Standard Bearing Vs. Dual Ball Bearing

[SquackDiddy]

whats the difference between a standard bearing turbo and a dual ball bearing? is there a ball bearing? how does it work? why is it better?

[1ViciousGSX]

Standard turbos use a thrust bearing design and BB turbos use dual ball bearings to support the center shaft.

There is a difference for the better with a BB turbo. Faster spool up, quicker response back on boost between shifts, longer life, ability to run a larger turbo with less lag than the same or slightly smaller thrust bearing turbo, etc.

The only downsides I can think of are cost (more expensive) and you have to run clean (filtered) oil thru it at lower oil pressure (from the cylinder head).

Some will say they wouldn't run one over a thrust bearing turbo, but if they had their choice without having to pay the difference, they would go BB .

[Halon]

I have always heard about how great BB turbos are. I had never seen one in real person, until a month or so ago. I was at RnR and he had a dual bb turbo laying there. I was anxious to spin the compressor wheel because i had heard about how they just keep spinning and spin real easy. Well to my surprise, it didn't spin anything like I thought. Just kinda spun for a second or 2 and stopped. I was kinda shocked. I thought it was gunna just spin so easily, but it hardly felt much better then my standard 50 trim felt. But I dunno, I have no actual test results or numbers, so my word isn't the best thing to go off of.

[CVD]

Without the bearing being supported by a film of oil it wont work the way it is supposed to.

If you take your intake off when the turbo is on the car, rev it up and turn off the car right away it will usually stay spinning for a while.

[SquackDiddy]

whats the smallest size bb turbo? because the info on these things sound amazing.

[SquackDiddy]

also who sells them? and what brand?

[Shane@DBPerformance]

There are tiny BB turbos, smaller than you would ever want to run on a DSM. The best dual BB turbos are the Garrett and Innovative lines. The Turbonetics ceramic BB isn't all that great. The times that dual BB makes the biggest difference is between shifts. It isn't a huge difference on initial spoolup, but between shifts the turbo keeps spinning fast and comes back online quicker. A lot of the quick spool up these newer gen turbos comes from other things too besides just the dual BB. Even a non-BB GT center section will help spool up compared to the old center sections. The big difference though is the GT exhaust wheels. They are much smaller than what was needed before with the old T3 turbine wheel, but they still flow a lot of exhaust. Since, you can run a smaller GT turbine wheel to get the power you want, it spools faster due to the much smaller sized exhaust wheel. For example the GT30 exhaust wheel that is used on turbos like the big FP3065 is actually smaller in size than a T3 Stage 3 wheel.

[SquackDiddy]

i see. so there are bb turbos with the mitsubishi turbine housing? because that will be very convenient.

[Shane@DBPerformance]

Yes, there are some hybrid ones like the FP3065/3055.