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A little back story. 62k miles on the car, 4k on new engine, less than 1k on new 99 spec turbos. All installed by a professional while the previous owner had the car.
I finally got around to taking my car in for a tune after doing a few upgrades since I purchased it last year.
The tuner called me after a tuning session and said the secondary is not spooling at all. He looked at the vaccum hoses and fixed a few things that I had done incorrectly when I replaced the vaccum hoses and he said it should fix the issue.
Second tuning session he called me and said the secondary is not spooling again. It must be from the turbo. Then he sent me these pictures.
He said it looks like small plastic powder.
He then said he would see if something is stuck in the turbo. He then sent me this picture.
He was just as stunned as I was. We don't know what that is or where it could have come from.
Has anyone ever seen something like this? Any suggestions?
The black plastic in the compressor housing inlet is the abradable compressor seal that raised the efficiency in the '99 spec high power turbos by decreasing the compressor wheel to compressor housing clearance.
It looks like your bearings are shot on the 2ndary turbo and it allowed the wheel to contact the housing more than it should and chewed up the abradable seal.
That or there was an exhaust leak onto the compressor housing and the plastic abradable seal got too hot and melted out and then contacted the compressor wheel. It almost looks like this is the case.
The black plastic in the compressor housing inlet is the abradable compressor seal that raised the efficiency in the '99 spec high power turbos by decreasing the compressor wheel to compressor housing clearance.
It looks like your bearings are shot on the 2ndary turbo and it allowed the wheel to contact the housing more than it should and chewed up the abradable seal.
That or there was an exhaust leak onto the compressor housing and the plastic abradable seal got too hot and melted out and then contacted the compressor wheel. It almost looks like this is the case.
Should look like this-
Wow! Thank you so much for the info. Given that these were new turbos it sounds like the exhaust leak option is more likely.
At this point the secondary is probably a goner, correct. It's not like I can take off the wheel and clean the plastic and install a new wheel, right?
Once that plastic is worn away like that, it'll never seal the same way even with a new CHRA. Unless you can get a donor set of used '99s to swap in the secondary turbo, they're toast. Sorry to say.
Once that plastic is worn away like that, it'll never seal the same way even with a new CHRA. Unless you can get a donor set of used '99s to swap in the secondary turbo, they're toast. Sorry to say.
P
Bummer! I guess I will start looking around for some low mileage turbos. Its a shame though, literally 1k miles on this turbo and its goner. I even have the receipt of the day the previous owner purchased it back in 2007.
