I was working on my car today and noticed that my compressor wheel was all chewed up . When I pulled the turbo I realized that it was pretty torn up . It actually ground out a 1 mm (or so) groove in the compressor housing.

The turbo (GT4082) has maybe 2k on it and almost zero shaft play. I always ran it with a filter and it's in perfect shape (no dirt, rips, etc.). The turbo boosted perfectly yesterday, I just happened to notice the chips today... also, the exhaust wheel is in perfect shape. Any ideas what could have happened?


Matt

 

you lost a bearing? did it still have no shaft play? cause if it still had no shaft play then maybe your housing came loose? i dont even think thats possible,,, so you mustave just blown a bearing? i would check your oil feed lines to make sure your gettin full pressure and flow...
are the grooves just as deep all the way around?

well i guess its time for new parts too bad about the loss...

 

Thrust bearing is dead.
Try and pull it off the turbine end and take some pics.
I bet it's super shiny and worn by now?


-Ted

 

Yeah, it's pretty consistent all around.

Thanks... If the bearing is dead wouldn't there be some shaft play?

 

thrust bearing equals front to rear play, not side to side, need to check both.

kenn

 

Your right, it has some front to rear play .

What could cause it to fail after just 2k miles (only 1k at 15 psi, the other 1k was while breaking in my engine)??

Matt

 

It could either-or or both.
Thrust bearing helps with axial play.
Oil journal bearings help with radial play.
Excessive play in either direction would cause your damage in the pics.

Also, overspinning the turbo does the same thing.
Also, insufficient oil pressure, oil lubrication, or oil aeration cause cause that kinda damage.

Did the compressor nut come loose or fall off?
You'd get instant damage like in the pics.

Overboosting can cause the same damage.

So it's either abuse or some kinda mechanical failure...


-Ted

 

there's a good possibility that you sucked something up. comp wheels don't really break unless something hits them or they are WAY overspun. it looks like when the comp wheel came apart it threw things out of balance at high speeds and tore up the bearings. we see this quite often on turbo's that are too small getting pushed over thier efficiency range ie. mitsubishi eclipse's running 18-20psi with a stock garret t25.

 

1. compressor cover could of came loose

2. oil starvation.... maybe something in in the oil gallies clogging the oil feed...check oil pressure,clean out oil cooler,check feed line, replace oil filter,check oil pickup, etc....

 

if it spooled fine then it's not an oil problem. oil problems don't cause sudden catastrophy, they have many identifiable symptoms that are easy to notice before you do alot of damage. if the compressor came loose it would most likely have broken the shaft.

 

Thanks for all of the advise .

I'm pretty positive it is not an oil issue - both the send line and return line had oil in them when I removed the turbo. Also, if it was not getting oil I would think that it wouldn't spool as good as it did before I removed it (I didn't even know anything was wrong before I noticed the problem).

The compressor housing was not loose (in fact it was on there pretty damn tight).

I guess I somehow got something sucked into the turbine, or I simply bought an out of spec turbo. Since the turbo worked flawlessly, I'm guessing that the turbo is fine and something got in through the filter (that's a disturbing thought).

It does have *some* front to rear play. I do not know what is acceptable or not, so I'll let A-spec make check if the turbo bearings are healthy or not since it's going there tomorrow .

Matt

 

Typical axial play is .045". Get you a set of dial calipers to check it. How much boost are you running with that turbo?? Reson I ask is we use some of the GT units on high boost apps and have seen some turbine shaft gyration problems on some of the new GT units. The gyration of the turbine shaft was happening at a frequency of about half of the shaft speed. Eventually the movement was enough to get the compressor wheels to move into the compressor cover. So I am just a little curious.

 

Running 15 psi. I no longer have the turbo to measure the shaft play (I sent it to A-Spec), but the shaft play was probably around 0.045", maybe a little more, front-to-back (it was very little).

The strange thing is that if I rotated the shaft and pulled it out (front-to-rear) at the same time, there was a specific point in the rotation where the shaft would pull out a pretty good amount (maybe 1/8"). At this point, with the shaft extended, the blade will not turn. If I let the blade go back down it spins freely and has very little front-to-rear play. I found this to be strange, is this normal?

Either way, with the shaft extended (even at the max extension described above) it didn't touch the compressor housing at all and had no side-to-side play...

 

The blade should be able to freely spin at any given point. If it would not spin then something is definitely not right.

 

Yes, but it's only when I pull out on the wheel and spin it at the same time... kind of hard to explain.