The Project Pad

So Im rebuilding my k24 for smog purposes. I got the bolts holding the turbine housing loose. I can not for the life of me get the housing off. The nuts on the turbine housing hit in certain areas, I've read some guys continue to run them out and it helps separate the housing from the center section...anyone know any tricks?

hammer to jar it loose, then rotate to get the nuts off.

BFH and heat...

Oxyacetlyene torch, go around and around until it is orange, lift the turbo out of the housing.

So I rebuilt the turbo, it definitely needed it. I got everything back together, no oil from exhaust on cold start! Great success. So I was cleaning things up and noticed both of my knock sensors have cracks through the middle. Any thoughts if this is contributing to my boost issue? It will boost to around 5 or 6 psi then jumps to 10 psi, then as I approach 5k RPM it falls to 5 psi again.... any thoughts?

Knock sensors are a (cheap) kind of preventative maintenance.

Do it.

Nice work on the rebuild.

Not sure if the knock sensors are the cause of your boost issues but considering how sensitive the sensors are and their need to be torqued to the block to an exact spec I'd suspect they aren't reading right. If you can log their voltage values you'll see how they're reading at lower boost levels... if the cracks are messing up the sensors then they should be off throughout. Or I guess you could loosen them a hair and see if that helps but, personally, I'd replace them - or at least put some duct tape over the cracks