Man....this issue is pretty near and dear to me right now too. My turbos have 93K on them but were working perfectly and no leaks or smoke before I blew the front rotor's seals. Now everyone tells me that likely the front turbo at the very least is toast, though I don't see any visible damage. So I will soon be faced with rebuilding mine, or replacing them. And now it seems it is a somewhat dodgy proposition to rebuild them? WHY? One would think there would be a kit with all the necessary items, and if everything is to spec and torqued correctly and all that, SHOULDN'T it be pretty much a no-brainer to rebuild one of these things?
What ARE all the options when staying with twins? The way I see it, it is:

• rebuild stockers
• replace stockers with other NEW stockers
• replace with other new units, such as BNR
• replace with used units

Am I correct?

 

I understand that generally you can rebuild turbos to near new specs, just that not many people have had good luck with the Hitachi units. The turbine seal grooves in the cartridge seem to wear out of spec by the time they need to be rebuilt. Even Brian from BNR doesn't offer stock rebuilds anymore because they can't be reliably rebuilt.

 

Hmm thats not good news... means im on borrowed time... my turbos are blowing a slight amount of oil. nothing to worry about yet but i dont imagine that they are gonna last forever at this point. Is there an easy vendor to get a rebuild kit from or will i have to go through my local turbo shop (that i hate dealing with) cuz for the money i think its worth a try to for me to rebuild them...

 

You just can't start with a good condition turbo and rebuild it for $450. The eBay auction I saw had no bids and I think $550 was the BIN price.

Dave

 

my point is there is always some degree of a gamble with rebuilt turbos because they take massive amounts of abuse, i bought a hybrid off someone unkown and it has served me well for 6 months so far, i guess we will see just how good it was done after i start pushing 12-15psi.

 

I have a set of rebuilts with maybe 30k on them and they're already smokin and making an auidble spool up/spool down noise. They were rebuilt by a reputable shop too. I mean, what do you expect out of a non-rebuildable turbo that somebody decided to rebuild. Just get upgraded twins, find a set of low mileage stockers, or go single. Kinda sucky, but thats life.

 

got the blown turbos off tonight... WOW they are completely screwed. after checking for shaft play with the turbos on the car i was worried that it may have been my MOTOR
blowing the oil. i was driving home from college (~2 hour insterstate drive) friday and out of nowhere oil smoke just started billowing out the exhaust while i was cruising. luckily i was close to my buddy's exit so i stopped over at his house to let the car idle, then it burned the oil out of the exhaust and stopped smoking.
after taking the turbos off, the rear one seems kinda "gritty" when you turn the turbine wheel, a slight bit of resistance...

so yeah, i thought maybe it could have been my motor that was blowing the oil since it started burning oil without boosting, but it happened out of nowhere while cruising and it was lots of smoke, so i'm guessing it really is the turbos