When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
So, again, maybe it is possible? So the oil cooler thermostat opens at 205C. Then the oil cooler cools the oil down (some amount, obviously highly dependent on placement, size, air temp and flow), from there is goes back to the sandwich plate and then directly to the oil filter mounted out at your firewall. Then the oil gets directed through 40" of -4an (don't forget there is also an internal restrictor on the 6258 that'll slow things down). So that oil could be too cold and eventually lead to early turbo death.
This theory could be determined with an inline oil temp sensor just before the turbo.
Ryan's was out of balance but the shaft was good so the static pressure test showed everything was fine. When you got it up to speed the imbalance caused the vibration that kept the oil seal from sealing.
I would do nothing before sending it to Southeast Power Systems. They are a master distributor above all of the other Distributors and dealers for the efr turbos. Mike Franke is your point of contact there.
Holy ****, the local guy I reached out to last night was the right person to talk to. He just replied to my email, and completely blew my expectations out of the water.
here's the email I just received:
Nick,
Thank you for sending the information. I spoke with both David and Patrick at BorgWarner about the failure as well as read your statement. It appears that a lubrication issue presented itself or may still be present but we are here to help resolve the issue.
BorgWarner is a stand up company and will stand behind their product when they put something out that fails due manufacturing defects in material and or craftsmanship. As a data point, all EFR turbos are VSR balanced before they leave their factory. A VSR balancer will spin the assembled CHRA from 0-300K RPM depending on frame size, while pressurizing the bearing housing with oil. The VSR will measure out of balance and vibrations throughout the whole turbo’s operating RPM range and they correct the balance to within 0.05 grams of out of balance.
A CHRA will not pass VSR testing if there I any component with issues fresh from manufacturing. That does not mean a failure can’t happen after being assembled and put into service, but the majority of warrantable failures I send back to any manufacturer is (Bolts Backing out, High or Low Cycle Fatigue, Electronics Failure).
Some questions I would ask are these:
1. Is there any sharp bends in the oil drain tubing going into the pan
2. Is the oil drain going into the oil pan, above the oil table level (is the oil drain entrance into the pan, above the oil level line) ß just ran into this issue with another customer
3. Was silicone or a gasket used on the oil drain flange to turbo connection
4. Was the engine/turbo primed with oil before initial start
5. Do you still have any oil you can send off to Black Stone or Titan labs to measure fuel dilution?
Turbochargers are very simple devices but their tolerances are extremely tight and they need every system to work together in conjunction to properly work. They are very sensitive to oiling conditions meaning, correct oil weight, oil flow, oil draining, oil contamination ect. The secondary things they need are correct pressures for both the turbine and compressor side I.E proper back pressure and turbine flow as well as unrestricted air intake flow.
To give you some turbo science really quickly, the piston rings within a turbocharger for all intensive purpose are more gas seals than anything and do not really do much in the way of controlling oil leakage. They are a dynamic seal that once seating into the bearing housing bore or backplate of the compressor side, do not move while seated. They work off pressure differential. If the pressure in the center section is higher than the pressure in the end housings, oil moves across the turbine or compressor stage ring. Oil flow into the bearing housing is pressurized and then once through the bearings, is gravity drained out. There are a few oil slingers on the compressor side and built into the turbine wheel that work toward throwing oil away from the piston rings. Once the bearing housing becomes flooded or pressures in the bearing housing exceed the pressures in the compressor or turbine stage, the oil will move across the seals.
Once oil has passed by a piston ring, it will often coat the sealing surface with oil residue leading to increase gas pressures entering the bearing housing, over pressurizing it and creating pressure differential problems. At that point the turbo will normally never stop leaking.
With all of that rambling stated, I have opened a dialogue with my Borgwarner rep, to see if we can get a discounted chra or supercore to you, or depending on our good-will funding, or even get you a replacement CHRA at no charge. I am also checking into their inventory levels to see how quickly we could get it remedied.
I will keep you posted on that and I encourage that everything is doubled checked. I live in Erie and if you would like, I would be happy to lend some eyes and hands, when you get the turbo re-installed to see if there is anything that concerns me, or we can run some simple tests to measure things.
Regards,
I have a few things I'd like to test this weekend
-install header, verify no exhaust smoke without the turbo.
-re-compression and leakdown test my motor
-drain oil cooler and oil filter, send each to Blackstone
-Smoke test my PCV system through the oil drain, verify that it has decent flow and that there aren't leaks elsewhere
A buddy of mine recommended him when I asked about shops experienced with EFRs. Check out the facebook group "Denver Auto Enthusiasts", that's where I asked.
A buddy of mine recommended him when I asked about shops experienced with EFRs. Check out the facebook group "Denver Auto Enthusiasts", that's where I asked.
Dang if I undeerstand even half of the problem or the response fromt EFR, but to have someone right in Erie to be a point person, is nothing short of a miracle!
Mac just let me know that his Borg Warner rep agreed to comp a CHRA - he's gonna let me know when it shows up so I can bring in the turbo. Just reading that email made my whole damn week - I can finally start dreaming about driving my car again.
My suspicion at this point is that my initial crankcase ventilation simply wasn't adequate, and by the time I upsized it, it was just too late and the turbine seal had already been coated in a layer of oil. Still have a few more things to check, but I'm starting to feel a bit better and less like I'm going to just blow up the next turbo that makes it onto my car.
Ryan's was out of balance but the shaft was good so the static pressure test showed everything was fine. When you got it up to speed the imbalance caused the vibration that kept the oil seal from sealing.
I would do nothing before sending it to Southeast Power Systems. They are a master distributor above all of the other Distributors and dealers for the efr turbos. Mike Franke is your point of contact there.
Whoops, didn't see your comment. A local shop spoke to their Borg Warner rep and they agreed to comp me a CHRA for my turbo. So I think on that front I'll be starting on the right foot. I'll give Southeast a call and talk over my case with them to see what input they have.
So catch me up about your PCV so I can learn. Are you now believing that you had too much crankcase pressure (due to insufficient crankcase breather flow) and that caused your oil return to backup and cause the oil seals in the turbo to leak (and eventually fail)?
What was your PCV system before? Have you changed it to address this yet?
On first drive, intake side capped and exhaust side with just a breather filter. Then I added a catch can to the intake side, then sent the exhaust side to a catch can, then welded a -10AN bung on each side and sent both to independent catch cans. -10AN bungs happened after the smoking problem started, I did those in conjunction with changing valve seals. Hindsight being 20/20, it would have been smart to weld some bungs in as part of my pre-turbo prep.
I do believe that initially, crankcase pressure was too high - allowing oil to push past the seals. It seems to me that once that occurs, there is a scavenging/vacuum effect that keeps the oil coming, particularly in times of low exhaust back pressure (like during idle). The oil coating the seals and coking up hampers their ability to function as, well, seals and everything just keeps going downhill.
Regarding the smell of fuel in my oil, I suspect that's a tune issue. I don't expect the problem to lie with my injectors (ID1000s installed at the end of 2017). I have some more testing I want to do that can hopefully pin down some questions like that. Took an oil sample and I'm gonna walk over to drop it off at the post office in a few minutes.
Did you do the internal drilling out work on the VC? This PCV thing is so ridiculously complicated. I can't believe the shear number of things written about it on the interwebs. But I did find this nugget pretty helpful:
Did you do the internal drilling out work on the VC? This PCV thing is so ridiculously complicated. I can't believe the shear number of things written about it on the interwebs. But I did find this nugget pretty helpful:
Interesting recommendations but it misses the case that if you have two catch cans VTA with giant lines. There is no mention of hose size, but it keeps comparing to stock systems. This site is trying to sell you a product, and if you look at the merchandise, it's all tiny lines until you're asked to invest in their ~$397.5 Stage 3 setups. If we're talking about the the little 3/8" barb on the exhaust side of the valve cover and the restricted orifice of PCV (let's just say for sake of argument it's the same 3/8" inner diameter free-flow, but we know it's smaller/less)...Then switching to two -10AN lines is comparing a system with a total cross sectional area of 0.22 in^2 with one that has now just become 0.61in^2
That 177.7% increase inner area would hopefully accomodate better pressure relief and not be as constrictive as implied. Again, being generous on the PCV side of things. This is all anecdotal, I have no data to back this up, and I'm sure I will be corrected. It would also require hogging out the port like you mentioned in the exhaust baffle for this to ever reach the efficiency the -10AN lines could offer, so this number is just being optimistic.
The idea of the PCV was "to remove harmful vapors from the engine and to prevent those vapors from being expelled into the atmosphere. The PCV system does this by using manifold vacuum to draw vapors from the crankcase into the intake manifold. Vapor is then carried with the fuel/air mixture into the combustion chambers where it is burned." (Source) ...and yet many of us are running catless or have no such emissions requirements.
In efforts to draw a vacuum, I couldn't get a slashcut to work (the vibrant one) and wouldn't ever consider plumbing the crank case back to the intake manifold running high boost. I have thought about vacuum assist pumps like on some mustangs and a vacuum reservoir, but quickly got bored and abandoned the idea since my car was functioning fine with the x2 -10AN with VTA catch can. I suppose there's always a more ideal method, but aside from leaky valves after 20,000 miles, I haven't had issues with leaky EFR's and have maintained < 3% leakdown across the rings. With all the variability in tolerances, gaps, and measurements for how we each build a motor, obviously YMMV.
There is a lot of info on the How to Catch Can thread with folks posting their cost effective methods, but even I lose track of all the different setups and justifications. I'm hoping for Nick's case it was something a little more simple.
Last edited by psyber_0ptix; 03-28-2019 at 07:55 AM.
Quick update because it's been so long since I've updated this.
Stuck a new supercore on the car and it didn't burn oil for a bit, so I took it to the dyno and had quite a bit of fun with it. Idle smoking came back, so I decided to yank the engine. Valve guides and valves were pretty gross, and there was a little bit of scoring in the #4 cylinder so I went ahead and did a full rebuild.
New goodies:
+1 Supertech valves all around (inconel on the exh. side)
bronze valve guides
Walter Motorsports stage 2 MSM 6sp
Clutch Masters FX400 sprung clutch
DW300
TSE fuel pump rewire
Converting the fuel system to return, all -6AN PTFE line, Radium rail, damper, and FPR
And several more little things.
Not 100% together yet, but the engine is getting close to go back in the car. I'll be building custom reservoirs to try and tidy up some of the messy *** plumbing on the last setup.
Also casually mulling over whether I should make the switch to the 6758.
red line is on corn, blue is on 91. Stock FPR became a limiting factor - hit about 90% DC on the ID1000, hence the changes I'm making to the fuel system.
Picked the manifold up after getting it ceramic coated, so I loosely mounted up the turbo. Still have lots of plumbing to do but it's nice to see things mostly assembled now.
03-20-2019, 03:48 PM
0
