How bad is this?
 

I have a prefabbed kit, but got tired waiting for my churbo.

I recently bought a Garrett from another forum member.
While I was cleaning it I found a few cracks. See the wastegate port.

I am not here to flame the guy, just curious how much time I have with this. I got notice that my churbo will be sent to me soon. My plan is to drive on the Garrett till it breaks then install the new one.

I would imagine that any crack in a turbocharger would eventually lead to a failure, and would defiantly have a negative effect on performance. If it where me I'd just wait on the churbo, how long 'tell it arrives?

Past history tells me that the turbo wont be here till January.

The Miata is my third car. I figure the worse is that the casting breaks, makes no boost and sends chunks down stream.

This is also helping me gain experience.

Hard to see for sure but it looks like the crack at about 7 o'clock only extends a short way through the divider, and gets nowhere near the outside of the housing. I'd say that it's not going to give you any issues other than potentially reduced efficiency. I've seen turbos with cracks so wide you could shove a coin into it and they still boosted fine. If it's blown through the side wall or between the divider then it would be a lot worse.

this guys are waaaay worse.

http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=432334

Yeah you are fine then.

Eh, happens to DSM turbos all the time and people run them like that forever, I wouldn't worry about it.

Every other subaru vf turbo has one of those around the wga flapper after about 20k miles
doesn't affect anything at all.

I say it should be fine for sure

If you're really worried, you can get a new exhust side for $190 from ATP and swap it out. When I rebuilt my turbo and boost crepp issues, I got a new housing because I didn't want to pot my slightly cracked housing...just for peace of mind. The CHRA will fail long before those cracks have any bearing on performance.

In my opinion cracks there of that magnatude won't effect anything. I have seen them befor and they never grow into areas of the housing that matter and the amount of leakage they cause is zip.

Bob