and 2 kits. A stage 1 kit is at a great price-point and is expandable if you want to go that route. ESS has meth as the only expansion route, and isn't substantially cheaper than an RK stage 1.
 
#38 ·
Evolve really should explain the modded injector choice vs just going with the green giants.
This single detail was the main cause of frustration for you for so long. Glad you got it sorted. I bet the car drives great. Do that pulley swap!
 
#39 ·
Yes, we'd all like to read about the decision process from an engineering standpoint.
 
#40 ·
I'm still amazed at how silent Evolve has been on this whole thing. They are eager to reply to questions on their medusa thread, or their canned tune threads, but here, or anywhere regarding this kit, they are silent. Are they hoping it goes away?

It's funny, even with all this, I still feel it's a better engineered kit, and a more desirable option than an RK kit.
 
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#45 ·
Thankfully no, there was no attempt to charge me.
 
#47 ·
Please don't compare us to RMS. You will find hardly any negative posts about us, our products and services online considering we have been in business for almost 10 years.

I truly regret how this deal with Zach turned out. The deal was done an ex employee and after he left I was left to deal with a kit that I personally had no involvement in developing. There was no completed bill of materials or installation guide. This was not Zachs his issue and I tried to deal with it the best I could. Honestly I would not have sold the kit abroad without written instructions on a complicated install and this is why no more will be sold abroad until we have completed the installation instructions. We have 2 UK customers that will be having installations soon and we will take this opportunity to button the instructions down so it will be ready for international sale.

We used to use the big green injectors until they become NLA and lots of chinese copies were around from reputable dealers. We supplied these injectors from a well known US vendor who I won't name for a number of reasons and as we supplied them to the customer so have to take responsibility for that. We have since sourced new alternatives ourselves for both this kit and our E92 M3 kit.
 
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