Pinhole size restrictor is normal. Ball bearing turbos don't need anywhere near the pressure of the older journal bearing turbos.
I don't think the blanket had anything to do with it, considering your not pushing that turbo hard at all, unless your coming in directly from a flyer and parking it with a blowtorch pointed at it. Frankly I'd chalk this up to China knockoff doing China knockoff things, especially as now two people just in this thread have had them fail...

I know I've preached this point before, but this is why I stick to quality turbos. I had to consistently overtemp my Garrett to kill it, and that was after two years of track use on a *used* Garrett(I didn't buy that one new, it came from a drifter lol).
My(new) EFR I've overspun and kept it operating at its peak output, even after having the turbine blades kiss the housing. No issues and I'd have to use vice grips to get any shaft play out of it, so it's gonna see it's... 3rd motor's worth of use soon, and I'd put money on it outlasting that motor as well.

You lucked out and found it at home, not, say... After session 1 at GTA. The less expensive turbo seems a lot more expensive if it costs you an entire weekend... Granted, most your NASA weekends are "free" with instructing.

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox. You'd probably pick up at least 2-300rpm worth of spool and top end HP with a properly sized EFR... 😉

 

New build detail mentioned ^^

Oh sh*t, you said some other stuff too. Thanks for chiming in.

Yeah I shouldn’t argue you on the China turbo vs real deal point. I figured I was fine with the PSR seeing as multiple folks on here seem to have had luck with them. Further validating my comfort with the clone turbo was the fact that Kraken only sells their kit with PSR’s. Maybe I should’ve stepped back and considered the amount of track use this car sees. I’m definitely gonna get the current CHRA warrantied and keep an eye on the new one. Maybe start setting some change aside for a proper Garrett if this is gonna become an issue.

The NASA weekend expenses are covered and contingencies are really good but they only apply if the car is running and able to podium lol. So I guess it’s in my best interest to make sure it’s running.

Properly sized, are you suggesting I go bigger? I don’t think I ever want this car to make over 350whp, probably even less, due to operating costs, scope creep, and stress on the system. I figure this turbo should do that without batting an eye.

 

I mean... I didn't say how many of them I needed...
350whp... For now 😉
Not necessarily bigger, moreso just saying you can't slap a 9280 on there and expect better spool lol.
Off the top of my head an EFR6258 should make those numbers without too much stress, but anything 7163 or smaller will make 350whp easy, with room for more when the itch bites or even temporary "full kill" extra power modes.
I've become a steadfast EFR fan after experiencing both, I've seen time and time again EFR's outperform their Garrett counterparts. Hell my 7670 spools up very comparably the "tiny" G25-660 I originally ran, while still being capable of 600whp and respooling faster on shifts due to the built on recirculation valve. The tech on the EFR's is just better IMHO.

 

Man, I didn't even make it to 350 before becoming a quitter and parting out my last car. Don't have faith in me making it that far I still need to catch up to the car at its current power level.

I'd be totally open to an EFR, but the current turbo is fitting my needs fine for the time being. I'm honestly stretched thin just trying to keep the car ready to rock between events (I think you know a thing or two about that as well) and really don't want to change anything else or throw any sort of custom fabrication into the mix. I should probably work on my fab skills and learn to weld, but like I said, it's a lot just to keep the car in the ring haha. Maybe I'll swap turbos if I build a motor and put a sturdy trans in this ar one day, but this thing spools just fine for my needs and will make enough power to blow my current bottom end and trans at less than 13-14psi.

So on the coattails of that, I messaged a bunch of folks, called a few turbo repair shops today, and ended up sending my turbo out to BoostLab to get rebuilt with bonafide Garrett internals. A couple guys on the 2.5 swap FB group recommended them for this specific task. I spoke to Ryan there on the phone this morning. He let me know they have all the Garrett internals on hand to swap into my turbo, should be able to diagnose what caused the bearing failure (if not for just being a sh*tty bearing), and that the rebuild will include high speed VSR balancing after assembly as well. Sounds like they do this type of thing often, so I feel pretty comfortable sending my turbo out to them. It's not gonna be cheap, I was quoted around $800 not including shipping, but it's a lot cheaper than buying a Garrett supercore or CHRA.

Pulsar warranty hit me back today with a bunch of basic, unprovable questions that were kind of funny. What was the highest boost level the turbo was run at? I seriously hope they believe my answer of "8 PSI a couple times." We'll see what happens there. Hopefully I never need a backup CHRA, but I wouldn't be bummed about having a spare.

The whole process with BoostLab sounds like it will probably take a few weeks (shipping time mainly), but that's ok as I have a laundry list of prep items I want/need to do to the car. Gotta finish installing the Doryoku bumper bar on the front end and redo my ducting accordingly. Fenders all need to be pulled further in preparation for the stack of 255/40/17 Toyo R's and RA1's I ordered from TrackDayTire last week. I still want to get my brake ducts installed and have the AWR backing plates modified so that the ducts actually point at the hubs instead of the rotor faces. Then I've gotta finally build a new larger splitter for this thing and figure out what I'm gonna do for end fences (Emilio said I need to do this so it's absolutely non-negotiable). After that, I've got a bunch of small things I want to do, like shortening some of the engine harness wiring and relocating the catch can to somewhere I can actually remove the reservoir from it easily. More updates will come.

 

BoostLab is local to me and I've casually known the owner for about 20 years. It's been a few years since I stopped by but they are legit and have always been very reasonable. They are active in everything from racing to heavy diesel applications and do a large volume of business.

I don't see PM's on the app for this forum so if you have any issues and want me to stop in and see them, just say so in this thread.

 

Just to be pedantic, mine didn't fail, it had an oil leak where the restrictor threaded into the CHRA so they sent me a new one. I'm still using the original CHRA though, with the new one as a spare. Having said that, another guy on here who picked up the Pulsar 2860 recently had the same issue.

I probably sound like a Pulsar plant at this point since I keep blabbing about it. I'm just excited to have a shiny new snail on the car

 

Dang, small world haha. I appreciate that! Will let you know if I have any issues. Based on the phone call I had yesterday, I feel very confident in them.

Also yeah, I was thinking Wing might have been referring to Sim's issue with the CHRA. I haven't seen anything about bearing failures with the PSR's, but it wouldn't surprise me that the Garrett internals really are more stout, at least I hope so. I was expecting to deal with other issues after the turbo install, not the turbo itself.

 

At the end of the day, any turbo can fail new out of the box, and I'm sure the PSR has a higher failure rate than a Garrett.

In my experience with stuff like this you either get a "good one" or a bad one, and you figure it out pretty quickly. That's what the warranty is (hopefully) for. Though a damn shame it glittered your oil, hopefully no issues from that. And hopefully the rest of us running these don't have any issues!

Interested to see what BoostLab reports back!

 

Yeah, no joke about the glittered oil. Bummed on that. I drained and refilled the oil twice so far and replaced the filter yesterday. Didn't find the filter plugged up with metal debris so hopefully I caught it early enough to avoid any damage. Oil pressure was spot on where it always is when I drove the car to work last Monday. I'm gonna start and run it for 30 seconds once I get the turbo back then change the oil again, followed by another change after a test drive around the block. After that, I'll keep an eye on the oil contents and maybe send a sample out to Blackstone. Gonna tear apart my backup engine this week and regap the rings just in case something inside the engine got damaged. Sh*tty part about this is I know for sure Pulsar won't be helping out with that if there's an issue. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. I'm sure it's more likely that the motor is fine.

Turbo landed at BoostLab today (two days quicker than USPS promised, woo!) and I just got a text saying it should be inspected shortly. Hopefully the ball keeps rolling smoothly. I was told turnaround would likely be a week.

Said this in SimBa's thread a couple weeks ago and I guess I've got a pretty good opportunity to do it now haha. Got a growing laundry list of things I've wanted/needed to get done including building a bigger splitter, trimming/simplifying the engine harness, optimizing my ducting, and finally setting up the C6 brake ducts. I started last week with some wiring projects and working on the Doryoku bumper bar install.



Just like the NA/NB, the NC's front bash bar interferes a decent bit with airflow through the cooling stack. Removing it freed up at least another 10-15% of surface area in front of the intercooler and radiator, although the top two rows of the intercooler are still blocked from behind by the core support. I could probably trim the support a bit for marginally better airflow as it's just super thin sheet metal in that area.



Those two front "teeth" on the intercooler mount were hooked into the back of the core support and needed to be attached to the Doryoku bar, which luckily comes with multiple M8 mounting points for things like this.



Trying real hard not to say the "So much room for activities" cliche...



The frontal part of the splitter mounts needs a provision for mounting, as they usually bolt into the factory crash member. 'Yoku offers options to have the bar made with provisions for 9LR and ProfessionalAwesomeRacing mounts, but nothing for the Racebred mounts. I drilled out the M6 holes that happened to be in the gussets and used some generic L-brackets off a set of light bar mounts as a solution. M8 bolts on both ends. Ended up being pretty sturdy. I'm sure if I hit anything hard enough, the mounts will just bend again. As you can see in the pic, they already have once or twice lol.

I don't have all my cutting tools at home, and it's just easier to do mess with my ducting at work, so I'm gonna wait until the car's running to finish that part. Gonna redo my ducting to seal better now that there's a big void where much of the bumper bar used to be. Also gotta trim my splitter rods a bit to fit. The bar has integrated M8 mounting pucks to be used with the ProfessionalAwesomeRacing splitter rods, so that's pretty trick.

While the car's down, I've also been making some revisions to the wiring harness. Ever since I relocated the alternator, I noticed that I could've cut the wiring about a 8 inches shorter, and routed it directly to the alt from the harness, rather than running it up and over the intake manifold then back down into the depths of the engine bay. I also have been meaning to shorten some of the other wiring runs and make them more direct since certain components have been relocated. Last week, I tore the harness apart, cut out about 8 inches of wiring to the alternator and MAP sensor, and ran the wiring more directly to each component respectively. Did the same with the throttle body and knock sensor harnesses, shortening each by more than a few inches and running them more directly to the components and eliminating wiring loops that get in the way when reaching below the intake manifold runners.







Still gotta button up some of the wiring up tonight and make the harness look a little prettier. Then it's onto making a new splitter so this poor guy can finally retire...

 

Almost on cue, BoostLab sent me teardown photos of the turbo damage this morning, and Pulsar sent me an email saying there was nothing out of the ordinary with that axial play and that the turbo is fine...

Turbine wheel face rubbing on heat shield:





The bearing was definitely beginning to go out. They also sent some additional comments about the turbo having a strange nonstandard bearing structure and indexing system for the bearing. Talked to Ryan at BL and we're gonna go ahead and swap a BL-built CHRA into it and have the turbine housing ceramic coated while it's apart. It should be finished and ready to ship out tomorrow morning.

The real bummer is that the wear pictured is outside of the bearing assembly and isn't the source of the metal I found in my oil. Backup engine will be getting prepped this week/weekend. Still got 6 weeks 'till the first race of the season but I'm starting to get tired of wrenching on the car after having such a smooth streak this past year.

 

Are you going to reach out to Pulsar with those photos? I'd be looking for a refund or replacement. I can't imagine they'd see that wear and think that was normal. Gotta hurry up on those side projects with that quick of a turnaround!

 

Big +1 with hounding pulsar a bit more with those pics, that's gotta be enough proof.

That said, the metal shavings are concerning. It has me wondering if the opposite way around happened, the motor shed some particles which took out the turbo.

All speculation, of course. And if you cut open the oil filter and it wasn't glittered that's a good sign.

 

Pics and diagnosis from BL have been forwarded to Pulsar. They've been sending me about an email a day, so hopefully I'll have a response tonight (China time).

Once I get the turbo back next week, I'm gonna run a couple changes' worth of oil through it and recheck the oil and filter for debris. Like you said, Nate, all speculation at this point. Guess this is the good part about having backup motors on deck, though.

 

Goddamn f*ckin right.

Splitter is done. Traced my old one and added 2" of protrusion in the center, for 6" total, and 2.5" on the sides. Gonna add some end plates to this one as well. I'll almost certainly trim it at the track after some testing, but the length looks sick for now. Gonna work on the front end ducting a bit more before putting the front bumper back on for good.





Wiring harness is just about done too. Should've taken more detailed before photos. There was a bit of a rat's nest going on between the TB and the belt tensioner. Much easier to reach in under the intake manifold now. Just need to get a couple clamps to retain the MAP sensor harness to the manifold plenum.



Aaaaand the OG 2.5 is loaded up in the van and on its way back to the shop just in case the worst happens. I'm almost tempted to just toss it in without gapping the rings. Hit up a couple guys on the interwebs that I know are tracking turbo'd unopened 2.5's earlier tonight to ask if they've butted rings before. If I toss the OG motor back in, I could take my third engine with the cloudy glazed walls, get it honed, and slap new rings on it along with the head from this motor (that already has the Fab9 cams and Mazdaspeed valve springs).

 

With e85 you technically could get away with tighter ring gaps in general due to lower ring temps. At $400 or whatever a motor it's worth a shot to see what happens, I say. Low boost and e85 probably would be fine. Maybe. 😂

 

Yo, thanks for chiming in Nate! That's about what I figured re: e85 and the tighter ring gaps. I don't think I've actually read firsthand reports of ring-butting issues from anyone running one of these motors turbo'd on track with e85. Might be a non-issue? That would be great and save a lot of hours haha. And yeah, I barely even qualify for running "low boost". We'll see what the next move is next week!

 

Ok, so I think I possibly misdiagnosed/overreacted to the metal shavings I found in that oil sample from last week...

I decided to dig a bit deeper into the filter today, since I'd only looked at it briefly last week, and had only checked for material between a few pieces of filter media. I tore the filter media out of the plastic caps today and fully unraveled it to find... basically nothing inside. I pulled the filter off at home and it was tight enough for some reason that I had to puncture it with my filter pliers to get it off, so there's a couple chips of white paint inside from that, along with just a couple silver flecks which may have been from the marring/puncture of the filter as well. I ended up with quite a few black specks in the media from the leftover plastic cap bits breaking and crumbling as I unraveled everything, but basically no metal. More importantly, I didn't see a single bronze flake, despite there being more than a few in my sample cup last week.

Then it hit me. When I took the sample, I just unscrewed the drain plug, pulled it back slightly, and held a red solo cup underneath to collect a ~1/4 cup sample of the oil in the pan. Over the Summer, my aluminum drain plug gasket began to degrade, mushroom and leak. I put off replacing it for months until it completely flattened, splaying out around the sides of the drain plug and ceasing to be a gasket at all. At this point, sometime around October or November, I finally replaced the gasket. I had to cut/pry/grind the remnants off the drain plug as the two had basically become one. Looking back, why did I not just grab a new drain plug? I got as much of the material off as possible and replaced the gasket with a copper one.

So yeah, I have a decent hunch that the debris in my oil might have just been my new-ish drain plug gasket interacting with small marrs on the oil pan sealing surface and/or drain plug itself. Still gonna drop the oil very shortly after the car's back up and running and if there's no particles I'm gonna chalk it up to that. Stupid if I'm right.

Filter media. Whole bunch of black specks from the plastic cracking, couple white paint specks, maybe one or two silver flakes in the whole accordion, no bronze stuff.



However, I already had the OG 2.5 in the van so I figured this was a sign to get it ready in case it needed to be tapped in. I dragged it into the shop and drilled the block for the turbo oil drain today, then pulled the valve cover and front cover to get it ready to be timed. MZR/Duratec cranks aren't keyed (neither are the cams for that matter), so anytime the damper is removed, the engine needs to be retimed and a new set of friction washers needs to be installed on the crank gear. Following drilling and tapping the block, I borescoped the cylinders.



The last thing a cheap econobox motor sees before getting slapped with boost and run 800rpm above its factory redline.

Borescope of the cylinder walls... kinda stumped me. Can anyone give a second opinion on these pics? From some angles, the crosshatching is easily visible. Ffrom others, it's kinda hard to see and looks like there's lots of very small vertical score marks on the bores? Also, there seem to be some mild brown patches on the walls. I dripped some ATF in all of the cylinders and turned the crank over but the patches still persisted. The pistons are designed with a crater in the center, though, so I might not have put enough fluid in each cylinder to coat the walls.

At any rate, tthe engine was running great and didn't burn any oil when I pulled it out, so I'm not too concerned. Just figured I might as well take stock while I've got it on the stand.







Turbo shipped from BoostLab today and is slated to land Wednesday. Looks like it's gonna rain from Wednesday till that weekend, though. If all goes well and I can get a shakedown on it, I might sign up for an SCCA track day the first week of January at Chuckwalla.

 

That vertical scoring is likely a non-issue. Every BP I've ever taken apart over 100k mi's has some slight scoring like that, as well as on the skirts of the piston, and they all ran great. My current motor one example, a hone took care of it and we re-ran the stock pistions (which again had similar matching scoring on the skirts) - the engine builder said that was no problem.

To me that just looks like a normal used engine, likely those wouldn't catch a fingernail and don't affect compression. Especially for something that you are going to boost and track to near death, I'd send it without question, especially since you've already run this motor and it ran great.

 

If you bring the spare OG engine to the track, then you won't need it. You will only need the things you left at home.

 

Hell yeah. Thanks for the feedback, Nate. I figured about as much regarding the score marks. I've seen way worse before but sometimes I get tripped up trying to tell if they're bad or if the camera/reflection is just playing tricks. I wouldn't expect absolutely zero scoring on any motor that's been abused like this haha.

Lots more happening this past week/weekend. Tore the OG 2.5 timing components off, got tires, and did a lot of parts swapping with some buddies yesterday.



Got the OG 2.5 in the stand on Friday and removed all the timing components to install new friction washers on the crank gear. Everything visible still looks good. Cams/valvetrain are clean and free of visible wear, valve faces themselves look good, spark plugs that came out of it didn't indicate anything shocking. I got the cams timed, slipped a new inner friction washer on the crank, and cleaned up the front cover and oil pan mating surfaces so it's ready to go back together. Outer friction washer will go on when the engine gets timed.



I had the day off yesterday, so I decided to pay my other NC buddy Mitchel a visit. Mitchel's 2.5L died a tragic death back in October when the oil filter perch threads failed (kinda known issue when running a sandwich plate on these engines, hence why I'm running a MadFabWorx perch) and it oil-starved on track. Mitch is currently doing the tried and true "budget high-comp 2.5L" engine build, using +1mm oversize GM Ecotec pistons for a 12:1 compression ratio.


Fab9 straight up sent him a set of their new Stage 2 cams, so he paid it forward and let me grab his old Fab9 Stage 1 cams. The engine oil starved, but only for a handful of seconds, and the cam journals still look near-flawless. I dropped them off at the machine shop yesterday for a polishing. Will toss those in the third 2.5 I have that's currently in pieces and needs a hone. My oil-starved BP's cam journals looked exponentially worse and the machine shop was able to polish them out, so I'm not worried about these.





While I was there, I grabbed our buddy Frankie's spare set of 255/40/17 RT660's on 17x9 RPF1's that Mitch had been using as mess-around tires. Frankie said I could mock them up to get a general idea on clearances for...



These 255/40/17 Toyos that showed up in the mail. I put in an order with the Toyo bucks from the last two NASA events and grabbed a set of RA1's for the street and five R's for track use. Double dipped pretty hard and used TrackDayTire's Black Friday deal in addition to their easily-obtainable "sponsorship" code. I still have a decent number of smoked 235 RC1's and Toyo R's to go through, and may just relegate all of those tires to street use now.



Did a pretty aggressive pull/flare on the rear fenders to ensure enough clearance. 255's on my 17x10's should fit easily but might still rub the inner tubs. Frankie said I could take these for a canyon rip to see if tub clearance is going to be an issue. These tires are 4 year old hockey pucks anyways. Much lower effort than removing the springs to check for rub, then pulling them back off and reassembling.



Unrelated but related: I sold my N/A exhaust setup last night to an acquaintance from one of the NC Facebook groups. I've had my header listed on marketplace, but have been too lazy to list the midpipe and muffler. Said acquaintance messaged me and said he'd like to take it all, for a very fair price. I ended up running the exhaust up to his place and we geeked out over his car for a while last night. He's got this turbo NC2 that was apparently built by Mazda Motorsports back in 2012. Thing's super cool and I didn't snap enough pictures of it.

Warranty CHRA from Pulsar is showing up on Monday, turbo's getting back from Boostlab on Christmas Eve. Current plan is to get the turbo back on the car, then get some miles on the car next weekend and see if the engine is shedding metal, or if I was just tripping and seeing flakes from the new drain plug gasket interacting with the scoring on the oil pan sealing surface.





If all looks well enough, I'll sign up for the SCCA track event at Chuckwalla the following weekend. And if not, I'll be swapping the OG 2.5 back in. I'm probably going to try and book a dyno slot for the second weekend of January as well. Gotta get the car classification documents for NASA and I really want to know what this setup is actually making.