in your engine......... there no coolant seals in turbos. there's oil and coolant lines, but no seals. the coolant running around your block is slowing leaking inside. whatever has leaked inside shows up on start up and will eventually burn away after car is warmed up. it starts getting worse when your car smokes as you shift. good luck and prepare for the worst.


see ya,

car 53

 

But, there are oil seals on both the compressor side and the turbine side of your turbos. If either of these seals start leaking, you will cause oil smoking ... which has been described as both blue and white colored. Either way, smell the smoke. If it smells like coolant, it's your engine. If it smells like oil, it's your turbos. I know ... because I've gone through both.

 

if it is the oil seals on the turbos, can I just replace those seals?? the local rotary mechanic is wanting me to shell out $4400.00 to have him rebuild them, but if I can get away with just replacing the seals, I'll be quite pleased.
BTW... where can I pick up a set of turbo seals? I have not seen them online.. maybe Mazda?

 

to replace thos seals, you have to rebuild the damn turbo. the main reason that people have to rebuilt their turbos is because of blown oil seals.

 

have you all ever seen a turbo outside of a car or even worked on your fd yourself?you should know these things my ******.

 

I have owned my FD for less than a week... so no, I have yet to put in my wrench time...

 

Your local rotary mechanic is a scam artist. $4400 for a turbo rebuild alone is ridiculous. A new set of turbos would cost you less than that. The seals for the turbos should be included in the turbo rebuild kit ... usually ~$150-175/each (you'll need two for the HT-12's on your FD). Proper procedure for turbo rebuilds should be as follows:

1) Disassembly
2) Glass beading housings and turbines.
3) Polish down scratches and rough spots
4) Replace worn parts (driveshafts, etc.)
5) Balancing and aligning
6) Re-assembly

Turbo city sells rebuild kits. There are others as well. I've heard mixed opinions about almost every rebuild kit, so take it FWIW.

If your going to have someone else do the rebuild (like most of us do), you should not have to pay more than ~$1400. Anyone charging you more than that is stealing from you.

 

HAHA... I thought $4400 was kinda steep... that price quote btw, was from Checkpoint Engineering in Sacramento, CA..
I just talked to Ivan down in the San Fransisco Bay area, and he gave me a MUCH more reasonable quote...
I'm taking my FD down to Ivan next week to have the engine rebuilt (136,000 original miles), and he will check out the turbos for me to see what is wrong (if anything)

 

...

 

Good lord, I havn't even been kepping up with my own thread.. I used to them just disapearing in the wind with no comments. I sent my turbos out to BNR for their stage II upgrade, we'll see how that goes. I have my car down at Rick's Rotary in Pleasanton, CA (also owns the RX7Fashion line after Rotary Extreme sold it.) I figured I might as well do everything else I wanted to do in my sig all at once, and have a shop do it. I have many bad experiences with Checkpoint, and being that Redline worked there briefly I'm sure he does too. I've seen some good rebuilds come out of Rick's, though like I said earlier, every shop is going to have it's share of bad experiences. Ivan's is considered one of the best shops in the northern cal area for rebuilds, so you won't go wrong there. I'll let you guys know how these BNR pull after my upgrades..

 

engine bro....but I was getting blowby on my m2s before I put in the oil restrictor pills and the car smoked pretty bad...if it is leaking a LOT of oil it could just be burning off oil...if the smoke smells like coolant it will be your seals....

a simple test is to pull out your spark plugs and see if any of them are wet with coolant...simple as that...if so your o rings are shot. if not then mr doom and gloom above can go back in his dark evil place. haha

ALSO>>>>>DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY WITH REBUILDS...what a friggen joke...I went thru two sets in 1500 miles before i dumped that shoddy money saving idea...it is a waste of money. PERIOD. turbo city sucks...performance techniques REALLY sucks.

my two cents

j

 

4400 is not a simple rebuild from checkpoint...this guy is either not listening or not too wise...4400 is for their dual Ball Bearing Hybrid set similar to m2's....

1500 gets you a **** rebuild...especially from turbo city...my fave shop sued them last year for faulty work and for building shoddy turbos...THEY WON...turbo city had to pay them back for the labor on the many sets of turbos they built that had to come right back out cuz they sprayed oil like a friggen hose.

j

 

Yeah, Checkpoint is using the stock housing with GT35/40 wheels.. You can read about it in this thread https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...1114#post941114 I'd thought about it for a while, but decided against it due to my dealings with them.

 

Lest we forget that $3500 is a lot of money to some of us. Plus, aren't your upgrades a rebuild technically? M2, Checkpoint, BNR ... they all require a usuable core for the upgraded turbos. They are using the same core and upgrading the compressor wheels, cartridges, backing plates, etc, etc?

We all have horror stories about turbo rebuilds ... I tend to agree with Cliff at Turbo Power when he says that most people who offer turbo rebuilds are not technically savvy in the details of a rebuild. Hell, I've gone through 2 rebuilds from Turbonetics and they're supposed to be experts on this crap. But, if you find someone who is meticulous about the bearing clearances and the seating of the carbon seal/backing plate, I think you won't be disappointed. I will admit ... the HT-12's don't lend themselves to good experiences with rebuilds to begin with.

 

I'm not the turbo expert either, but I was under the same impression -- that M2s turbos were also rebuilds that are using ball bearing cartridges. I've heard great things about them, but before I spend the extra money I'd like to try out at least one set of rebuilds from BNR. Looks like Artguy has seen his fair share of horrors with rebuilds, I guess I want to have my own set of horrors to base upon..

 

I have a feeling that ALL rebuilds will have shortened life due to the fact that you are reusing old cores. Even if they don't have large cracks or don't have any, you can't reverse the fact that they are used. This applies to Turbonetics, Pettit, M2, BNR, Turbo City, everyone. Old heat cycled metal is just that, no amount of experience and precision will overcome this. Eventually it will crack and cause the gaskets to fail. Now, the question is, how long will this take? Knowing all this I still got mine rebuilt through Mazdatrix, which warned me that if the housings were not up to a certain standard upon disassembly that they would refuse to build them (I think they use Turbo City too, ug), for the reasons stated above. Happily the housings were still in very good condition (only 40000 miles old), but I make no qualms about their longevity, if they last 20000 miles I'll be happy. So far its been 1 year and about 3000 miles, no problems so far, knock on wood...

 

what do you mean by 'oil restrictor pills' ??

 

I ordered the Turbo rebuild kits from TurboCity about a year ago and rebuilt them myself. The cost was only $150 per kit and the cost to balance them once finished. Some say that you can just mark the wheels, but it's better to rebalance. It is very simple. You should have the wheels glass beaded at a shop to clean them thoroughly, but protect the shafts. Delicately clean the shafts; you don't want to take off any shaft material. This leads to the final note with a rebuild...new bearings and seals will not do any good if the shaft diameters are worn. I hope this helps. Anyway, mine are still running perfectly since my rebuilds. Though now...I am looking to upgraded ball bearing twins I am looking at a few ideas!!