What’s the go with ZD30 turbo actuators?

So you want to get rid of the factory boost controller and you’re weighing up whether to go with a dawes valve or a positive pressure actuator

We’ve been seeing a fair few ZD30 owners and workshops fit aftermarket actuators, Save your money! They just don’t work as well as your factory actuator 99% of the time. It’s rare to see one that performs the same as the factory actuator no matter how you adjust it

Lets dive into some data

ZD30 vacuum turbo actuator mounted in car
zd30 positive pressure actuator vs zd30 vacuum actuator

Normal positive pressure actuator data

On the left you’ll see two boost curves. The red is with a standard vacuum actuator and a dawes valve, targeting 19psi. The green is a Positive pressure actuator out of the box

This is normally how we find positive pressure actuators to react, they tend to slowly build up to the desired boost, similar to having a tillix kit on your standard actuator with a slow spool rate

You might think that adjusting the actuator rod would help spool it up sooner but all it did in this case was move the whole curve up or down, to start the dyno run with the same boost as the stock actuator, it would be overspinning the turbo by the end of the run. Not ideal. For this reason, we don’t recommend aftermarket actuators, even for larger turbo applications

Conclusion

I hope this brief blog illustrates the difference between your factory actuator and a positive pressure unit. With a dawes valve, your factory actuator will do it’s job perfectly. Don’t waste money on an aftermarket actuator, we end up swapping them out the majority of the time

1 thoughts on “ZD30: Stock actuator or Positive pressure actuator?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *