It didn't start too well because the first one I purchased from eBay turned out to be damaged. Unfortunately, because I didn't find the damage until 5 months after I purchased it I wasn't able to get a refund from the seller.
(See damage to turbine)
I bought a second turbo which turned out to be just fine so I decided to keep the damaged one for spares and using for mock up.
Here are some pictures showing the physical differences between the Schwitzer and TD04l:
Although the pictures don't seem to show it too well, the TD04l is quite a lot smaller and lighter than the Schwitzer.
It would've been nice to ditch my CB hideaway header as I have seen a few other designs which seem to have benefits over CB's, but it just wasn't in my budget. So, my first challenge was to get the TD04l to fit the CB header. You can see in the picture below that I had to mount the turbo a little higher. This was to enable the larger exhaust housing to clear one of the exhaust primaries on the header. The advantage to this is that the inherent problem of turbo oil drainage that comes with the CB header has been slightly improved upon.
As I've touched on the subject of turbo oil drainage I may as well explain what I have done to accomodate the TD04l.
Basically, I have used a mixture of the parts from the Schwitzer and the original Subaru drain pipe. I cut the flange from the Subaru pipe and made a new pipe with a length of 15mm mild steel tube which I bent using a plumber's pipe bending tool. The 15mm tube was the perfect size to slide inside the old Schwitzer drain tube. I cut the Schwitzer tube to size and welded the whole assembly together.
I'm hoping that because the TD04l sits higher it will improve drainage back to the sump (the gradient certainly seemed better on mock up). Also, with the pipe diameter getting larger towards the sump I hope this would also help stop oil backing up the pipe back to the turbo. In fairness, I only ever had this problem with the Schwitzer when the oil was cold but it was enough to break the seals and give me smokey cold starts.
I've now painted the drain pipe with high temperature resistant paint because living in the UK means unprotected steel turns to rust very quickly. I've used high temperature resistant paint because the route of the pipe travels in close proximity to the exhaust collector.
I'll keep this thread updated as often as I can. The turbo will be installed and running by 17th May.
I have the car booked into a rolling road dyno on 17th May so I can have the ECU map tweaked to match this new turbo and also find out how my power delivery compares to the Schwitzer. I've also bought tickets to a VW show over the weekend of 18th and 19th May where I plan to put my bug through its paces around a racing circuit.
