Re: BOV placement
OK, let me clear up something about BOV's POV's, intake bypass valves, whatever you want to call them. Here's what they do:
They dump boost when; A) intake backfire, or overboost. B) throttle plate shuts durring boosted condition, like gear shifts.
The diaphram line is plumbed into the intake manifold after the throttle plate, when the down stream side of the throttle plate goes to vacuum and the up stream side is under boost, the valve opens and dumps boost. This would otherwise overboost the and, no shit here- stop the turbo from spinning and in some cases make it spin backwards- the compressor side acting like the turbine side driving the turbo. When you do a hot gearshift, the BOV opens, the turbo keeps spinning; then you open the throttle again for the next gear and the BOV closes, boosted air suddenly blasts through the throttlebody making the next gear feel real torquey, like a huge flywheel. This is why turbo engines benifit from lightning fast shifts. Or automatic transmissions...
You always want your BOV mounted as close to the throttlebody as possible, NOT close to the turbo. Your boosted air should NEVER change direction in the intake tract. This will cause a noticable hesitation because the boosted air has to stop, turn around, get dumped out of the BOV; when the throttle opens back up, the air has to again change direction and head towards the cylinders. You want to make use of the pressure wave that the BOV causes, not waste it.
Turbo lag is usually looked at as a negative aspect of turbocharging, not in drag racing. Here's why:
It takes a while to spool up the turbo to 100,000 RPM, it takes just as long to slow it down. If you have a manual trans, a BOV and you shift like a crack addict, you don't have to spool the turbo up for every gear shift. It makes my little 1.8L Subaru engine feel like a big block when upshifting.
The BOV is usually vented back to the intake side of the turbo, downstream of the MAF, it is after all, metered air. If you dump it to the air, you will see a brief rich condition. I vent mine to atmosphere in my rally car because it gives me a nice exhaust backfire with a flame. This jolts the turbo up in RPM for a second while I shift- good for power, bad for turbo. Who cares, it's racing right???
-Chuck-