Of the 3 i'd spend the money on the WG. first, Turbo second, BOV last.

 

This. I've seen a bad batch of Tials stick when hot, (brand new at the time series), they were an awesome company to deal with, completely owned up to the problem and helped immensely with the damages. And the engine wasn't cheap. Sometimes you get more than what you pay for. Will your cheap china company help you pay for an engine they helped destroy?

 

What about BOV's?

 

There's less of an issue if one fails. You'll know if it does and it's not likely to hurt anything, so I'd cheap away there first.

 

So what has been found to be a good value in BOV's?

 

i went cheap turbo (on3 7875 and now a billet VSR 7875) cheap wastegate and cheap blowoff valve. I'll give you my experience:

-turbos (both) have been great. Wouldnt hesitate to buy another of either.
-blowoff valve (ebay one, compact 25mm) leaked badly. Upon further inspection, the valve face was not even centered. chuck the valve up in may lathe and it was off pretty bad, so i refaced it and made it seal. you can skimp here because youll at worst get boost leaks.
-wastegate. well i hate to say it, but dont skimp here. you can maybe for a moth or so, but plan on getting a good one. I went through three cheap wastegates until i got one that I even felt remotely ok trying to run. The first two were junk, torn diaphragm new, twisted up diaphragm. the third one, had a brass valve stem but still had the valve get locked in it, spiking my boost....luckily I could tell right away and immediately let off. So now I have a tial to go in it.

 

My normal wastegate go to is JGS...in my opinion they are the best value.

I tried some chinese units on my boat project....the valve guide was not machined concentric or normal to the valve seat.....translation the valve sealing surface does not contact the valve seat around the entire circumference so the valve leaks internally when closed. For the application its on it isnt a big deal.....but for a car I can see it causing lazy spooling especially around boost threshold.

I also have overboost protection/cut enabled in my ECU if the wastegates decide to stick

 

What kind of boost cut do you have? Is It where it sees an overboost and dials the boost back via the wastegate, that won’t work because if the wastegate freezes up it loses control over it. Been there. It’ll control it somewhat if you put too light a spring or something like that. Now if your ecm can cut the rum on overboost, that would work. Just wanted to make you aware that a boost cut on a wastegate control ain’t gonna work with a frozen gate.

 

No boost control....simply hoses to below the diaphragm and pressure regulator to the top of the diaphragm

The overboost protection comes from a setting in the microsquirt ECU.....you can have it cut fuel or spark....I have it cut spark.

 

when you decide you want to get fancy, check out the cortex boost control. heck, i recommend checking it out anyways. Its simple, cheap and accurate and loaded with lots of useful features. Its the only one i could find that was affordable that does a TRUE boost by gear and not a guessing or timing based. heres a link to make it easy. https://sirhclabs.com/