SteamSpeed FA20 (2015 WRX) stock location turbo R&D

[SteamSpeed.com]

We have been working a stock location FA20 DIT turbo for about a year. We will use this thread to post up some pictures of the product development process.

We started our FA20 turbo development program over a year ago with reasonable expectation that we would have 2015 WRX turbo upgrades by summer 2015. It turned out that some of the castings were very hard to make. Time will tell, but it might be a while before other turbo companies will be able to replicate our tooling success.

Here are some pictures from around a year ago, when we first got our hands on an OEM FA20 turbo which we promptly took apart. Here are some pictures of the Honeywell stock turbo next to one of our BB 20G turbos for STI.

Looking at the Honeywell unit, it is obvious that it is using iron casting techniques that are light years more advanced that the good old STI single scroll style turbine housing. There was nothing tricky about the compressor housing.

Note how small the wheels are on the OEM turbo vs the 20G compressor wheel, and the G30 turbine.

Another thing to keep in mind is that OEM turbos are engineered in this priority order:
OEM turbo: reliability > low cost > performance
whereas our priorities are:
Steam Turbo: performance > reliability > cost

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[maperformance]

This excites me

[SteamSpeed.com]

[SteamSpeed.com]

Needless to say, we did not launch our turbo in summer 2015, and the turbine housing was the reason. The compressor housing was easy to make.

Here is the early cad drawing for the compressor housing. The compressor housing wasn't complicated. We had successfully made tooling for the compressor housing nearly a year ago. This is all you get to see though. We are not going to publish more detailed tooling designs for the world to see.


The turbine housing was the opposite of easy to make.

Like I had mentioned in the first post, Honeywell's turbine housing utilizes very advanced iron casting technology that is very hard to replicate. This may or may not be obvious, but we do not own a foundry. I don't think all but the very biggest companies, like maybe MHI for example, operate their own foundry. Not many foundries in the world are capable of casting such a part, and Honeywell and MHI are not letting us use theirs. Ultimately we decided to let our favorite foundry that casts the best turbine housings we can find, give it a go.

Even with our best foundry partner, they failed casting our tooling design more than one time. Revision after revision, we started to loose hope that we would be able to figure out a tooling design that would work at our foundry. Perseverance paid off. The we found a tooling design that the foundry was able to reliably cast.

Here are some early successful castings of our newer and larger turbine housing upgrade. Here is our all new turbine housing for FA20 in its first successful casting a machining. Our new housings can support much larger turbines than the OEM housing. This is the main reason why our turbos will be able to outperform the OEM turbo, or anyone trying to make an OEM derived turbo.

Note the turbine housing here isn't fully machined. Our designs will permit both BB and JB CHRA long term.

[Dubbstahh]

Any updates? Pretty interested in the stealth turbo upgrade

[bunz559]

Checkout their facebook page. They have updates there. Looks like a few more weeks and they'll have shipments out.

[Dubbstahh]

Originally Posted by bunz559

Checkout their facebook page. They have updates there. Looks like a few more weeks and they'll have shipments out.

Thanks man!!

[SinX]

Yes I'm digging this!!!

[SteamSpeed.com]

We are a week or two into full manufacturing of retail turbos. The first batch will be in in large quantities by the end of the month!



With a firm ETA, we are ready to take preorders! Click the link below.

Stock location FA20 2015 WRX turbo perorder

[SteamSpeed.com]

We got some STX 67 FA20 turbo results in. If you have more questions, post them below.
Install:
- it takes about 3 hours to install the FA20 turbo
- the heat shield was tricking to get back on over the turbine housing and required modification, but our turbine housing is bigger.
The Car:
PRE's shop car has a super basic stage 2 mod list:
- ETS turbo back
- ETS intake
- stock motor
- stock intercooler
- stock TGVs
- made ~300 whp and 330 w ftlbs with e85
The Tune:
It is not finished. The PRE shop car was having spark problems on cylinder #3 with boost over 20 psi... Still, we have learned the following:
- made 350 whp 380 ftlbs on e70, but the spark issue was preventing us to go furter
- The tuner things it should make ~370 whp, and 400+ ftlbs with cylinder 3 working correctly.
- With TGV deletes, hp should break 400 whp
- the turbo came only about 300 rmp slower than stock.
- the spark issue prevented us pushing the boost.

We'll post up the final plot when the spark issue is resolved, and we can run full boost on the turbo.

[SteamSpeed.com]

Here are some pictures of our first FA20 housings after they were successfully machined. These pictures are mainly about showing that the housings are finished, and these housings work with the stock location turbo parts. The main point is that our turbos are all machined correctly for easy fitment in the stock location. We did design and manufacture new lines and a custom actuator for our FA20 turbos. We did however design the turbo to work with the OEM turbo oil pan and heat shields. You can see in the pictures how the OEM parts fit on our aftermarket turbo. With our prototype test at PRE, we did not note that the top heat shield however needs to be modified somewhat to fit back on. We will try to improve on the fitment of the top heat shield the best we can, but our turbine housing is physically larger. There will only be so much we can do.

[SteamSpeed.com]

Here are some pictures of the first FA20 STX turbo prototype. It is a JB STX 67 for 2015 WRX, etc.



This means if you own a 2015 WRX, and have already an exhaust, intake, intercooler, etc. that works with the stock turbo, our FA20 turbo upgrade will simply replace your stock turbo and work with all of the parts you have already invested in.

Initially we will have two journal bearing versions, the Steam STX 67, and the Steam STX 71. The STX 67 is known to typically makes 350-400 WHP on pump gas and more on E85, and the STX 71 makes 400-450 WHP on pump with a proven 59 lbs/min peak flow. Our turbos will make power to redline solving the OEM's turbo's unwillingness to flow well over 5.5k RPM.

This is what it looks like to unbox a Steam STX FA20 DIT Turbo. This may or may not be the final parts list, but it should give you a close idea as what to expect.
This is still the DV (design validation) prototype, the machining will be cleaner on the retail version that we ship.
Answers to common questions on this turbo:
- This is a journal bearing water cooled turbo.
- It is stock fitment. This means it can be used with all of your other boltons.
- It is our own castings and parts. It is not made by Honeywell/Garrett.
- We expect the STX 67 version to make between 350-400 whp, and the STX 71 version to make 400-450.
- We will be doing full fitment and dyno testing on the 22nd and PRE, so look for actual FA20 dyno plots then.
- Pricing will be between $1300-1600.
- We will ship first orders in less than 4-6 weeks.
- We will start taking preorders in a week or two.
Please leave a comment if your question has not been answered.

[SteamSpeed.com]

[SinX]

This is awesome. We are all excited to see the dyno for STX 67 and STX 71.
I do wonder about the rods if we use STX 71

[scotte30m3]

I ordered a 71 last week... I have all Bolt ons and already have some base lines to provide a true delta.

[scotte30m3]

Steam posted an update on thier Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/steam.speed/posts/831881630274847

[SteamSpeed.com]

Originally Posted by scotte30m3

Steam posted an update on thier Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/steam.speed...31881630274847

Yes we did. This is what we put on Facebook:
[FA20 STX 71 Update]
In case you haven't noticed, we haven't posted anything about the JB STX 71 for FA20 yet. This is because we have been busy designing tooling an building turbos.

The first machining attempt on the prototype STX 71 casting was not successful. This is why we build prototypes to validate everything before we go into full production. Not to worry, the machining design has been updated and production is on track, but it has caused a ~2 week delay in our production road map.

It looks like we are on target for April 22nd to having all of the housings made for the production turbos. Obviously we will have the CHRAs, and other parts done before that so we can put them together as soon as the housings are ready and ship everything out around the 22nd.

FA20 is our priority, but we only have one mechanical engineer building our tooling designs. We have several other models in the pipeline as well...coming after we are done with the first batch of FA20 turbos.
Lots of cool new products coming, so stay tuned!

-Sam

[SteamSpeed.com]

We are committed to shipping in April.

The STX 67 FA20 turbos will probably ship even sooner than the 22nd.

[tank the ek]

Just curious if any have shipped/people have received any of these yet? Poking around, really interested in the BB 71 when production/sales begins.

[SteamSpeed.com]

[FA20 Update]
We have some good news. The castings for all of the housings have been sorted out, and we have full production housings rolling out of the foundry this week.

**That means JB FA20 turbos will be getting final assembly next week and will be shipping out to us shortly thereafter.**

[Pre Orders]
If you have been waiting, I'd recommend jumping on the pre orders while there are slots in the first batch left. The 71s are almost all sold out already.
http://steamturbochargers.com/index....-fa20-dit.html

[More info]
There was a 4 week delay as we were improving the moulds for the castings. I don't think I need to say this, but it is more important to get the tooling right than have parts out more quickly. We are committed to doing it right and only making the best possible even if that takes longer. Thanks for being patient and understanding!

[BB FA20 update]
BB FA20 tooling designs are mostly done, but we have not yet designed the machine design to adapt the BB CHRA to OEM turbo oil pan. FA20 BB turbo parts will be blocked until we ship our turbo backlog. If you have preordered a BB version from one of our resellers, we'd recommend swapping to the JB version if you want it sooner, or if you are not in a rush, continue being patient.

[etc.]
Unrelated to FA20 on the plus side, we will have new batches of brand new turbo models for BMW N54, STI, and LGT/WRX 08-14. Stay tuned for the new STX 63, STX 67+ LGT, etc.

[SteamSpeed.com]

Originally Posted by tank the ek

Just curious if any have shipped/people have received any of these yet? Poking around, really interested in the BB 71 when production/sales begins.

PRE in Portland has the only prototype. Feel free to ask Jason the owner about the turbo's performance, or Erich, their tuner's opinion on how well it makes power. I know they will say it is great, but you don't have to take our word for it.

[KENTEND0]

Any updates? I've been waiting to here more about the STX 67. I've read the reviews on PRE's website but it looks like they test it on the 2.5 and not the 2.0

[SteamSpeed.com]

Originally Posted by KENTEND0

Any updates? I've been waiting to here more about the STX 67. I've read the reviews on PRE's website but it looks like they test it on the 2.5 and not the 2.0

Oh yes, follow our FB page. We keep that most up to date. We actually finished production of the first batch of FA20 turbos last week. We will start shipping our preorders this week. The will go out in the order they were received.

We use the exact same CHRA in the FA20 turbo that we use in the STI turbos. The potential will be the same as the STI version and is well documented, but the curve shape will be similar the stock turbo's curve except without falling off over 5.5k RPM, and 30% more power. As production turbos get out, look for the results flowing in.

[Cer3alKiller]

Can you please post the full results from the independent shops finally. Videos if possible and any bottlenecks that might have been found etc..

[SteamSpeed.com]

Here is one WRX from a shop in the Philippines. He was running a STX 67 for FA20 on pump gas. This WRX has a CVT.

If you are Australian, then maybe the format of the dyno plot will make more sense to you.

The important data is that the customer has a 30% power bump, and a 5% peak torque bump, and a ton more torque on the top end. You can look at the chart to see where the gains were.

If you want 'Merica dyno numbers, I will try to put a 30% power gain into context. If a full bolt on stage 2 car makes around 300-330 whp and 330-350 ft*lbs depending on the dyno etc., then the new peak numbers would be:

390-429 whp
347-368 ft*lbs

Hopefully that make more sense for the USDM crowd.