having problem with my labonte setup

Jersey Dino · Mar 7, 2009, 09:42 PM

I installed the kit and was tuned by the end of January. the kit worked great for about 1 month. Then the pump failed. Dan at labonte was awesome and inspected my failsafe and sent me out a new pump very quickly. car was back together in a week,(great customer support). I installed the new pump and tested the pump by jumping the wires on the harness. it pumped like a champ. i put my meth map back on the car and I am still getting some lean readings. Lean as in it might not be getting the proper amount of juice. It appears that the new pump works fine, the solenoid had appropriate pressure in it at the nozzle which makes me assume that its going where it needs to go. I guess my question is, what can cause inconsistent flow besides a kink in the line perhaps? again sorry for the rambling post.

Labonte MotorSports · Mar 8, 2009, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jersey Dino

I installed the kit and was tuned by the end of January. the kit worked great for about 1 month. Then the pump failed. Dan at labonte was awesome and inspected my failsafe and sent me out a new pump very quickly. car was back together in a week,(great customer support). I installed the new pump and tested the pump by jumping the wires on the harness. it pumped like a champ. i put my meth map back on the car and I am still getting some lean readings. Lean as in it might not be getting the proper amount of juice. It appears that the new pump works fine, the solenoid had appropriate pressure in it at the nozzle which makes me assume that its going where it needs to go. I guess my question is, what can cause inconsistent flow besides a kink in the line perhaps? again sorry for the rambling post.

Check your fluid tank and make sure cap has a vent hole. If it does push a paperclip into the hole to make sure did not get some clog in it.

Jersey Dino · Mar 8, 2009, 07:30 PM

Ok will do that. Is the rubber gasket required in the cap? And also if there is solid pressure at the inlet side of the check valve before the nozzle, that should rule out a leak right? Thanks again for awesome customer service! On a Sunday no less

Jersey Dino · Mar 10, 2009, 09:45 AM

Well this is one of the tons of threads that has adequate views and limited chatter, so I figured I would post up again. I just wanted to tell anyone who reads this that Labonte Motorsports is by far the best companies I have dealt with. I have picked Dans brain for hours on the phone over the course of multiple days while he helped me iron out and track down my problem. Not only did he help, but he has been very expeditious in providing me with replacement parts so the car would not be down unnecessarily long. If everyone did business like this there wouldn't be any bad business.

Now for anyone curious, it seems that the FCS-10 solenoid, located just inches before the nozzle, was faulty, either mechanically or electrically. During my bench test I was able to simulate boost pressure by attatching an air compressor to vacuum source. This would trigger the VC25 to activate pump causing it to flow at a range of pressures by adjusting the flow on my air compressor. This demonstrated that the IFS-10 fail safe, VC25 controller and BBK (boost bypass kit) were operating correctly and that there were no leaks present. Once the boost source was removed, (also read taking your foot off the gas) the solenoid would close and stay closed. Add the pressure to the vacuum source again, (read step on the gas) and the solenoid would erroneously stay shut, immediately triggering the IFS-10 fail safe and BBK to divert to waste gate only. I was happy to see that the system works, and had been working for quite some time. The only way I was able to get the solenoid to function again was to release the pressure in the line by disconnecting the inlet side of the FCS-10. While this would allow it to work again, it ultimately would need to be replaced, which Labonte Motorsports has offered to do with no fuss. Just to confirm my findings, I ran the same test, but this time eliminated the FCS-10 from the plumbing and just let it spray straight from the hose. This proved to work time and time again, bringing me to the conclusion that the FCS-10 was faulty.

What else did I learn while messing with the setup? You can run without the FCS-10. The only problem is that you WILL consume much more methanol. Depending on where your nozzle is in relation to where your tank is mounted, you WILL gravity feed the liquid in the lines. If the tank is higher than the nozzle it will drain faster. Obviously this is bad for a number of reasons but say
you happen to start your car and let it run for 10 and then minutes on a cold night and walk away; let the turbo timer turn it off and when you get back the car is pretty warm. Come back after the car ran for 10 minutes and then sat for 10 minutes. What you might find is a car that wont start, and when you do get it to turn over it will run like you blew and intercooler hose and reading 10.0:1 on the wideband. Ask me how I know this... What I did was get it to start and let it idle for 10 minutes again giving it throttle in neutral hoping to help dissipate the methanol the probably trickled into my intercooler. I hope this helps anyone who reads it. And sorry for the length of the post.

Cheers

And thanks again to Dan at Labonte Motorsports for doing good business

jamevo8 · Mar 11, 2009, 12:21 PM

Im going to Labonte Friday for a install... I hope I don't have any problems like this! I think I am going to try thier Maf kit rather than the Vc25 kit.

pcamara17 · Mar 23, 2009, 11:01 PM

I hope when I try to install my kit next week I'll be getting help from you guys if I come to a problem

Jersey Dino · Mar 24, 2009, 05:13 AM

Yea no problem. Either post up here or pm which ever. Posting public is the best bet though so everyone can chime in. Good luck

krazirob · Jun 14, 2009, 07:32 PM

so as long as you have the FCS 10 hooked up, it will mitigate the meth sipping into the FMIC??...

Jersey Dino · Jun 14, 2009, 09:12 PM

yeah the FCS10 will prevent the meth from leaking gravity feeding or getting sucked into the nozzle from the vacuum effect

tweaker41 · Jun 14, 2009, 09:39 PM

According to the labonte wiring diagram on his site it says to hook up the yellow wire from the VC-25 to the black wire on the FCS-10. That yellow wire for me is currently hooked up to the MAF as per the diagram I received with the kit. Could I disconnect it from the MAF and hook it up to the solenoid or would I be better of just splicing into the yellow wire and having it connected to the MAF and FCS-10?

Labonte MotorSports · Jun 18, 2009, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tweaker41

According to the labonte wiring diagram on his site it says to hook up the yellow wire from the VC-25 to the black wire on the FCS-10. That yellow wire for me is currently hooked up to the MAF as per the diagram I received with the kit. Could I disconnect it from the MAF and hook it up to the solenoid or would I be better of just splicing into the yellow wire and having it connected to the MAF and FCS-10?

If your yellow wire is connected to the MAF then you have the VC-25D controller. In the VC-25D the yellow wire is an input to the controller and not an output to drive the solenoid.

All new versions of the VC-25 since May 2009 now have a secondary 12v output siganl used to drive the solenoid.