Blown turbo cause of bad motor? WTF Now?

[Shane@DBPerformance]

When something goes through the turbo and does that kind of damage, it often blows the seals also since the shaft gets so tweaked when the wheel slams into whatever.

Does the compressor side look as bad? I would think that if all the damage was caused by up and down shaft play from blown seals or a bad build, then the compressor wheel would be eaten up also.

I have seen turbos that look almost that bad work fine also. I made 460whp with a turbo that looked like that, except for that one really bad fin of yours. I pulled a turbo off a car once that had a good sized nut logged in the exhaust wheel, I had no idea where that came from. Which came first, the chicken or the egg is your problem. 20Gs are usually almost bullet proof.

Any chance you had an EGT probe that fell apart? Or were you running too low of timing too much from a timing belt being a tooth off, base timing too low, lots of knock retarding the timing under boost, too much use of anti-lag or whatever and ended up melting the turbine wheel.

[Outlaw1]

I was kinda fuzzy on what exactly happened in the first place so I pulled the first post. After reading that, I'd say something broke and took the turbo out. The "LOUD blowoff" sound you heard was probably something breaking and heading into the turbo. Also, I doubt the noise you heard when doing a boost leak test was air going past the oil ring on the turbo shaft. It was probably oil going past your rings in a cylinder that had some intake valves open.

Originally Posted by howslowcanyougo

Believe it or not I was driving my Godson to Church this morning and boosting a little bit cause we were running late, and then suddenly I heard a LOUD blowoff sound except my foot wasn't off the gas! Then the car started stumbeling, running slow and weak for the next mile or so to our Church. I thought that I just lost a IC clamp or just caught a large boost leak, but my wife said I was starting to blow blue smoke? I got the car back home, and gave it a once over and couldnt see any clear boost leaks or couplers-clamps hanging off etc. I took the intake off to start a boost leak test and checked for shaft play and the damm 90 day old $1000 turbo is loose as a goose, with the shaft play is now wobbly as hell. I really did wonder about the integrity of this turbo from day one as whenever you'd run a boostleak test you could here air bubbling in the oil pan as it blew by the seals. I just spent most of Sat finally installing the PLXM300, and finally was ready for a nice tune, and now this crap! Anyway, that's the emotional vent, here's the real question: Has anyone else had any issues with Slowboy's Turbo's? and or service from "Crager?" Damm I really hope they do the righ thing here and at least repair it? Think they will they stand by their work?

Comments welcome....?

TIA.....Howie

[Outlaw1]

Originally Posted by ecoli

When something goes through the turbo and does that kind of damage, it often blows the seals also since the shaft gets so tweaked when the wheel slams into whatever.

I think the majority of the people (excluding yourself, ecoli) have a misconception that the turbo has a standard seal like you'd see on an engine somewhere. This "seal" gets blamed for lots of turbo problems. It's kinda hard to visualize, but a typical turbo shaft is supported by two bearings and has two oil control rings, a bearing and oil ring on the compressor side and a bearing and oil ring on the exaust side. That's basically the whole turbo as far as moving parts go. If the bearings are still tight and keep the shaft spinning on a single plane, the oil rings typically don't let much oil get past them. They don't really "wear out". Now if trash goes through the oil system causing the bearings to wear, bearings get sloppy, the shaft wobbles around and the oil rings don't have a constant surface to seal against. Oil will spew past them. There's not really many parts inside a turbo to mess up. Keep fresh clean oil to them and don't shut the engine off (shutting the oiling system down) while the turbo is spinning 100,000 rpms and your turbo should have a long happy life.