N55 F30 Top Mount Turbo Kit Development

Hi guys, I thought I would share some news on what we've been working on at the shop. We have ourselves a new player in the N55 upgraded turbo game. With such great results with the N54 turbo kits I figure why change things.  We will use all the same great parts (Precision, Tial, Vibrant) even the same size exhaust tubing, hell we are even using the same head flange.  There have been some tweaks but the new kit is practically the N54 kit. We just had to make some small adjustments to accommodate the new chassis.  So we know the kit is easily capable of 700+ hp. But we also know the N54 motor is known to hold much more power than the N55. We have decided to use a smaller 6062 Gen2 turbo for now until we throw a built motor in it which will max out at 650whp and will produce a very factory like spool.  The one thing we made sure to focus on was to keep drivability.  It's one thing to make 600hp, but its another to have that type of power and having the car start up and feel like it is completly stock. 

So far I have only put a few miles on the setup. I am running only off the wastegates right now which is set at 10psi. Terry has sent the single turbo firmware for JB4 so hopefully I will have time to load that up this weekend and start to control boost.

I am also working with Precision Raceworks with their fuel components to get some good fuel in before we hit the dyno.

More info to come but for now I will leave you guys with some pictures. I will have some videos soon also to show how the exhaust sounds with a tubular manifold and open wastegates. 

It's a tight fit but it's in there. This time around we had our own shorty air filter to use versus the turbo screen we used on the N54. The engine cover has to be trimmed but as you can see it can look very factory if done right.

Twin Tial MVS wastegates are being used as they have been proven to control boost very well.  They are mounted down low away from all the heat.  This will make it easy to change out springs if needed.  You will not have to take off other turbo kits components in order to service the kits.  On the development car we have chosen to go open atmosphere dump, we want to hear when it hits full boost.  There will be an option to go recirc when we start to manufacture the kits for guys that don't care for that. 

Here is a rare shot of the manifold.  Notice it has a v-band connection going up to the turbo.  This makes installing the kit that much easier by just tightening one nut for a full connection.  This was something that we wanted to do on the N54 but because of how the O2 sensors were setup with the twin turbos it required us to do twin scroll.  We have free range on the N55 because they came factory with a single turbo.  Some might be thinking we're going to lose some spool by going away from twin scroll but lets hold off on speculation until there are some results.   We can always go back to twin scroll if needed. 

One last thing I want to show is this custom billet machined coolant neck.  The factory piece could have been left in place but if you have ever held one in your hand you will notice there are some kinks in it that may cause overheating issues down the road.  The kink in the factory pipe is there to get around the factory turbo which we have tosed.  I figured while we are here and about to double the factory horsepower rating we may as well help the cooling system as much as we can.