HomemadeTurbo - DIY Turbo Forum - How can i increase the boost????

I'm gonna try to help you out.

"The wastegate is a valve that allows the exhaust to bypass the turbine blades. The wastegate senses the boost pressure. If the pressure gets too high, it could be an indicator that the turbine is spinning too quickly, so the wastegate bypasses some of the exhaust around the turbine blades, allowing the blades to slow down."
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/turbo.htm

The wastegate is the flapper that covers up the hole in front of the turbine wheel. When it is closed, all of the exhaust heat and pressure is spinning the wheel. If that flapper never opened, the wheel would spin it as fast as that amount of exhaust heat and pressure the engine creates would spin it, building boost up to 15-25 psi.

When the flapper is open, it allows the exhaust heat and pressure to go around the turbine. Exhaust takes the easiest route, so instead of spinning the wheel faster, it just escapes thru the open hole, letting the wheel slow down, and boost to stay at a safe level.

The wastegate actuator is the thing you have pictured. It's job is to keep the gate completely closed, until the turbo spools up and pressurizes the engine intake to a certain PSI. Once the actuator sees (thru the vacuum line to the intake mani) this PSI, let's say 5psi, the rod pushes out, and opens the gate/ flapper. The turbo starts to slow down, and as the PSI drops back below that set 5 PSI, the actutator rod pulls back and closes the gate, letting the turbo build boost again. When you are flooring it, the wastegate is actually opening and closing quite a bit, keeping the maximum boost right at 5psi.

You are not sure whether your actuator opens at 5 psi or 10psi. This is the first thing you need to figure out. You can use a pump to test this. A bike pump, basketball/football pump, air mattress pump, any of these will work, though the smaller the pump the better. One of those mini football pumps is probably the best. Hook the pump up to the wastegate vacuum source w/ a vacuum line. Put a T in the lline and hook up your boost gauge. Make sure the line is not leaking anywhere. Pump slowly, and see what pressure the rod extends at.

A-ight, now you know what PSI the actuator opens at, and you want to adjust that PSI. You can only INCREASE the boost. You do this by making the wastegate vacuum line leak a little bit. The intake mani will see 8psi, but some of that pressure bleeds off, leaks, out of the vacuum line before it gets to the wastegate, so the wastegate still sees 5psi.

There are a couple ways to do this from free and kind of ghetto, to bling blang JDM flashing light bullshit

Free-- poke little pinholes in the vacuum source line. The more holes, the more it leaks, the higher the boost

china-man cheap- fish tank vacuum tees that have levers that open and close. $7 at petsmart
http://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=680238

cheap- Home depot HMT manual boost controller. Search, you will find a how to.

Flossin' - store bought manual boost controller

I wipe my ass with hundos- electric boost controller, MAD TITE yO!