I'm looking for some suggestions on how to keep the v-band clamp for my Grimmspeed EWG dump tube tight. While changing the oil earlier in the week, I noticed the dump tube was completely loose (able to move it by hand) and it was resting on the axle boot. I believe it's been like this since getting installed last fall. I tightened the v-band down so that it was no longer resting on the boot. I checked it out yesterday and it must have loosened up again. Has anyone else had this issue? (I have no idea why this image keeps getting posted upside down)
Uh, tighten it more I guess? lol. I guess just make sure it is fully tight and try rotating it by hand once it is tight. Otherwise if the bolt/nut is backing off, you could try some thread locker. But due to the high heat, you'd probably need to use the red loctite...but I'm not 100% sure off the top of my head of all the heat ranges for the thread locker compounds.
The v-band clamp should be a using a locking nut. Like this: You should not be able to spin the nut without tools. Assuming that is right, just tighten it down. Way down. Very tight.
Question about vbands actually...the vband on my ewg has an allen head bolt and a nut on the other side (non-locking actually). It looks like there is a slot/groove on the clamp itself to stop the nut from spinning while tightening the bolt with the allen wrench. But the slot isn't tight/small enough to hold the nut, but there is also barely enough room to fit an open ended 8mm wrench in there to hold the nut...which makes for a very frustrating experience lol. Am I missing something?
I just had tried tightening the Allen bolt since it's all I could get to. It seemed pretty tight. Any more and I was afraid I'd start stripping the head.
Thread locker should do the trick! If that doesn't solve the problem just contact GS and see what they can do. Mike
No, that's normal. The bolt/nut are not held captive by the collar. Although you could have the bolt going through backwards. One side you should be able to get a thin walled socket onto the nut, but if you put it in the other way you really can't get a tool onto the nut at all. It should be really tight. Usually it's basically bottoming out the clamp. I always do it with an allen key on one and and a ratchet on the nut. Plenty of leverage to get it tight.
Got under the car last night to try to tighten it down. The nut does seem to be held by the collar - you can tighten from the bolt side and the nut does not move. We tightened it down a lot - to the point where we were shaking the whole car by the dump tube and it was not moving. It felt solid. Drove it a few miles home and it still looked good. Drove a mile this morning and it's loose again, sitting on the axle
Is it a locking nut on there? The normal nut that comes with it is a locking nut and it has a flange on it so it will NOT hold in place within the collar. I don't have any real close in pics, but you can kind of make it out in this photo. Did you buy the parts new? It seems like someone may have swapped the locking nut with a non-locking version because it's a little easier to install...?
All the parts were new, but I'm not sure if the nut was swapped at the time of the install. I wish I would have looked or tried to take a photo but there isn't much for clearance. Maybe once it gets warm enough the v-band is expanding more and that's how it sinks down.
I'd take the clamp off, grind material off of the flat surfaces that are touching now so that you have more tightening travel. Or, get a new clamp. Its probably a tolerance issue with the flanges and/or the clamp.
It seems like the flange on the dump tube is smaller than the flange on the wastegate. We were going to try a new bolt with the same nut (bolt head was held in the v-band collar), but the nut is now junk. We put it on there again, but not really torqued down as much as we'd like because the bolt kept getting stripped. We also used a file to shave down the clamp a bit so that we could close it slightly more. I'll probably send an e-mail to Grimmspeed about the flange.
Same exact issue with mine- it's a tolerance issue with the flanges on the dump tube I believe. Even at full tight my dump tube would stil l move if I gave it some medium force
