As Bill mentioned earlier, it's our TT that has one fitted. We bought it purely to test the GT3071R to see if the turbo would do what we wanted, with the consideration that it was disposable after that if the turbo didn't work out. I paid £90 for the manifold and 38mm wastegate (both XSpower), so the expectation was virtually zero lol. Anyway, after testing it was clear that the turbo was fine and indeed suited us perfectly, by then a reasonable amount of work had gone into the downpipe and wastegate plumbing so it stayed on there for a few tests. After a few sessions, close inspection showed no problems so it got left on there until it caused a
problem. After a full season racing and subsequent year off but with the equivalent in trackdays and testing, it is still on there! The engine is making about 340bhp on a 0.82AR GT3071R at 1.6bar. so it's not exactly getting an easy time.
The one we have is like this one -
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AUDI-TT-99-06...arts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM?hash=item1c0e4398ec - to be fair the fabrication is not too bad and materials seem ok, flange was about as flat as a banana, but didn't take much trueing. We made a substantial support brace for the turbo to give it as easy a life as possible, and I'd say the only reason it has survived is because the particular example is so short and compact. After 2 years abuse we have the engine apart now and there is a small crack. For race use it only has to last one race at a time, and if a crack needs welding up then so be it, but I'm not sure I would want to use it on a road car where long term reliability is more of an issue. However, for our purpose, we haven't seen any need to replace the "piece of s##t" as the internet would have you think, it serves the purpose alongside the £300 secondhand GT30
As far as budget is concerned, we are a super-budget team (eh Bill
lol) and are willing to find out for ourselves what we can get away with - 2 seasons track abuse at 340bhp with £400-worth of "big turbo" upgrade and a standard ex-Cupra Cup engine
