Turbine Housing cracking
 

I was taking my turbos about to port the wastegate, so far I have been lucky with the craking, none on the exhaust manifold and none of the entrance to the turbines. Took them apart, went to look at the wastegate and I found some decent sized craking going on.

I do not believe I was having any trouble with boosting because on cold nights I it would begin to creep, hence the reason I want to port it. Does this look to bad to use? What about porting it with the cracks there?

I was reading about welding them, and I read in a thread that if it is not properly done then it will just lead to more problems. SO I think I would be best to leave them alone. BTW they have 93K on them with VERY minimal shaft play, there is oil around the outside of turbos, put squeaky clean on the inside (may be do to my oil pan leak) but like I said there is no problems boosting.

The hardest thing to realize about cracking in turbine housings is the fact that exhaust gasses simply don't care what the turbine housing *LOOKS* like. The ONLY times a crack is so bad that the housing isn't usable are -

1. When it's cracked into a sealing surface for a gasket, which could introduce pressure under the gasket and blow it out.
2. When the crack is large around a wastegate passage where it's bypassing a lot of pressure through the cracking and reducing spoolup time.
3. When it's broken through enough for a chunk to come loose from the turbine housing.

#1 is a possiblity - it's not super common, but it can happen. #2 is getting to be the case you have, but in general the amount of pressure lost through the crack is pretty small. I have NEVER heard of #3 happening - it could happen in theory, but no one's documented it to my knowledge.

Port the wastegate out and use the turbine housing. It's tough for us to look at something that's cracked and ugly, but you have to remember that the exhaust simply doesn't care what it looks like. You have to solely consider function.

Dale

Honestly, how it looks is not a problem, I am just worried it would fall apart. Or cause other major problems. Although I will be replacing these in the near future with BNRs, RX6 or GT30R setup, when the wallet regains its size. :)