One of my customers showed me his latest part that needed replacing. It is a Borg Warner (I think) turbo off of an articulated wheel loader made by John Deere. I thought you guys would appreciate the carnage more than most people.

Post mortem indicates that the turbine shaft, though bent, still turns and is not seized. Id does drag a bit, but I would expect that from looking at it. As of now, the initial cause is up for speculation. My apologies for not having pics of the turbine side.










His intercooler has to be replaced because it is full of metal and oil.

 

Good god - looks like a bomb went off in there.

 

Compressor wheel hub burst due to low cycle fatigue.

 

Something came loose in the intake tract? (other than the compressor wheel...)

 

Please elaborate. I'm very curious.

 

Lots of excursions from low to very high speed eventually weakens the wheel til it goes kablooey.

 

This picture really raises my kersplosion expectations for my borg turbo.

JKav, I don't understand. By low/high excursions do you mean a situation like not using a BOV?

 

No, I mean situations like if you run a turbo to high boost pressure (aka speed) and back to very little boost and repeat this several thousand times. You'll never seen LCF on a gasoline application, boost/speeds/duty cycle are far too low to stress the wheel that way. It's on diesel applications like transit buses and loaders that see only full whack, and then nothing, and then full whack, over and over again for their entire lives that experience LCF.

LCF is why some diesel apps went to billet wheels, and then titanium. Billet wheels in the aftermarket are for ease of manufacturing in low volume, and bling.

 

Ah ok, thank you for the explanation. I never thought about the diesel application.

 

was this yellow turbo on a yellow bus?

 

Did that effect performance?

 

Naw, dude it's running great. Hell, we didn't even take it off to take the picture.

And yes, this was on a wheel loader that probably went from vacuum to 40-50 psi and back to vacuum constantly for years of operation. I did not realize that could contribute to this type of failure. Pretty cool.

 

Wow that looks great. This looks bad on borg warner but when you look at most stock diesel turbos they are small compared to engine size and they run them at around 30 psi and up so I can see after years of construction this could happen. It is after all just a cast aluminum wheel.