Found the cause of my boost issues

[wintertidenz]

Went out and checked the piping just before after putting the battery back in the car.

Looked at the T join and went hmm that's not quite right, so replaced that... still wasn't going in properly and noticed a hard piece of piping on the pipe going to the wastegates.
Thought 'great, the previous owners just put the red tipped pipe on another piece round the wrong way' so snipped the piece of pipe off where the hard bit was and joined the rest of it up.

Decided to cut the pipe open to check out the restrictor, and found this!

50223
50224

The previous owners had an affinity for half arsing stuff, hence why the boost solenoid and FPR solenoid were missing when I got the car, along with a few other things. Guess they didn't know how to reconnect it all after removing their EBC and just jammed a piece of metal piping in there to seal it off!!!

[MarkSanne]

WTF?!! good find though!

[Davezj]

When you fit a ebc or MBC you should disconnect the boost pipe to the factory boost solenoid and blank it off.
The other pipe going to the boost pressure is intercepted and the MBC, ebc goes inline with this pipe.
So it looks like that piece of metal blocking the pipe is from when the pipe was blanked off. Normally a bolt is used to blank the pipe off by screwing it in to the end of the pipe.
So when removing a MBC or ebc you will have to remove the blank from one of the pipes coming from the wastegate T piece

[wintertidenz]

Originally when I got the car though, the two nipples on the stock intake pipe were joined to each other and the FPR fed a vacuum source straight from the TB. The boost and FPR solenoids were completely disconnected, most likely to avoid a CEL.

Instead of blanking off the return hose for the solenoid though, they blanked off the wastegate pipe - this is what this was from. The return pipe to the low-pressure side of the intake (pre-turbo) had a bolt in it which I replaced with a joiner for vac piping when I redid it all the correct way.

I suspect they did this just to make the car boost semi-normally when they sold it.

[Davezj]

the boost piping can be a bit of a pain in that area, as it is conveniently all coloured black.