where'd my boost go?
 

I just drove from ATL to Daytona to FL west coast and back to ATL. Not a single hiccup with the car. Ran right up to boost target and held it every time it was asked. Get home yesterday, park the car, then get in it this morning to go to the dentist and peak boost is 4-5psi. WG can is 10psi. Wtf? I was wondering how long it would be until I got a manifold leak, but I can't hear one. There's no noise like an intercooler pipe leak. All the NA power is there. BOV sounds like it's working properly. My old bosch leaked and it sound like a pipe leak.

The only thing I noticed is that there's a couple of spots on the compressor inlet where it looks like the blade has touched. Not a full drag around the inlet but some spots that are about 1/4" long. The thing still spins like mad, the shaft play feels the same as it did when it was new. It had some, but that's typical of a journal bearing tolerance. There's no in/out play. If I push laterally (hard) on the compressor nut right after shutting the car off, the turbo is almost impossible to spin. Of course I've never tried that before, so I have no reference. I'll try it later when it's cooled down. I've had zero signs beyond that, that something was wrong with the turbo.

Thoughts? Any other ideas for boost loss?

Does it feel dry when you push and turn the shaft? I dont know if it could be an oiling issue, since a dry bearing would probably fail fast. I would think that would cause excessive drag and not allow it to opperate efficiently. Probably not what it is, but all that comes to mind right now. Odd issue.

if the turbo is hard to spin sounds like something is no gooood.

Very easy to spin. AAMOF I shut the engine off, got out, took a screw driver to the clamp holding the air filter/hose on the compressor and the turbo was still spinning. I could put enough force laterally on the nut/shaft at the compressor end to make it bind, but I've been able to do this to other turbos. I'm guessing it's just the nature of the tolerance found in a journal bearing. But I could be wrong. Anybody tried that?

I'm running no restricter on the feed line and have no smoke or any typical signs of oiling issues. I actually ran this turbo with part of the drain hose removed to check oil flow with and without a restricter. And after much discussion I couldn't think of a reason to run less oil to the turbo it was causing the typical "seal" problems you see discussed.

Here's oil flow to the turbo at idle:

Tighten all the clamps, and check to make sure the wastgate isn't stuck half open. Both have happened on my cousins car.

Good LucK!

Make an intake tester and hook it up to your compressor inlet in place of your intake pipe. Pump 10 psi through it and you'll hear the leak if there is one.

Intake Pressure Tester

Frank

Even easier -

http://www.sr20forum.com/gallery/dat...MG_2808_1_.jpg

C

WG is possibility. Intake tester sounds like a plan. I've had IC leaks before and they were very loud. This doesn't like the turbo overspinning in an effort to reach boost target... unfortunately. :( My turbo is loud as it is with the short intake and foam filter. I guess what's got me stumped is the last time I got on it was a little less than ten miles from the house on 295 and all the boost was there. I park it and this morning it's gone. :dunno: Well- I'm getting a list of things to check, that's what I need. :bigtu:

edit: sweet chriscar, visuals ftw

Rob I'd check the wastegate rod...

+1 to everything mentioned. FWIW, I made a .070" oil restrictor for my GT3271 journal bearing T3. I believe you're supposed to run a restrictor. Too much oil can damage the seals I here. But I can't imagine it seeing "too little" with a .070" restrictor. It only needs a few pounds to make a cushion. All it does is spin, no loads are put on it to push the shaft down into the bearing, other than gravity.

rofl. i had to replace my .060" restrictor for a .040" one :P

Yeah, I wanted to make a .06 but I couldn't get my drill bit that size to drill through a grade 8ty set screw. So far no smoke, but I'll probably put a .060" this summer, or sooner if there's a problem. :fingerscrossedmycarrunstillthissummer:

I was going to add the restricter back in IF I saw smoke- but it's yet to happen. So the housing is either sufficiently restricted as-is or it doesn't need one regardless. I was running one before on the previous turbo before something chewed up my turbine blades. But I can't find an argument against more oil flow if it's not causing problems.

My turbo started to shit out on me because of what I beleive was not having a restrictor.
Anyway, i was losing boost/power. No smoke, no nothing. Then about 5-7 laps later (after all of the sudden boost came back) I started having a 007 smoke machine back there and the turbo was shot to shit and I had oil coming out of my exhaust it was so bad.. Oh, but I had noticeable shaft play too.

Good luck on finding the problem.

Any thoughts on how too much oil (or oil pressure) could cause a journal bearing failure for a turbo? And the fact that it had all boost the prior day and not the morning after doesn't seem significant of a bearing failure (I hope), so I'm voting stuck internal wastegate... actually I'm praying. :D

The actual oil inlet in my chra was much smaller (~1/8") than the prior turbonetics. So it's about twice the size of the .060" restricter I had in the other one.

Too much can "wash" out a bearing. But I don't think you'd really have that problem with a turbo. I know too much oil causes seals to be damaged. I see some people have quick failures from running no restrictor. I've also seen several who go 2,3,5,8,11 months and then have a seal die, and they ran no restrictor. From all the imperical evidence I've seen, too much oil pressure damages oil seals. And most failures I see are either foreign object damage or leaky oil seals. Can't say I've ever seen people that had bearing failures they contributed to a restrictor.

Like I said, my .070" will probably be changed to something smaller. Hell, might do it this weekend.


But I'm beting your no boost problem is WG related.

You say you only get about 5psi, but where does that 5psi come? Same place as usual, or a lot higher in the rev-range?

Pat explain "wash out". If you have a given area for oil and that area is always filled to it's max, then the pressure shouldn't matter. The pressure only dictates how long a given unit of oil is present within that area.

That said, I have a shimmed oil pump and I'm running high oil pressure - it's off the gauge at redline. The engine ran near 90psi @ 4-4500rpm oil pressure my entire trip last weekend, which was around 18 hours of travel time. I do have a .060" restrictor that I ran in the last turbo which suffered turbine blade damage from who knows what. But never had an turbo oil/bearing issue prior to that incident. Just figured more oil was better if it wasn't passing the turbo seal.

That 5psi comes in a lot higher in the rev range. And it takes longer to build X amount of boost throughout the revs.

you could be seeing what I saw when I hurt my turbine....I still made boost, but only 10psi compared to the 14psi i was running, even with the wastegate fully shut I could only make 10psi.

made quite a bit of difference in my power output: http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1..._Mooredyno.jpg

The less boost later thing could be drag on the wheels, shaft or a leak. I made 5psi at 7k with a coupler leak, compared to 10psi at 3500 before. When my turbine wheel got chewed up it made less, but still made boost and later, but with lots of angry noises.

What happened to your turbine? can't remember.

A ingested a screw; it got lodged in the turbine blades which ultimately bent the shaft slightly. This caused the bottom edge of the turbine to make contact with the heat/oil shield thing and slow the wheel. You can see from the dyno my spool speed slowed significantly and I couldn't raise my peak boost. Otherwise it ran normally and didn't make any noises.

don't run a restrictor , talked to a professional at turbo exchange in charlotte nc and he told me i would make a mistake running a restrictor. i don't have one and had the turbo on for 15 month now no problems. restrictor= ball bearing. not enough oil can damage the bearings and lead to shaft play and than oil burning. i trust this guy since he rebuilt my turbo and guaranteed 1 year for the work. i'd check wastegate or leaks.

I absolutely have to run a restrictor. With my -4an feed line, I pass WAY too much oil. A turbo shouldn't see more than 30psi of oil pressure and we see upwards of 90psi towards redline. Those with a -3AN line can get away without one, as the flow volume is that much less, but my turbo will smoke at idle without a restirctor and I had to even go down from a .060" restrictor to .040" orifice. It's common to see a journal bearing turbo need one, not so much with ball bearing turbos as they are integrated...Do a quick search on any boosted honda forum and you'll see the majority of users will have one.

If you can get away without one, more power to you, but there's no yes no answer. I'd rather run my .040" and have no issues or failures than to run without one and die suddenly on the road due to either fumes or the smoke screen left behind me preventing a semi form seeing my brake lights...

i called the guy up at turbo exchange. he's got 30 yrs of turbo experience. asked him if i should run a restrictor with the 4an line. answer was absolutely NO. even at 90 psi he said with a good drain you don't need a restrictor. he said you need volume in a journal bearing turbo and with a restrictor you reduce the volume causing bearings to run dry. His answer for a journal is that you never should run a restrictor with a good drain setup. a drain he said has to be angled a bit when it comes out of the turbo and can not go straight down and into the oil pan. it will reduce the flow of the drain if it is not angled he compared poring a beer if you slant it it flows better than if you just turn it upside down. i mean this guy can school all of us on turbos all day long. great guy to talk to if you need a rebuild. no BS here.
by the way check this out
http://www.tepturbos.com/troubleshooting2.htm

Before I made the decision to drop the restrictor, I went through garrett's site and there are no recommendations for journal bearing turbos, only bb. But in Scott's case it's working for him and I'd do the same. OTOH If the guy who is putting a warranty on the turbo tells me not to, then I won't. Mine came from TunerToys and they said it was not needed.

That's a nice chart, but I think I'm beyond that. I just went out and looked closely at the compressor inlet. What I thought were scrapes were actually incoming air swirl marks in the light oil film (from the air filter). They're now gone and my finger tip is dirty. ;) The wastegate is fully closed at rest too. So I'm going to build one of those inlet pressurizer leak tester things since I found all the junk needed and I've got a secondary regulator on the compressor. I hope it's a leak in the IC piping... then again the actuator could have unstuck as I rolled in the driveway. :doh:

there are more cases than just me were people absolutely need them with high oil pressure motors, such as the honda crew.

it's also possible the seal to your compressor housing is leaking...i believe that happened to magna-mx5.

ahhh- good one

if the shaft play is tolerable than there should not be any leaks. i took my turbo off the other week and thought the seals are done just to find that my drain sucked. took the turbo down to turbo exchange and the guy told me to recheck my drain since the turbo had normal shaft play. now i redid the return with a copper pipe and some bends, no more smoke and still no restrictor. but in some cases it may need it if seals are not in the best shape. went with the 3/4 inch pipe and don't think there should be any problems. good luck and keep us updated.

I went ahead an pressurized my IC piping and had a nice leak... in my WG actuator hose. Check out the "fingers" on the oe vacuum hose clamp at the compressor bung- it made cut about 1/3 of the way through the other hose. Apparently it rotated on the trip. :doh: I don't know if that's enough or not, I'll test it out this weekend. As a bonus, I found out my throttle body is leaking a bunch of air into the manifold, which IMO explains my 1200 rpm idle with the idle screw totally shut.
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t...eclamphole.jpg

I can't imagine that being enough to cause such a substantial problem, but maybe.

Me neither. And a drive showed it was only leaking 4psi of boost (actually more than I thought it would show). Now I'm peaking at 9 around 6k. Unfortunately I found out a new noise is not what I thought was a heat shield rattle. It was still there once I removed the big shield and stabilized the dp shield with a screw drive. It's either a rattle, scrape or a leak. I hesitate to guess, but my experience has showed that turbine scraping usually shows on the other side as compressor scraping- of which there is none. I'd think the likelihood of a failed SS Autochrome manifold is greater, given the sustained temps of the last road trip. It hasn't seen anything near that- just a <2 hour road trip prior, and the usual tuning runs. Well, enough speculating - a tear down will tell. The wastegate housing comes off in minutes and that'll let me take a peak at the turbine. :eek5:

Here's the vid:

• Gate seal
• Gate actuator bent/loose
• Gate actuator spring broken/weak
• Plumbing leaking
• Ex mani leaking around gasket
• Compressor housing seal etc etc.

You have a three possibilities disregarding damage :

• Boost leaking out between compressor and valves
• Exhaust leaking out between valves and turbine
• Exhaust leaking past turbine

On to the side topic :

Hmmmmm
Fixed!

That'll be because there isn't a vaild one.

Good man, stick to your guns, you are in the right. If the drain is decent you are golden. In fact, without the drain being inappropriate it is pretty much impossible for the turbo to get too much oil volume OR pressure!

Why EXACTLY do you HAVE to have one??? And where did you get that 30psi drivel/bullshit??? Stop spreading BS about this based on zero hard facts.

Fix or replace your bodgy turbocharger and/or drain!

"Talking is cheap people follow like sheep" - AdultSheepFinder - The Worlds #1 Sheep Sex and Dating Personals Site

Why be a sheep?? Even if 1000 15 year old prepubescent honda owners ran a restrictor without issue I would not.

Those 15 year old boys again? What are they doing on a testosterone filled BB like this one?

This is good advice :-) Ying with yang.

Seriously though :

Excess oil pressure and volume PAST the bearing WILL kill the seals.

This is true but = bad drain or cheap/nasty/damage/worn out turbo.

Not a reason to starve the turbo... Saying you are giving the turbo too much pressure or flow is like saying you are giving your mains or big ends too much pressure or flow, ie, just silly.

I put way too much time into convincing Rob to ditch the restrictor to allow you buggers to even think about swaying him the other way.

10/10 for musanovic

Fred.

I've had my own personal and friends setups that ran journal bearing turbos.

Unrestricted they'd blow oil past the seals. Restricted with a simple .060 fitting and they were fine again. These are with -10AN drains, no kinks and smooth flow.

I will always run a restrictor on my journal bearing turbos.

I only speak from my own and my friends experiences.

rb26dett, next time you're in DC I beg you to come over to inspect my drain line. Then we'll hold hands after we remove my restrictor and watch the pretty blue smoke at idle as my turbo dumps oil past the rear seal into the exhaust...

Rob and I have already had this discussion, and I never tried to convince him to use one, only that I needed one. I would never had talked about a restrictor in this thread if patmx5 didn't start talking about one.

I would also like to correct myself where I said 30psi of oil pressure, I did mistype. I meant to say 60psi (you can go back to my thread history and see where I've used this number a few times on topic). The number was from two good sources:

also, let me know what size I should upgrade my vertical -10AN (5/8") line to please.


I shouldn't even had repsonded to your post; I have boost, it's worked for years, so fuck you :P

But don't you guys (outside of fred) agree that if the oil pressure isn't blowing out the seals, then the bearing should be fine? I don't see how high oil pressure can harm a bearing. I'm still waiting for Pat to explain "wash out". :dunno:

Unless I'm misreading I agree. It'll mainly go after the seals.

I wouldn't assume it to, just overload the piston ring.

I listened to your video and it sounds like an exhaust leak to me, as far as i can tell.

Or you could link a photograph :-)

Quick, backs against the wall!!

Fixed :-)

No need, I believe you :-) You should probably pick the upper number of the range given though.

Reference one is a shit one to use. That book is SO full of shit in SO many places I would rather use it for wiping my arse than a reference.

Reference two has no link or context. When and where did which Garrett employee say this? Link please??

If it's actually vertical I am worried about your short term oiling situation. I mean, the 5 litres you have won't last long being pumped out onto the road... Or do you have a winged sump that you can dump it straight into the top of? Again, pics or ban, please.

Calm down man :-)

And tell us about the origin of your turbocharger.

Was it brand new? If so, which reputable manufacturer produced it? (I'll accept borg warner and holset as valid answers, garrett, maybe...)
Was it rebuilt? By who? Are they any good? How do you know?
Was the answer to question A this :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...China2.svg.png

Basically for your turbo to gush oil through a seal like that at idle means your seal is already history or you have some blockage below it.

http://www.teamlorenz.com/images/insidelg.jpeg
http://www.jhdiesel.com/Turbo_Cross-Section.gif
http://www.cad.pl/rys/Turbo-Sprezarka.JPG

Note the size of the orifices leading to bearings and other regions. Something is not right with your turbo or setup. That something could just be that it's an OLD garrett design = a poor design. Is there a thread with your setup in it already so we can diagnose your issue out of Rob's way?

Fred.

obliged.

:bowrofl: well played sir

I glad someone appreciated the humor in that.

I lol'd.

No really, I did.

C

I was going to check it and it fell on the ground. So how does it look? :giggle: The can sounds like a baby rattle.
Before I buy something (new or used) is there a potential upgrade to the standard internal wg actuator?

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t...ctuator640.jpg

Rob, would it be too much of a problem for you to change it to an external WG and be done with it?

Yes- right now. More work and more $. And my ewg port is on runner 4 - notorious for cracking/tearing. Another actuator would put me where I was so I could tune my cam timing.

[LarryTheCableGuy]Theerrrr'ssss your sign.[/LarryTheCableGuy]

lolz. i was thinking it might have been disconnected, just not there...

YouTube - Pinky and The Brain Intro

The first post (before you edited it) was SO much funnier. I was just upset that I couldn't reply with a great big LOL. But not as big as this lol :

LOL

Trust you, Rob! Can't you use something a little newer than 1982?

"But I ONLY get 2 PSI!!!????" - ROFL

Fred.

Wired the gate shut and I've got my boost back- and then some. :D But closer inspection has revealed that my compressor mount for the actuator put too much of an angle on the rod and probably caused it to wear out. Oh well.

Why yess it did was a quite weird thing to u could take it apart and silicone it and see if u get the right pressure.
As far as the restrictor argument. Its best to run one if u do the standard oilpan int eh front tap wich is alil more convoluted than the straight down ontop of the motor mount tap i run on my car. Or if you have a shimmed OP for more pressure etc.
Reading further i see u had a WG issue gratz on solving it Rob :D