What have you guys done about blown turbos?
 

I wanted to know about the different options I have when it comes to blown turbos. I was specifically interested in the process of rebuilding them and remanufactured turbos by BNR.

Rebuild = Same as stock, just working again
BNR = Upgrade from stock, looks stock but from what I've seen they trim all the fat and replace with better stuff..
Single = Sky's the limit (or your wallet as the case may be) :D

I've heard lots of good things about B&R. :D

depnneds on how much $$$$$$$$ you can spend...

I'm not here to slander anyone, just sharing mine and other local friend's experiences with BNR. One friend sent him a 60-1 single turbo for an FC. He asked for a rebuild with a water/oil cooled center section. Much later he got the turbo back with a "dry" center section (oil cooled only).
I sent Brian my turbos when they went, and as soon as I put them back on the car, they were blowing by oil. He sent me some banjo bolts that were soldered to restrict oil flow. I installed them, and they smoked just as much. So I sent the turbos back to him. I got the turbos back, and the compressor housings were not lined up properly, so when I went to put the Y-pipe on (turbos are already all bolted up) it would not line up. So I had to pry on the front compressor housing to get it to line up somewhat preoperly.They lasted about 2-3 months before they started smoking again. I didn't bother sending them back. They still smoke, but I've gotten over that, within a few months I'll have the t04e on my car.
Another friend of mine with a 93 sent him a set of turbos that were smoking a little, while we had the car down for some big work. The turbos he sent had absolutely no cracks on them. Brian told him he had to replace a shaft or something else that would make it another $100 over the original price. The turbos we got back were not the turbos we sent out. The center manifold had some huge cracks all through it as well as a giant one going past the wastegate door. Brad gets ahold of Brian, who sends a newer center housing to us. Those turbos didn't have 2,000 miles on them before the front compressor wheel wiggled out enough to gash the fuck out of it's housing. Brad sends the turbo back. The next set gets another 1,000-3,000 miles befroe they started smoking significantly. Brad sent those back, and the next set came back with the compressor housings misaligned as well.
Brian might be great at rebuilding turbos, but out of the 3 people in Pensacola whom I know that have dealt with him, it's nothing but a headache.

<- puts his forum reputation on the line for BNR.
bnrsupercars@aol.com , he will answer any questions you may have.

Sorry to hi-jack -
who does the stock re-build from RX-7 store?

I know Brian sometime frequents the forums and that he has a lot of friends on here. I'm not trying to step on anybodies toes. I just want people to know that his shop is not a land of milk and honey. It could be that the only bad rebuilds he'd ever done went to Pensacola, and if that's the case, then congratulations to everybody else. I'm just saying that it sucks having to keep pulling the turbos off to get them rebuilt. And there is nothing that sucks more than finding out that the Y-pipe won't bolt right up because he was in to much of a hurry to test fit one before he sent the turbos back to you. Yeah, I should have checked that myself, but when you spend that much to fix them, you don't expect to have those kind of problems.

hmm that sounds pretty scary...
I was told by roger at Japtrix that rebuilding can be a pretty sticky situation and he suggested new ones or low mile ones.
When I was mentioning BNR, I was talking about their remanufactured stock twins.

Remanufactured Stock Twins

Although I would love some stage 3's, I don't have $6,000 to get my car that far right now.

Another option I have is I have a parts car thats wrecked but as far as I know the turbos are good. They have almost 90k miles on them but have been running 8PSI for a good while. It would cost $900 to do the swap. You can see the above BNR's are $850 without installation but those are theoretically new, so what do you guys think?

SINGLE!!!!!

up

When mine were knocked out by an apex seal i was reviewing the same options you are, but with turbo city. BNR was not around then iI believe.

I tried 1 set of used but was not pleased so I decided to rebuild them.

I found this guy in Oregon....Don's Turbo. He said he uses Viton oil seals and could build them better than Hitachi. 60,000 miles later no problems.

later,

Hey All.

I do appologize about the problems we've had with the turbos as of lately. I have found out in the past 4 years that if the Hitachi HT12 turbochargers that come on the RX7 have more than 40K miles on them, most likely can not be rebuilt. If you want me to elaborate on this subject, I can.

I have changed all my lines of upgrades and rebuilds with new , off the shelf parts. I learned about this the hard way and I tried to hang in there along with the people that had issues. I am now putting in 100% new parts to eliminate all issues we have had in the past. :)

Bryan
BNRsupercars@aol.com

but how can you get around cracked manifolds? most of the manifolds out there are pretty bad!

If the manifolds aren't cracked to the gasket line, or not cracked around the radious of the turbine wheel, they are still usable in some cases. The secondary turbine housing with the dogleg, usually cracks around the bridge part and up above the port. If you run sequential the bridge crack will effect spool up, depending upon how large the crack is debates how slow they spool. Hairline cracking isn't anything to sweat. If you are non sequential, that bridge doesn't matter. The only thing you have to worry about is the crack going north and then the crack around the radious on the primary turbine housing. If they are within spec, there isn't much you can do with them. If you weld them, the welds crack off and go through the turbos. Nickel welds don't hold and regular cast rod doesn't fuse well enough to hold up to 1600 EGT's for a long perioud of time. The best thing to do is just let age take its course and replace the housings with lower milage housings. The lower milage housings can be found anywhere and they can be picked up cheap.

Bryan

Bryan,

Have you guys completed testing on the new setups? And when will they be ready for sale?