Mine might have expired after 2000 miles too but this looks like a valve will have caused the damage (if there is damage yet to check). I however was running 1.5 bar but it was no where near as hard mapping as the likes of Jools (custardcupra) as his with the P20 still spooled well mine always felt laggy.
As soon as I've stripped mine down there will be a 'looks whats failed' thread to warn people, and I really wished I'd seen Bill's thread regarding fitting a £375.00 set of one piece valves before going IHI. When I spoke to Jabba regarding internals I was told not to worry or waste my money, and there would be no problems on the standard valves... oops.
If my VF34 P20 is dead I'll be looking into the likes of the above mentioned, but untill I actually know whats wrong I can't comment too much. Need to find out what is wrong before throwing away £££.
I'm undecided on mapping, if Mike will map another turbo fair play, if not I'll need to find somewhere willing to do it.
you might wanna check with jools/custard on how theirs are currently running
If JS have advised not to bother with valves, thats surprising to me, as we both know what happens on more than a few tuned 1.8t's. Thats why uprated valves got brought into the equation at all, BECAUSE of KNOWN FAILURES. I started the change to uprated valves supplying them initially. Its an investment at the end of the day vs risk if you dont. (much like rods... do i dont i type question)
Fueling and top end egt's is where some of the "tuners" vary their opinions on
how to map cars. I know CC mapping is less than ideal on my own for absolute power on afr's compared to mikes mapping, but egt's are lower from the extra fuel dumping. The thing is, unless you have gauging to see whats going on, you will be oblivious until things go wrong mechanically in a big way.
Ignorence is'nt neccessarily bliss. Thats a big reason I fitted zeitronix way back when... as I had had enough of not knowing whats going on, in real world/track use, and repeated heat related failures. (never bearings tho)