3.0 TDI tunes, power upgrades and turbo upgrades

NTDI said:

What engine(s) are the GTD coming in on? 3.0TDI or something else?

Click to expand...

Exhibit A

TurboABA said:

The most efficient approach is to obtain a spare GTB housing, and after it's machined to mate with your desired version of the GTD, have any future "customers" exchange their housings (as in charge a core amount which gets refunded once your existing housing is deemed to be in good condition aka not cracked or something)

Getting anything custom cast will be uber expensive.

Click to expand...

The cost of castings depends on where they get cast and the quantity. The actual casting should be about $50-$100 in materials. Developing the patterns and finding a company to pour them is a different issue. Either way you'll need a quantity of about 10-20 in order to get the cost reasonable. To get them machined will probably be a CNC process and you'd want more than one to cover the programming and setup costs. I'd be surprised if you can get 10 of them machined for less than $300 each. But depending on extent of machining it could be lower.



What we'd need to do is get a GTD unit and a GTB and compare them. The easiest way short of a 3D scanner like a Faro arm is to take a mold from the casting if at all possible using a plastic liquid. Something like McMaster 87075K57 or Smooth-On 300 (Amazon) (or similar). Smooth-On (in Allentown) makes all sorts of casting resins for molds and part making in plastic. Generally I've used casting resin in the past to grab the shape of something that is difficult to measure (like the internal cavity of the turbine housing). This allows it to be more easily scanned or measured as you can pull a representative plug of it which should be fairly accurate. Though you'll have to most likely pour one half at a time so you can pop them out. Modeling clay can be used to divide the cavity across the diameter. Another option is to use Silicone to make a flexible pattern that can more easily be removed from complicated shapes.


Also there are some 3D scanning places around that can reverse engineer the parts. However my experience with 3D scanning is that it can be difficult to scan internal cavity parts with a touch probe style scanner. And equally as hard for an optical scanner as line of sight is required. But... it can be done.






So... who has a GTD housing and a GTB housing to get this rolling?

Chinese castings arent actually too bad. I worked for a company that used a lot of Chinese vendors. If I had my choice I’d keep it in the US and pay the extra. Unfortunately the only way to get prices is to have a drawing or model. And usually that entails a completed design.

I’m half tempted to do a clean sheet design....

However I saw a used GTD for sale on Darkside’s website for a decent price. That could be enough to get started.

The question is how many of these can we get made?

There are plenty of casting ships that I can hand a 3D CAD model to and they can print the pattern or even the mold.

I’d probably want a high nickel casting rather than straight iron.

Then we’d have to find a machine shop to finish them (drill game guide dowel holes and wheel interface geometry).

.
.
.