LONG BUT WORTH THE READ FOR ANYONE CONSIDERING A PORTED EATON.

Ok,
First off I am now a Cobra owner but this most certainly applies to Lightnings as well.

Perhaps others will learn from mistakes made. This is NOT an APTEN Ported Eaton. I have a ported blower that looks strikingly similar to what 03CobraOxford has posted pictures of.

http://www.modularfords.com/forums/...ead.php?t=13045

Amazingly I had similar results. However unlike 03CobraOxford I made no changes to the car other then the Ported Eaton. My blower removal/installation was done by myself, another local Cobra owner, and a schooled, certified Technician. Not an intercooler bolt was broken, all gaskets were replaced and everything was tightened to Ford torque specification upon re-installation. The dyno runs were roughly 1 week apart done on the same dyno with very similar conditions.

Like him I saw no power increase. My boost would quickly peak and then rapidly fall off. (I have video of my autometer boost gauge during 1 of the 3-dyno runs, which shows this) After dynoing the only thing the poorly Ported Eaton gave me was detonation, mostly in the mid range rpms. Like I said before no changes to the car were made other then the Ported Eaton. I had an extremely conservative reflashed tune running 11:1 A/F ratios, 23 degrees max timing at WOT. I have multiple A/F charts done on the road with my wideband LM-1 and on the dyno before, during, and after the port work. The change in A/F ratios was negligible. I tried many solutions, colder spark plugs (from NGK TR6's to Denso IT22's), new fuel filter on a car with 3,000 miles, and so on. Nothing made a difference.

I made many phone calls trying to figure out what would cause no power gains and the never before detonation. I spoke with Brian at Apten at the time and called Magnson Powers the only authorized Eaton re-builder in the US. Both explained a few possibilities that could be causing issues.

Finally Chris Johnson from SCT was nice enough to look at my car at the Bradenton NMRA event. Chris made a few changes to the tune and we hit the street. I did not help, after multiple changes to the timing, I finally ended up with 18 degrees at WOT. Just to re-enforce how much timing had to be pulled to stop the detonation, 13 degrees at 3,000 rpm. Mention was made while trying to stop the detonation issues that the IAT2 temperatures also seemed somewhat elevated.

In my opinion the plain and simple answer to the cause of my problems was a improperly Ported Eaton from a vendor that had no idea of what they were doing other then cutting something bigger. After the fact I have come to learn it is much more involved then just a cut here or there. There is much to be considered and much to be lost. One must concerned with warping the case while machining it, removing to much material and allowing the case to flex, and the new rotor to case clearances. The Eaton does not compress the air; it simply paddles it around the outside of the blower case and into the lower intake manifold. In my opinion Porting, or actually cutting, the outlet of the case larger likely reduces the amount of backpressure the blower has to over come as it paddles the air around and slightly increasing the efficiency. However if you improperly clearance the rotors upon reinstalling them, not taking into account possible changes in the case do to machining, or possibly removing to much material allowing the case to flex under load, you can negatively affect the efficiency of the blower. Perhaps as the air is paddled around the outside of the case with clearances that lets say are to large, as the pressure in the lower intake manifold builds it will now leak back past the rotors and the case causing issues with the air flow out of the blower. Now you have an improperly ported Eaton with little backpressure (or resistance) as it paddles the air around. Quick to make boost, little backpressure, nice open clearances, quick to loose boost too, big gaps for it to leak back.

Hind sight is always 20/20, if I had to do it over again I would have paid for an APTEN. But it was an excuss to go a different route

*** If people want to explain how to post a bunch of thumb nail pictures I'll be more then happy to share dyno charts, conditions, pictures, and a/f charts. If anyone wants to host a video, I'll share that too.

 

A friend will shortly be posting a dyno chart showing the conditions from both dyno runs per the dynojets computer, overlayed dyno runs before and after, and my own LM-1 wideband a/f chart from the after run.

 

Mostly the same information repeated, but a little more.

SVTPerformance.com

 

Here are the conditions before and after, as you can see, this was not a factor

 

Here is the ported vs non ported dyno. As you can see, almost no peak gain and almost no gain anywhere in the HP curve.




STOCK BLOWER




AND THE PORTING

 

a/f logged with the LM-1 wideband

 

you have my interest...

 

I get the whole picture now cutting a big hole in the blower case is not the answer i will move more air with a bigger crank pulley a lot safe also the bigger port hole is not sufficeint enough you are going to lose a lot of air. i will produce more air with crank pulley like i am running 6# pulley no sir no port for me. why is it my lightning with same mods as my friends lightning only his blower is ported mine is not he has yet to out run me every time we run i take him a truck lenth or more both lightnings same year model 2003 we use to run neck and neck. i say i am moveing my air than him safer and without losing any in fact i am moveing air more efficiently is your E T time not as fast your quarter time not as fast. Hard to stay in tune air to fuel ratio hard to control i say lets look at the facts and deside If i port apten would be my choice i wish good luck to everbody with a lightning and have fun tom/
.????

 

Good story. Sorry to hear about your misfortune.

...and people ask why Apten charged so much for their port job - I know for a fact that I gained from the port job. Did a back to back comparison on the same day, within an hour or so on a stock lower pulley. If I had a 4# lower at the time, I'm sure the gains over stock eaton would have been even more.

Like they say - "You get what you pay for". I know I did.

 

So many guys see things 2 dimensionally. Problem is it's a 3D world.

This is exactly the reason I went with Apten.


Onelfastlride, Thank you for this post and letting us have a reality check.

Rich

 

This all makes me wonder what the down side to the bigger ports is...

Eaton or SVT or Ford could have easily made the eatons with bigger exit holes... If there is that much pent up HP waiting to be released why wouldnt they ...

There HAVE To be reasons.

Noise ? Reliability ? Warping ? Heat ?

There has to be a reason that the holes are shaped that way from the factory. After all changing the hole size would be a no cost horsepower improvement for the factory...

There HAS to be a reason they didnt design the blower with larger exit holes..

Im not saying that some dont gain HP/ET from it - Just wondering why the engineers that designed the thing left the ~30 hp in the design...

Doug

 

Hopefully everybody that's considering a Ported Eaton seriously reads over this thread and tries to fully understand there is much much more then just cutting. Learn from the mistakes of others. If you look hard enough you might be about to read between the lines and figure out whom or what vendor did the work.

More often then not you get what you pay for.

 

I had my blower ported by the same vendor as you. I didn't have any before dyno # for comparison. The only measurement I had was before/after track time.

Here's the result:

https://www.f150online.com/forums/sh...hreadid=158757

 

someones gotta say it......

who did the porting, would help alot of people out to know who it was so they can use it when deciding who to go with.

 

Sorry to hear about you problems. I ran a new best after installing the LFP ported blower on my L this spring. It was a 12.21@110.21 but I never got around to updating my sig.

BTW, my previous best in the sig was at like temp and conditions with a tailwind. I had no tailwind on these runs.