Hey boys and girls, bumping this thread because (after shipping delays and unfortunately many financial delays), the boys and i got my shuenk K03+ on this weekend.
Took us about 11 hours, 7-8 hours if you dont count breaks and part store runs in the process haha.
Quick impression of the turbo, makes the stock k03 look like a little bitch, the turbo is yuge, chonky even. Depending on your bushing wear and softness, we had to unbolt the dogbone and let the motor hang to actually fit the thing, YMMV. The car sounds way different, very manly growl like a golf r with a tune and a downpipe, rather than a whiny 4 cylinder turbo, and running (legacy as of recent) APR stage 2 software on 91 octane nets about 260whp on the butt dyno. I have a CTS turbo outlet pipe, CTS turbo blowoff valve kit (ive blown 2 piston diverter valves, they cant handle more than like 14 psi, do yourself a favor), beluga racing 3" catless downpipe, beluga racing 2.5" catback exhaust, and pretty much everything else you can bolt on, except the stock airbox with a K&N panel filter.
The power band is extremely smooth, there is no on-off torque like the stock k03, and WalkerT's wastegate load numbers confirm my suspicion/gut feeling that theres about 60whp left on the table from how my car currently sits. The wastegate seriously doesnt even flutter. Stock k03 wastegates are loud as hell fluttering away to save their own lives, but feels smooth and like light work for the k03+ on stage 2 tunes.
The stock airbox could now be a bottleneck to the car, i will get an intake soon enough, but the stock airbox is fine for anything the stock turbo is going to request, power-wise. I have a snow performance stage 2 meth kit installed, meth is not currently hooked up and may never be with the throttle body location, who knows lol. But the boost gauge/meth controller is tapped at the manifold disconnect that is commonly used, and shows 22 psi peak, tapering and holding 13 psi all the way to redline in 4th gear, where arriving at redline immediately cuts boost requests down to 9psi or so. Once again YMMV depending on your software, and APR is now legacy as their new shareholding company removed their non-emissions compliant products from the market a few months ago.
Next steps for the car are an actual intake, and i am weighing options when it comes to tuning, as it seems like WalkerT has generated enough interest for the turbo that integrated engineering has taken a peak at this thread if i remember correctly reading through it. One possibility is finding a used accessport and seeing where dyno tuning can take us, my goals are 300whp in the most reliable way possible, as arizona ambient air temps get around 120-130 in the heat of summer. I also have a stock evo 9 intercooler that a buddy of mine pushed about 700hp through, so ill get it mocked up and mounted after an intake and see how it feels, as the stock intercooler is also now a possible bottleneck to the car, we shall see.
All in all, great product, can recommend 100%. Cleans up the rear of the motor and looks much nicer sitting back there than the k03. Definite performance potential, and with some testing, could even give an actual tangible reason to bolt things up to the car, that before only netted about 5 crank horsepower or so, resulting in the best power to performance bargain so far.