Technical FrankenTurbo F21Bi Turbo Upgrade

devildog0905

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http://www.frankenturbo.com/new/F21Bi.html

**If this is already a thread please delete but I couldn't find a thread on just this item**

The point of this thread is just to talk about THIS turbo offering, not anyone elses.

So, this has been announced for a few months, but I haven't seen any real feedback on it. I contacted Doug Harper at FrankenTurbo and he said the "Open Beta Testing" offer is still open if you email him. Basically they are looking for people to data log and dyno their turbo and they will give you $500 back. They also have their own inlets, which are pictured on the site, which you can add for $220. So you can get:
Turbos: $1999
Oil Feed Lines: $125
Install Kit: $200
Inlets: $220
TOTAL: $2544 (-$500 if you log and dyno). $2044
Also, you can just buy the turbos if thats all you want.

I think this is a very cool idea and a great price, especially if you are on a budget. I would like to know what you think. Try to keep personal "BS" out of this. Some dyno sheets are showing 600whp. IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE BETA TESTERS I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!!!!. Thanks for your time guys !!!!
 
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PUTC

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I would really love some information also on what he is doing now. A lot of rumors and bad news spread around. Would love to hear from beta testers and first hand people about these turbos. Everything sounds great about them including prices
 
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Abacus38

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Not a bad deal for someone looking to go the hybrid route plus the give back is nice idea from a marketing standpoint.

tenor.gif
 
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Dec 14, 2016
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[Edited per forum administer request]

That focus on value is every bit as sharp with our currently developed smaller turbos, the F21Bi. We charge $1999 for them. And NEVER has any product offered for this platform at this price performed as they do.
Boost:

F21Bi%20Open%20Beta%20(WP92oct_methanol-rev2).jpg


Dyno results:

F21Bi-Alpha-Test-Car-1-Wedge-E50-v2.jpg

So what about product quality? What about reliability? Because when your talking about value, when you factor in these considerations this market isn't being served much of it.
Until now. You see these two bearing designs? You'll find the usual-suspect TD03 spec journal bearings on the left. Ours is on the right.

TD03-vs-1pc-bearing.jpg

See a difference? Our F21Bi turbos include our own proprietary single-piece bearing that have 64% more bearing surface than our competitors at this price. And by "our competitors", take a guess who that is! Do they look familiar Tony? Squint a bit. They're tiny but you can still see them. Get it? As it happens, our journal bearing design is unmatched by any competitor at any price. It has a larger surface area for superior high-speed stability. It has greater oil flow capacity for superior lubrication. And it has greater mass for heat dissipation.

Speaking of heat, here is another feature of our turbos that prove their superior value: the center housings themselves. Our turbochargers' design for superior heat dissipation doesn't end at the rotating assembly. See those two holes in this cutaway of our casting?

N54_F21Bi_bearing-housing-section-view.jpg

Those are the cavities for the coolant jacket. Its these cavities that are responsible for conveying away heat -- the enormous amount of added heat that is generated by an engine developing more than double its factory-rated horsepower. More heat requires more cooling. We offer it. "Brand-X"? Not so much: (pssst: Brand-X is Vargas!!)

N54_bearing-housing-cross-section-comparisons.jpg


Our competitors' Chinese-sourced bearing housings not only have inferior cooling capacity to ours, it's inferior to that of the OEM housings. The bottom line is that (to paraphrase a line in The Right Stuff) our Chinese are better than their Chinese. Which is to say, our turbos are better than theirs. You enjoying the read so far Tony? Little surprised maybe that we've Oppo Researched you? 'Course it's not anything as potent as that horrible, horrible YouTube video your so fond of linking! Nope, I'm sure it isn't. So let's keep going!

Here are our thrust bearings in comparison to theirs:

N54_upgraded-thrust-bearings-comparison.jpg


Have a looksee at the notches for oil lubrication and cooling. Our bearing is superior. We know that because it's based on the bearing we've offered for years in our other products. So when a little someone talks about their fancy "Upgraded Thrust", there is more to it than that. Is that "upgrade" up to the service demands of 25+psi duty? We know ours is. It's proven.

We have spent years researching the N54 engine. And over a year in product testing for our F21Bi. And in the course of that internal testing we have upgraded every single part shown here. Every arrow points to an upgraded component. Not just an "upgraded thrust". With the F21Bi, you get "upgraded everything".

N54_F21Bi_rotating_assembly-arrows.jpg


Our F21Bi turbochargers are designed and manufactured to have robustness that is unmatched by any competitor. At any price. The rotating assembly you see in this picture the strongest and most reliable ever offered for this platform. And we have spent over a year in product testing to confirm that.

The F21Bi turbochargers cost $1999. They are backed by a 2-year warranty. No other manufacturer comes close to the value we offer.

Thank you everybody for your consideration. And one last shoutout to our pals at Vargas, who make our jobs here so much more fun.


Doug Harper
FrankenTurbo

F21Bi-2-rev1.jpg
 
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devildog0905

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Whoa. This got serious, real fast. Doug, all of your info looks great and sounds great. Cant wait to see some beta tester info.
 
Nov 5, 2016
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As for his "AWESOME" Turbos. Congrats Doug, you are using single journal bearings in your MHI turbos. MHI did it 20+ years ago in ONE MODEL the TC04. Where is the TC04 now? It's in the garbage can, one, and done. They scraped it, why? Because it was failure prone and did not work well. Guess what ALL MHI turbos have come with since, and still. Twin Journal bearings. Why? I will let people with common sense figure that out. So you have now "updated" your turbos with 20-year-old tech, that the actual manufacture scaped because it was garbage, and your big selling point after that is let's wait for it, drum roll, please. Water Jackets..... Man, you cannot make this stuff up. You really can't Doug, do this.

Next we will address those thrust bearings. Since you have never actually built a turbocharger, and have limited knowledge of them, it is not surprising you have taken a factory TD04 thrust with a single oiling hole, and actually made it worse than it was stock. Thats not easy to do, and you have accomplished that. That you want to put two thrusts side by side, and try to make people believe the thrust with the single oiling hole is superior to the thrust that provides twice the oil volume to the one place in a turbocharger where oil volume is abssolutely critical, and is the main factor in keeping a turbocharger alive shows me you truly have no idea what you are doing. You are basically trying to sell people on bullshit fake news, and “upgrades” you did. Same way you tried to sell everyone your bullshit data sets.

Do us all a favor. Once you have anything resembling a real set of results, please share them with us all. I know, I know in 2 years it's hard to get those pesky results. But hey, maybe you will get them one day.



See you on the other side, Doug.
 
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ChrisNeil5

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I'll be sharing my thoughts once I get everything together for the car and installed , there's still a foot of snow around.
 

JuniorB

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There is an another tread about this, the power it made, the fuels, and it's structure long another site. He was tuning these on his own, reported what worked, and what didnt work, and announced that they were close to wrapping up beta. There were a lot of disagreeers on that tread, some didn't see the same thing he saw, but it's still up I believe. It's funny how there is such criticizem of parts not being made here, and made else were. If you go thru your house, you'll find nothing is made here, but you dinner. I'm loading 35k ton of metal going to, you guessed it!
 

doublespaces

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All off topic posts (almost the entire thread) which do not follow the technical spirit requested by the OP have been moved to a new thread in our disputes/complaints/octagon section. Discussion of this type may continue there and is located here: https://bmw.spoolstreet.com/threads/opinions-on-frankenturbo-f21bi-turbo-upgrade.2831/

Please ensure future posts to this thread have a technical contribution to the given subject and nothing more.
 
Nov 5, 2016
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If anyone is interested in a little turbo theory, and some pictures, facts, actual knowledge of what is going on.

Lets start by taking his "bearing housing comparison" First of all, if you did not know it, Doug is a liar, and has been known to photoshop things to try to sell products. This time he simply cut the housings in a way that would show things favorable to himself, while also showing some pretty scary issues with his bearing housings. That he is too uneducated to recognize this is another very scary thing.

So let's get started. Let's take a look at the actual comparison below with a bearing housing we use for all our "Stock Frame" N54 turbos. This includes OEM Replacement, Stage 1, Stage 2, and 2+.

We will begin by showing you the actual water jacket of a bearing housing used by VTT with a cross-section taken out. I have highlighted the water jacket area. Notice how different it is from what the other guy is trying to sell you. When not impeded by the oiling area, the water jacket spreads out to almost the entire area of the bearing housing to provide maximum cooling. So if I were to want to try to sell you on BS facts, I would say look at the VTT water jack area. Its 3-4 times bigger than the Frankenturbo water jackets, our turbos must be better. But in all honesty, it's not going to help much except add a little bit more cooling.

Water Jacket.jpg


Next, and on to the more important part. Below is the same image Frankenturbo is trying to sell you.
I went ahead and added the image of our actual bearing housing, not his BS marketing ploy. I want you direct your attention to the oiling holes. Yes the ones somehow absent from the OEM, and VTT housings in his photo, but present in the Frakenturbo housing. We won't even dwell on the fact that he wants you to believe he cut all 3 housings in the same spot, but in the top two, you cannot see the oiling cavities. this means they were not cut in the same spot, he cut them purposely to make the water jacket look smaller. Does this surprise anyone? This is the person who photoshopped compressor maps.

The important part here is, now that you can see the oilling gallies, look at the VTT housing, you will see 3 areas that feeds the turbo with oil. One small gally to the compressor bearing, one small galley to the turbine bearing, and one LARGE gally to the thrust bearing (the reason the thrust gally is so large ie because this is the most critical area for oil volume in the turbo, more on that later)

Now take a look at the Frankenturbo housing. We see for whatever reason they tried to add double gallies to the turbine side bearing. One would dump directly into the water jacket, meaning you have now mixed your oil, and water basically ruining your engine, and the other he has that same galley dumping after the bearing directly into the oil drain area? This would be a disaster, the car would smoke, and oil would fill the bearing housing causing very swift turbocharger failure. Keep in mind, these are Frankenturbo own pictures, not mine! So either we have a disaster of a bearing housing design OR we have very very poor casting with phantom gallies or large porosity in the mold. Either one is a HUGE issue.

N54_bearing-housing-cross-section-comparisons_fixed_4.jpg


Now let's move on to the REALLY important stuff. The oiling for the thrust bearing. If there is ONE area that will make or break the longevity of a journal bearing turbo, its the thrust area, and oil volume. In all instances the more oil volume you can get to the thrust, the better. There are a couple reasons why. When a turbocharger is loaded up, the turbine wheel is literally trying to push its way through the thrust, this can cause EXTREME load forces, the only thing stopping metal to metal contact, and pre-mature thrust wear, and turbo failures is the layer of oil between the thrust and the thrust collar. This is the main reason we suggest upgraded thrusts. Not only is the area where the thrust collar rides about 30% larger to spread out the load, it adds ANOTHER oil feed, and much more area for oil collection. Take a look at the pictures below, as you can see, our thrust use two much larger oil feeds for the thrust, and collects this oil from a much larger area. This is CRITICAL in keeping the thrust alive. The N54's spin over 200K RPM when at full song, and the thrust load is sky high. This extra oil ensures cooler temps at the thrust, and a film of oil is maintained under the harshest of temps, and loads.

Compare that to the small single hole from the Frankenturbo thrust. Congrats Doug, you added a few more ribs to the thrust collar area and ignored the important area of oil volume. This is like selling everyone an "improved N54 engine with sleeves, closed deck inserts, but installing plastic ring lands. All you did was improve areas that are less critical than the ones you ignored. Now if you know nothing about engine building, this may be something you would do. Since Frankenturbo does not build his own turbos, and literally knows nothing about them. It is clear why such glaring errors would be present.

FL Thrust 1.jpg
FL Thrust 2.jpg
FL Thrust 3.jpg
VTT Thrust 1.jpg
VTT Thrust 3.jpg
VTT Thrust 2.jpg




Bottom line, Franketurbo has used deceptive marketing tactics in the past. Now by his own photos, he is showing you he cut the housing in a different spot, and his thrust is inferior to what should be being used in the N54. His bearing housing looks like a disaster waiting to happen. When it is this easy to take someones own photos, and turn their claims upside down with just a little knowledge, the only words that come to mind are BUYER BEWARE...

/THREAD
 

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If we are talking someone shooting themselves in the foot. Posting photos that clearly show you cut the housing in different spots to manipulate the appearance of the water jacket size, while also posting photos of your thrust from an angle that does not show the oiling holes to try to make your single feed thrust appear like it is superior to a dual feed thrust. This is foot shooting 101, and also what many would call misleading, and deceptive marketing, while accidentally making your product look inferior when someone with actual knowledge can point out the flaws in your deception, and products. Take it as you will. I just destroyed Dougs “tech” using his own photos.
 
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doublespaces

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Please dont edit this thread again. Let douggie come in here and defend his "products".

If you have a technical argument against The F21 turbos, post it. If you have anything else that is not technical, then it belongs in the other thread which has been created for that purpose and has even been linked to inline with this thread for convenience. This is a basic rule, called staying on topic. If you want drama and bullshit and pointless bickering endlessly, there are many other places to go, like that thread I branched this conversation off into and various other forums which almost do that exclusively. Nothing has been deleted or edited by me, those edits were done by the posters themselves at my request and the missing posts have merely been moved one step off the main road for anyone who wants to participate in that fashion. If someone is too lazy to click the link to resume that portion of the conversation, well, that just doesn't register on my fuck-o-meter.
 
Nov 5, 2016
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If you have a technical argument against The F21 turbos, post it. If you have anything else that is not technical, then it belongs in the other thread which has been created for that purpose and has even been linked to inline with this thread for convenience. This is a basic rule, called staying on topic. If you want drama and bullshit and pointless bickering endlessly, there are many other places to go, like that thread I branched this conversation off into and various other forums which do almost exclusively just that. Nothing has been deleted or edited by me, those edits were done by the posters themselves at my request and the missing posts have merely been moved one step off the main road for anyone who wants to participate in that fashion.
Tyler, I tried to keep my lastest post technical, showing the actual issues with his photos, and claims. I did add a couple jabs, if you want to edit those out feel free, but I feel it’s important to see the glaring technical issues present in his own photos.
 

doublespaces

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Tyler, I tried to keep my lastest post technical, showing the actual issues with his photos, and claims. I did add a couple jabs, if you want to edit those out feel free, but I feel it’s important to see the glaring technical issues present in his own photos.

I will not be editing your posts, and the reason your post is still here is because it involved technical points. The effectiveness of your post is diminished by your insults you've thrown in there, that is your own problem really. Anyone who likes Franken Turbo is not going to be enlightened by a post they did not read because it begins with insults toward someone they favor.
 
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? That you think I am trying to sway blind Frankenturbo supporters you have no idea why I would make a technical post. Its to educate the masses that are mostly ignorant to turbocharger theory, yourself included. The insults were justified as Doug is a proven liar. Calling him one is more of a statement of facts than a jab. But hey whatever...