Building a Boost Leak Tester: A DIY Project for Turbocharged Cars

With a turbocharged car, compressed air is forced into the engine to make it go faster. However, if there's a leak in the system, some of that compressed air is led out to the environment instead of being used by the engine. This can cause the car to run erratically and not produce its intended performance.

The author of this article has been experiencing boost issues with their 240 Turbocharged car and decided to take matters into their own hands. They set out to build a DIY boost leak tester, using readily available materials from Home Depot.

First, they visited Home Depot to purchase the necessary components for their project. These included a 2-inch plug, some five-minute epoxy, a 1.5 flexible coupling, and a compressor (which was not owned by the author, but could have been purchased instead of using a bike pump). The author measured the turbocharger's inlet hose and decided to use a 3-inch plug, as it was slightly larger than the original measurement.

To build their boost leak tester, the author began by drilling a hole in the plug. They then applied a mix of epoxy to the plug and held it in place for about 30 minutes to allow the adhesive to set. The author also applied a lip around the edge of the plug to ensure a tight seal.

Next, the author attached the valve stem from a bike tube to the plug, as they didn't have an old tube available. They mixed another batch of epoxy and applied it liberally to the plug, making sure it was completely sealed. The author then held the plug in place until the epoxy had set.

The author's first attempt at attaching the plug to the turbocharger's inlet hose resulted in a failed installation, with the plug being placed on the wrong side of the valve stem. However, they were able to salvage the situation by cutting off the excess epoxy and reattaching the plug on the correct side.

With their boost leak tester complete, the author pressurized it at about 25 psi and checked for leaks. They found that the system was leaking near the blow-off valve, which they suspected might be the source of their boost issues.

Although the author's DIY boost leak tester may not have been perfect, it provided them with a temporary solution to their problem. They plan to use this experience as an opportunity to learn more about turbocharging and eventually upgrade their car's blow-off valve or replace the o-ring that was leaking.

Tips and Recommendations for Building Your Own Boost Leak Tester:

* Make sure to measure your turbocharger's inlet hose accurately, as incorrect measurements can result in a poor-fitting plug.

* Use high-quality materials, such as epoxy and silicone-based sealants, to ensure a tight seal on your boost leak tester.

* Consider purchasing a compressor or renting one from Home Depot instead of using a bike pump.

* If you're not comfortable building your own boost leak tester, consider consulting with a professional mechanic or turbocharger specialist.

Common Issues and Solutions for Turbocharged Cars:

* Boost leaks can be caused by a variety of factors, including worn-out o-rings, loose connections, and damaged blow-off valves. Regular maintenance and inspections can help prevent these issues.

* When experiencing boost issues, try checking the blow-off valve and o-ring for signs of wear or damage.

* If you're unable to find the source of the leak using a DIY test, consider consulting with a professional mechanic or turbocharger specialist.

Conclusion:

Building a DIY boost leak tester may seem like a daunting task, but with the right materials and a bit of patience, it's possible to create a functional solution for your turbocharged car. The author's experience has provided them with a valuable learning opportunity, and they hope that their project will help others who are struggling with similar issues.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthere's a snake in the water it's our second day here at the beach if you watched yesterday's video you already know that we're gonna hang out and go in the water and film with waterproof cameras and stuff I'm actually so excited right now I never go to the beach because it's so much work we're covered in sunscreen head-to-toe so while Adam takes an F we have an aggressive game of Frisbee going on in my family I know you're sleeping but someone wants to meet you or they just they just walked on the beach to come meet you you slept for about 25 minutes yeah I filmed a lot of footage yeah I don't know if that's good these people want to meet you so I close my eyes for like two seconds and then Nicole ran off and played frisbee we should crush them this is Adam meaning as Nicki Minaj always says let's go to the beach each let's go get a wave words to live by guys every time we come here we go to this ice cream place and there's the craziest long line there so we waited for it to rain and we're gonna go get ice cream in the rain Oh Nicole and I came up with a really cool challenge for you guys ready see if you can like this video with your nose now it might be easier for some people and harder for some people because I guess if you have a phone you can just like hit it but if you have a mouse you might have to me my camera's name is all foggy it's so humid here a FRA family car check I love this interior the only thing cooler than this Porsche is the fact that it has the same LMS is me and they're actually real for once this ice-cream looks like play-doh and it's actually just vanilla ice cream Cookie Monster and Michaels doesn't make sweets you poop yeah so I know that first thing we'll check up with you later and I got Cookie Monster with gummy worms KitKat whip cream hot fudge and a cherry mint chocolate chip half peanut butter chocolate fudge with Twix hot fudge peanut butter sauce and half banana that's part of ice cream the fact that makes you keep them blue let's take a bun Michael zoom on the camera when you're filming focus he shut out Pretty Little Liars yeah so we just played a super fun game of Tokyo Drift no Tokyo dragons no Kino Tokyo it's a sick board game that I actually had a really fun time playing and I also just learned that Nicole's brothers are now my brothers-in-law I never realized that so welcome to the family guys today was cool but it was kind of like a chilled day so I'm gonna combine it with footage from the next day so she has a much more of a positive connotation than a wash of the day like you tweeted I mean like video wise like the footage this morning that I filmed on the GoPro I thought the audio is gonna be way better Nikko what so for the Frog sad day leaving the beach fun weekend though it's not over now we are headed to Ormond Beach skate park the park that got rained out in the last video so I'm excited to go about it it's so crowded you're gonna do our best to get clips I was trying this line for ever or I do a double-take hard web and then do like a rock fakie at this ledge and I kept beginning the Heartless no problem but for some reason I just don't know how to fakie so I kept like missing the ledge and got really frustrated you know we're just gonna make this a clip I'm gonna roll around the grasses with bunny John and I are gonna try 620 yeah 600 your first one I saw we're head now now it's really fun I'm just not good at putting up with a floor to heat super fun park though I wish you got it a little bit closer look at this massive dead spider my see you holy crap since I got a 240 all fixed up I've been dying to give Nicole ride cuz she hasn't ever really ridden in it when it's fast and what do you have right there no yeah she's gonna try to drive it - I actually let the car warm up for a while it just died because the idols really probably of tired we like reenacted a scene from one of the Fast and Furious movies I was trying to get the girl off the side of my consoles like Nicole got this to hold this dear well I'm like like trying to pull one of those electric things off what up how do you write man take it easy if you have another booze leak really intent me as I I knew that I got another person even the other night gosh now I get to find it with you because you're never gonna get to ride in the 1940 don't get a two-party it takes any turbo car doesn't I know I did remember I said when I take that for us do you remember what I said I was like I feel like I got another boost like after that poll 10 psi right now me having a persons yeah I swear that this cars broken more than it's fixed we're gonna go get some climbing gear the 240 could use a new air filter so you know just gonna go big or go home look guys they have a ladder that matches my frame I might just have to get it Nicoll hundred layers of ladder challenge they sell in tapes and they sell turbos at Lowe's who would have known Adam insisted that we didn't need a car and now he's stealing someone's cart my cute little toes my feet are so pale in comparison to my legs what the heck did I marry I hope I hope you get kicked out got approached by a fan and his family who saw the 240 in the parking lot his name was AJ those are my initials AJ yeah he came in two loads with his family just to fine it so we've been recognized a lot lady lately and it's really awesome that everyone's coming up to us and being confident approaching us it's not awkward it's not awkward don't feel uncomfortable if you see us say hi ask for a picture or stickers if I have my purse always give you stickers we're telling her how he got three filters because we own three houses and choose an AW Nicole's trying to steal stuff they got the lowest prices we don't really know if the ladders gonna fit I don't know Nicole we got it see this is why we don't have a roll cage guys oh look I found a wallet funny thing is there's like a nine out of ten chance of me leaving in here yeah yeah you don't just like me number five we made it back home and Abuelita as ray someday I'll get to drive a doubt 240 never heard of it I understand that there's a lot of you guys on the channel that might not know that much about cars so to make things really easy to understand essentially with a turbo car you have compressed air that gets forced into the engine and it makes it go faster when you have a boost leak there's a leak somewhere in the system so that compressed air isn't all going into the engine and some of its being led out to the environment the car goes left faster and it runs really weird conveniently I already have a boost leak tester that I made that I can just hook up and pressurize the system with I actually filmed the entire process of making this little thing and was supposed to be a video that was back in April and I never wound up finding the boots leak and I just got really aggravated I never uploaded the footage so here's a throwback to April of this year and I'll insert that footage of building this little thing now I've been having boost issues with the 240 so I ran to Home Depot and we're gonna build the boots leak tester we need a two-inch plug cup some five-minute epoxy to buy one and a half flexible coupling this is just gonna sit in here like this I'm also gonna grab one of these just in case so the articles on line that I've read say two inches but I measured it and it was two and a half after the math before it was three so if I can do it before the math I'm gonna try three if not use the two on the turbo personally I don't have the compressor so I have to get one of these crappy little things it's only 60 bucks there's probably comedian to have a compressor around instead of a bike pump of course I took Nicole's Miata question is will the compressor fit in the trunk there's a loose line this is just banging around sorry lunge Pitts wasn't me so I went outside and checked in the two-inch is the correct one so the first thing I'm gonna do is drill hole in it and then put the valve stem from a bike tube be nice if I had an old tube to use but I'm gonna have to waste a new tube sorry Matt stable I'm really dumb making a mess you've gotta hold it fits r.i.p to this beautiful new bike tube watch this right on here got a mix that stuff it's apply liberally I've never used epoxy before so it seems pretty self-explanatory in this case the more the better cuz we want to get a really really good seal that was will be leaking boost out of our booths leak duster I'm so not good at this I'm gonna put on this lip here to make sure we get the best seal I let the poxy set for about 30 minutes now we are going to go throw this thing on wow I'm so dumb I put it in the wrong side no damn it so I put the valve in this side and it's supposed to be in this side because this either needs to go on moral the story I'm an idiot now I'm gonna try to peel this thing off and hope that I can salvage this and not have to go get another one of course they do so much epoxy haha so I'm going to cut this a little bit and put it in the other side and we should be good to go I don't think very much sometimes often just gotta cut it a smaller square so fits see I got mixed more plastic I got two phones one for Nicole and one for my friends because I'm a baller shot caller whereas not too big put a little epoxy on the top to displace they've let that dry and we'll give it a bit I'm gonna take the intake off the turbo inlet hose way too easy take the math plug off I'd add a little adapter on because the turbo in let's actually bigger now that it used to be such that some compressed air right in here it goes right in through the system and we should be able to hear boots leak I pressurize it at about 25 psi it seems like it's leaking by my blow-off valve if you can hear it definitely not an ideal fix but probably gonna RTV it until I get a chance to either get a new o-ring or new blow-off valve whatever I need to get this working right how easy it is to make a mess super ghetto is probably I can't even work but I really have much choice at this point well I may have a subpar drift car but I do know that I have the best wife these mashed potatoes pure ivory this corn pure gold if you like the like button hit the like button if you subscribe to subscribe button and subscribe to the subscribe button but all jokes aside drop a comment below we actually read all of them and try to respond to quite a few during the first day or two that the videos uploaded comments fun and some spares I I'm curious to see if that solves the break-up guys we dothere's a snake in the water it's our second day here at the beach if you watched yesterday's video you already know that we're gonna hang out and go in the water and film with waterproof cameras and stuff I'm actually so excited right now I never go to the beach because it's so much work we're covered in sunscreen head-to-toe so while Adam takes an F we have an aggressive game of Frisbee going on in my family I know you're sleeping but someone wants to meet you or they just they just walked on the beach to come meet you you slept for about 25 minutes yeah I filmed a lot of footage yeah I don't know if that's good these people want to meet you so I close my eyes for like two seconds and then Nicole ran off and played frisbee we should crush them this is Adam meaning as Nicki Minaj always says let's go to the beach each let's go get a wave words to live by guys every time we come here we go to this ice cream place and there's the craziest long line there so we waited for it to rain and we're gonna go get ice cream in the rain Oh Nicole and I came up with a really cool challenge for you guys ready see if you can like this video with your nose now it might be easier for some people and harder for some people because I guess if you have a phone you can just like hit it but if you have a mouse you might have to me my camera's name is all foggy it's so humid here a FRA family car check I love this interior the only thing cooler than this Porsche is the fact that it has the same LMS is me and they're actually real for once this ice-cream looks like play-doh and it's actually just vanilla ice cream Cookie Monster and Michaels doesn't make sweets you poop yeah so I know that first thing we'll check up with you later and I got Cookie Monster with gummy worms KitKat whip cream hot fudge and a cherry mint chocolate chip half peanut butter chocolate fudge with Twix hot fudge peanut butter sauce and half banana that's part of ice cream the fact that makes you keep them blue let's take a bun Michael zoom on the camera when you're filming focus he shut out Pretty Little Liars yeah so we just played a super fun game of Tokyo Drift no Tokyo dragons no Kino Tokyo it's a sick board game that I actually had a really fun time playing and I also just learned that Nicole's brothers are now my brothers-in-law I never realized that so welcome to the family guys today was cool but it was kind of like a chilled day so I'm gonna combine it with footage from the next day so she has a much more of a positive connotation than a wash of the day like you tweeted I mean like video wise like the footage this morning that I filmed on the GoPro I thought the audio is gonna be way better Nikko what so for the Frog sad day leaving the beach fun weekend though it's not over now we are headed to Ormond Beach skate park the park that got rained out in the last video so I'm excited to go about it it's so crowded you're gonna do our best to get clips I was trying this line for ever or I do a double-take hard web and then do like a rock fakie at this ledge and I kept beginning the Heartless no problem but for some reason I just don't know how to fakie so I kept like missing the ledge and got really frustrated you know we're just gonna make this a clip I'm gonna roll around the grasses with bunny John and I are gonna try 620 yeah 600 your first one I saw we're head now now it's really fun I'm just not good at putting up with a floor to heat super fun park though I wish you got it a little bit closer look at this massive dead spider my see you holy crap since I got a 240 all fixed up I've been dying to give Nicole ride cuz she hasn't ever really ridden in it when it's fast and what do you have right there no yeah she's gonna try to drive it - I actually let the car warm up for a while it just died because the idols really probably of tired we like reenacted a scene from one of the Fast and Furious movies I was trying to get the girl off the side of my consoles like Nicole got this to hold this dear well I'm like like trying to pull one of those electric things off what up how do you write man take it easy if you have another booze leak really intent me as I I knew that I got another person even the other night gosh now I get to find it with you because you're never gonna get to ride in the 1940 don't get a two-party it takes any turbo car doesn't I know I did remember I said when I take that for us do you remember what I said I was like I feel like I got another boost like after that poll 10 psi right now me having a persons yeah I swear that this cars broken more than it's fixed we're gonna go get some climbing gear the 240 could use a new air filter so you know just gonna go big or go home look guys they have a ladder that matches my frame I might just have to get it Nicoll hundred layers of ladder challenge they sell in tapes and they sell turbos at Lowe's who would have known Adam insisted that we didn't need a car and now he's stealing someone's cart my cute little toes my feet are so pale in comparison to my legs what the heck did I marry I hope I hope you get kicked out got approached by a fan and his family who saw the 240 in the parking lot his name was AJ those are my initials AJ yeah he came in two loads with his family just to fine it so we've been recognized a lot lady lately and it's really awesome that everyone's coming up to us and being confident approaching us it's not awkward it's not awkward don't feel uncomfortable if you see us say hi ask for a picture or stickers if I have my purse always give you stickers we're telling her how he got three filters because we own three houses and choose an AW Nicole's trying to steal stuff they got the lowest prices we don't really know if the ladders gonna fit I don't know Nicole we got it see this is why we don't have a roll cage guys oh look I found a wallet funny thing is there's like a nine out of ten chance of me leaving in here yeah yeah you don't just like me number five we made it back home and Abuelita as ray someday I'll get to drive a doubt 240 never heard of it I understand that there's a lot of you guys on the channel that might not know that much about cars so to make things really easy to understand essentially with a turbo car you have compressed air that gets forced into the engine and it makes it go faster when you have a boost leak there's a leak somewhere in the system so that compressed air isn't all going into the engine and some of its being led out to the environment the car goes left faster and it runs really weird conveniently I already have a boost leak tester that I made that I can just hook up and pressurize the system with I actually filmed the entire process of making this little thing and was supposed to be a video that was back in April and I never wound up finding the boots leak and I just got really aggravated I never uploaded the footage so here's a throwback to April of this year and I'll insert that footage of building this little thing now I've been having boost issues with the 240 so I ran to Home Depot and we're gonna build the boots leak tester we need a two-inch plug cup some five-minute epoxy to buy one and a half flexible coupling this is just gonna sit in here like this I'm also gonna grab one of these just in case so the articles on line that I've read say two inches but I measured it and it was two and a half after the math before it was three so if I can do it before the math I'm gonna try three if not use the two on the turbo personally I don't have the compressor so I have to get one of these crappy little things it's only 60 bucks there's probably comedian to have a compressor around instead of a bike pump of course I took Nicole's Miata question is will the compressor fit in the trunk there's a loose line this is just banging around sorry lunge Pitts wasn't me so I went outside and checked in the two-inch is the correct one so the first thing I'm gonna do is drill hole in it and then put the valve stem from a bike tube be nice if I had an old tube to use but I'm gonna have to waste a new tube sorry Matt stable I'm really dumb making a mess you've gotta hold it fits r.i.p to this beautiful new bike tube watch this right on here got a mix that stuff it's apply liberally I've never used epoxy before so it seems pretty self-explanatory in this case the more the better cuz we want to get a really really good seal that was will be leaking boost out of our booths leak duster I'm so not good at this I'm gonna put on this lip here to make sure we get the best seal I let the poxy set for about 30 minutes now we are going to go throw this thing on wow I'm so dumb I put it in the wrong side no damn it so I put the valve in this side and it's supposed to be in this side because this either needs to go on moral the story I'm an idiot now I'm gonna try to peel this thing off and hope that I can salvage this and not have to go get another one of course they do so much epoxy haha so I'm going to cut this a little bit and put it in the other side and we should be good to go I don't think very much sometimes often just gotta cut it a smaller square so fits see I got mixed more plastic I got two phones one for Nicole and one for my friends because I'm a baller shot caller whereas not too big put a little epoxy on the top to displace they've let that dry and we'll give it a bit I'm gonna take the intake off the turbo inlet hose way too easy take the math plug off I'd add a little adapter on because the turbo in let's actually bigger now that it used to be such that some compressed air right in here it goes right in through the system and we should be able to hear boots leak I pressurize it at about 25 psi it seems like it's leaking by my blow-off valve if you can hear it definitely not an ideal fix but probably gonna RTV it until I get a chance to either get a new o-ring or new blow-off valve whatever I need to get this working right how easy it is to make a mess super ghetto is probably I can't even work but I really have much choice at this point well I may have a subpar drift car but I do know that I have the best wife these mashed potatoes pure ivory this corn pure gold if you like the like button hit the like button if you subscribe to subscribe button and subscribe to the subscribe button but all jokes aside drop a comment below we actually read all of them and try to respond to quite a few during the first day or two that the videos uploaded comments fun and some spares I I'm curious to see if that solves the break-up guys we do\n"