well my turbo is toase again... only this time it wasnt my fault :beatyoass: I went to see a friend about 2 hours east of here over the weekend and saturday we decided to go get something to eat at the local chinees place, so my friend asked if he could drive so I said sure being the nice guy that I am, on the home he redlines it in first and runs it at its top end most of the way back quickly pulls in the drive way and shuts it down turbo screaming as its spooling down smoking the bearings :shoothead: so I try to nurse it back on the 150ish mile trip home and it starts pouring smoke from the tail pipes and I get stopped by a state trooper........ he comes upto the window and asks me how I'm doing of all things..... I tell him obviously not very good... and he starts asking me what I was doing driving the car smoking like it was, where I was going, where I was coming from, insurance, license all that then he says that I nearly caused a head on collision. so he walks back to his car sits there for a while and comes back with a ticket.... $96 for "excessive smoke" so he tells us that the car wasnt going any further and that we had to have someone come get us. g/f calls her dad and he agrees to come drag us back the 100 or so miles to home. took us 5 hours to make a 2 hour trip and $300 in fines and repairs to fix something that my so called best friend screwed up. :grinno:
Well then he should pay for it. Thats why I generally dont let my friends drive my car.
Um,aren't you going to make him cough up the cash to repair it?
he said he would but I dont see it happening he likes his beer too much......told me to get the new turbo and let him know how much it was and he'd send me a M/O
Time to go repo man on his ass.
I only have one friend who I will let drive my cars and I'm the only one he lets drive his trucks.
Scott
I thought I could trust him with it :(
Well,now you know.Make him fork over the cash.If he's really your good friend,there's no doubt he will.Otherwise.................
He needs to pay up....and you should NEVER give him your keys again...
I wont........ the state trooper that stopped us left just left us there... I thought that their job was to keep people safe :dunno:
Nah man they are just money making machines for the state. If the REALLY didn't want you to drive a car when it was smoking, then they would throw you in jail for two months and charge you $5,000.
They just nickel and dime us to death with these tickets because it's worth millions to the state. There really is no other reason. I mean seriously. "Excessive smoke?" Hilarious.
Hooooly .
That's amazing. Were you riding in the car with him? Did he not understand that a turbo has to cool down at idle?
That's a terrible situation, man.
I got stopped for excessive smoke years ago driving a '79 Malibu that had a catalytic converter that was oil soaked(was swapped from another car with a blown engine)... Of course it didn't smoke till it got hot and I was a couple of miles from home. He did let me go but said he could cite me for the smoke... Luckly I wasn't too far from a fellow I knew auto shop, so I headed over there and out behind the shop I kept gunnin' the piss out of it, till the smoke cleared up...
Wow, That sucks man. Your friend obviously ain't very familiar with turbos, sounds like he doesn't have much respect for your car or belongings either. Now you got to tear it all down agian and get another turbo and i sure hope your friend will be paying for all of it or atleast a large chunk of it. Good luck, and lets hope you get her back on the road soon man.
Why didn't you tell him to start the car back up? It takes about five minutes for the turbo to quit spooling, in that time you could have had the oil pressure back up and lubricating the bearings until it settled back to an easy idle.
Just a thought.
Sorry about your luck though man, that really blows. But it's a good opportunity to step up the turbo.
Does it really take that long?
:eek:
Not hardly... The Impellers create enough air drag that it will be completely stopped it a few seconds... But the heat soak can burn the oil on the bearings causing carbon buildup and dry bearings at next startup..
A turbo does need a few minutes of idling after a hard run to dissapate the heat, sounds that that one was toast when he pulled in with it...
Sure. Depends on a lot of things, like how fast it was turning when the engine was shut off, etc. But yeah five minutes is about right for an old IHI or T-3 after pretty normal driving.
Most modern (ceramic / ball bearing) turbochargers will go a lot longer than that. Turbo timers will usually run for about ten minutes or so.
I always let the '86 idle for a minimum of two minutes after driving it normally. If I'm hard on it, I'll let it idle for five minutes or so.
I once cranked the hell out of it when I was having a bad day. I was WOT most of the time, actually.
I let it idle for about 10-15 minutes after that. The T3 in my car is in fantastic shape. It doesn't smoke at all and there is virtually zero shaft play.
I'd like to find a way to run an auxillary oil pump after shutting off the engine. That way the turbo gets fresh oil as it cools down.
I always wondered if an oil accumulator could be used for that purpose. Here's Moroso's product. It's designed to do the exact opposite (pre-lube the engine), but I bet it could be used to hold pressurized oil while the engine is running and slowly let it out using a solenoid and a restrictor in the line, after the engine is shut off.
http://www.moroso.com/catalog/categorydisplay.asp?catcode=13600
the turbo was a two month old TO4E. its completely gone :( its literally pumping oil out of the compressor housing. the car is not drive-able I came up with the idea of bypassing the oil feed to pump the oil back in the engine but I couldnt come up with a place to let it back in. I know Shawn brought this up a while back but I really am not in the mood to go searching for the thread it was in. any ideas?
Or get a turbo timer. He should definitely be forking over some cash.
And people wonder why nobody but me is allowed to drive my car.
so whats this turbo timer and what does it do?
First off my wife doesn't have an ignition key to my car. Much less does any one else get to drive it. So kick his ass. And make him fork over the CASH ti fix it. A turbo timer keeps the car running after you shut if off for a set amount of time. Very handy on turbo cars.
looks like the car is going to get another TO4E for now or atleast until I can save some money for something worth putting on...
Isn't a TO4E a fairly large turbo to begin with? Where are you getting these turbos anyways?
Check out what they have over a turbo city. That is where I got my t3/t4 hybrid wasn't bad on price and I've been running it a total of 3 years. I can't say that I'm nice to it all the time but it still works great and I haven't had any problems.
I've been getting them from ebay pretty cheap but I dont think I want to go that route any more but then I only have about $300 to spend on another turbo. any ideas? I'm set up for a T3 with a 3" inlet, 5 bolt , and internal wastegate
One hard run and one hot shutoff shouldnt kill a turbo. Most everyone that attended CatJam last year will attest to how hard i ran my car, and no-one notice, but i hardly let it idle. The turbo was killed by something getting past my air filter, nothing to do with the bearings. Id look more into getting a factory T3 or another IHI for the time being, because i think those Ebay turbos are the culprit more than your buddy beating on it.
5 minutes to spool down?! HA! I have had turbo cars with the intake off running, shut the car off, and in less than 5 seconds, they stopped spinning. Turbo timer's running for 10 minutes? Since when? Mine stops at 3 minutes max.
What i did when i blew my turbo, since i knew it was 100% toast, i went to advance auto, bought a coupler and plug. I threaded the coupler onto the oil feed fitting, and the plug on the coupler. The oil doesnt need to go back down to the return, you can just plug it.
Then your bearings are junk.
And so are yours.
found this, http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Garrett-t3-t4-turbo-gt35r-gt30r-turbonetics_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ107058QQihZ016QQitemZ260055799486QQrdZ1 I'll probably get flamed for it though.....
I guess my brand new SC50 was junk.
How much experience do you really have with turbo cars?
5 mins is a joke, 1 or maybe 2 TOPS in ideal conditions.
is there any way to connect a V-band turbo to the stock pipe without making any changes to the pipe? maybe some kind of adapter?
those cheap ebay turbo's are known for being . No offense I dont think it was your friends fault really.
I guess you didnt read the whole post then... he wasnt nice to it at all...
Were you in the car with him? How could you let it happen? Grow some balls.
Did you end up winning your turbo? Honestly man... if you need your wheels and it gets you back on the road... **** it buy an e-bay cheepie and go easy on it till you can afford something better... or just save up for a v8 conversion ;)
sort of on topic here,,, has anyone ever explored the option of the standby diesel generators out there. The larger ones usually have turbos on them. Could this be a possible source of turbo's. I had my first up close/personal experience with them while over in iraq working around different stuff like this with the army.
no. I read the post and I am not trying to be mean at all man so please dont take this wrong. Do a search on turboford and the net in general about the scorge of cheap ebay turbo's. I have seen videos of them on the dyno literally blowing the heck up! you are lucky you just lost the oil seals. I have seen a video of a guy with his car running and the compressor blade would spin a few times and stick....spin and stick. Poorly machined housings. A little romp should not have killed a good turbo.
Let this be a lesson...if you took the money you spent on a cheap ebay turbo + the money spent if fines and the general hassle of downtime you could have bought a nice properly machined turbo to begin with that would still be working right now and have many miles to go
this is where I am now, installing a garret .60 .63 for the time being and saving for something better.
cool...like i said please dont be offended by my post. I am not here trying to be a smart ass. I will admit I have been tempted by those cheap turbo's even after all the I have seen. I tend to think "maybe I will get lucky" I once bought a rebuilt t3 center section and I used to for about 1k miles and took it off to use something else on that car. When I went to use the rebuilt T3 on something else...it smoked like a freight train :shrug:
I knew you were in the service, but I missed the going to Iraq part. I was also over there with the army, in Samarra. To answer your question, I think they are a bit big for our appplication. I'll have to look up the specs again, i think I might have a decent 10 manual around here I can consult on that. Plus, does it even have the like out cars have? They sure cant be anything to special, because I saw a lot of them burn up easy. Granted, these things were sort of working in turbocharger HELL (130 + degrees, constant running, ect ) I'll get back to you when I know more!:birdsmily:
i've always wondered the same thing.