I recently purchased a 10th anniversary turbo second gen, the car is kinda rough but does move under its own power. I bought the car fairly cheap knowing it was a project car.

when i got the car it appeared that it had a blown starter, but would bump start just fine. after driving it and shutting it off, occasionally it would start with the turn of the key, other times it would only click. leaving the car sitting for a day or two results in a completely drained battery. I was thinking this could be either a loose starter wire, or the starter is in fact on its way out, has too much free play and is grounding out causing my battery to die. could this be?

now the much worse part.

once running and well warmed up, i took it out of the city to see what the car would do. now keeping in mind that I have never owned a turbo second gen, it feels like the boost kicks in a little higher than it should. what rmp should i start feeling boost?
anyways, the car pulls HARD on the low and mid end, but the boost completely cuts out about 2000rpms before redline, but only sometimes. occasionally it will boost all the way to redline. when i gas it, and let right off the gas, the car shoots a mean flame and sparks out the the exhaust. but not just sparks, more like little pieces of something that you can see bouncing down the road glowing behind you at night.

are these glowing pieces of metal from my turbo? or apex seals?

what I'm thinking is that the turbo has too much shaft play, so it will boost until it gets spinning too fast then the blades of the compressor move and touch the side of housing causing it to stop and/or take little chunks outa the the blades and shoot them through the exhaust. possible? what else could it be?

any help you can offer would be appreciated.

 

The stuff blowing out of your exhaust might be the insides of your exhaust. If your worried about the condition of your motor, just do a compression check.

 

It could be bits of your exhaust tubing, or pieces of the cat. Probably not your engine.

 

Exhaust is soo important on these cars. If your mufflers or cat are rotting they will cause a restriction. If they are rotten to a certain point, their internals become free floating which means they can get aligned in a position where they can sometimes be a restriction and other times not be a problem. I would pull the exhaust off and make sure nothing inside it rattles. Primarily the muffler and the cat.

Good luck

 

what about the boosting issues?

edt: so the boosting issue COULD be because of exhaust restriction? or this is just to explain the peices of molten metal seen shooting from my exhaust?

 

rotarys do get pretty hot on the underside especially with higher boost. but like all the above, remove you CATs and replace them. i'm planning to do so to my car during spring. i dont want any back pressure going to my turbo.

 

boosting issues can be caused by the restriction i was talking about. If you have the ***** for it, pull of the exhaust after your downpipe and drive it like that to test.

RUNNING LIKE THIS FOR MORE THAN ONE PULL WILL MORE THAN LIKELY BLOW YOUR ENGINE. THE FREED UP EXHAUST WILL ALLOW MORE BOOST TO BE CREATED AND THE FACTORY FUEL SYSTEMS DON'T COMPENSATE FOR SUCH AN INCREASE VERY WELL. ONE RUN SHOULD BE ENUF TO TELL IF YOUR EXHAUST IS CAUSING A PROBLEM.

 

ok, so I'll pull the exhaust off and see whats happening in there, but could too much shaft play in my turbo be causing these boosting issues?

 

not boost issues as extreme as you're describing. shaft play will cause noise and death more than anything. When it becomes a real issue, you won't have enough time to wonder if something is going wrong with your turbo. You'll just realize you have to spend money on stuff you didn't plan for.

 

If you were shooting chunks of motor out your Exhaust,then it would really Run like ****,taking the Turbo with it.
I am guessing Catalytic Innards.Time to get greasy!