I bought a longblock with about 80k miles last year and am trying to guage how many miles these turbos have on them. Is there any way to tell based on these pics?

 

no way to tell, but those look pretty damn good.

measure shaft play, and that will give you an indication of health.

wiggling the wheels isn't how you measure either...you will have to search for the that...something along the lines of sticking a dial indicator into the oil lines on the CHRA and measuring movement there. I've never done it, I'm speaking from something someone posted...sorry.

 

Yeah! As long as there weren't any metal chunks missing I'd bolt them on my car right away! Those look great!

 

I concur - the slight cracking you see is more indicative of 10k-30k mile turbos. However, they may indeed have 80k if they weren't boosted much.

Dave

 

We're all guessing but it has to be far, far less than 80K. Looks at how pretty the outsides of the housings, manifold, plumbing and accessories are.

 

Either grandma idled that thing back and forth to the grocery store, or those were replaced. My 60k mile turbos looked WAY worse than that and they were in pretty good shape when removed. The cracking you see is normally far more substantial.

 

Very true. It doesn't take but a few thousand miles to start destroying the finishes on stock turbos - by 80k everything will be rusty and cruddy.

Dave

 

It's also hard to tell from the pics but the edges are very crisp on the manifold making almost a perfect 90 degree angle.

When i bought the blown longblock last fall i had orginally planned to part most of it out except the core. But I pulled these babies off last weekend and was shocked at how nice they looked. I think it might be time to give my 120k miles twins a rest.

Here's a better pic of the whole unit...

 

Did you steam clean those before you took that picture? Would you consider selling them?

 

I took a rag and some all-purpose metal cleaner and spent about 20 minutes getting some grime off. I'd only consider selling them if I got a much better offer than what guys sell them for in the for-sale section. My secondary has never boosted fully at all so i'll probably just swap this set in.

 

Those turbos look spectacular.

But, as long as they're on the bench I would get a very narrow extension mirror and reach up into both exhaust port openings, shine a light through the mirror and make sure that both of the inside turbine blades are all intact. If there is a prior apex seal breakage in the motor the most likely turbine damage tend to occur on those wide turbine blades deep inside, even if the externally visible blades on the turbos look perfect. That would completely set your mind at peace for bolting this unit back on.