Garret Turbos
 

Are the Garret Ball Bearings good? And what is the biggest turbo they have for street/strip?? What does ball bearing do anyways?

I dont know too much about garret turbos.

ball bearings make the turbo spool-up faster....!!! and thats a good thing

1FAST7

ball bearing turbo's are great for lower boost, but I've heard and seen several come apart at higher boost levels.

Ball bearing turbos do not, as a rule, come apart at high boost. Improvements in the last few years have made them almost equal in terms of thrust-bearing loads.

I don't know if this is completely accurate. What is your definition of high boost levels? Remember, HKS turbos are essentially Garrett units, and many people run HKS BB turbos at high boost levels without problems. Many Indy cars in the mid-late 80's used Garrett Turbos running 40-50+ psi (although I don't know if they were ball bearing or not). Also, there are many high hp and high psi Supra's out there doing just fine on Garrett GT (ball bearing) units. Darren Strunk (the Walser Supra) runs HKS 2835 twins at 1.7 bar+ without problems. These guys (www.exvitermini.com) ran Garrett twins on their 444Kw R33 at 1.96 bar with no problems.

The turbonetic's one's are supposed to be pretty good, but I had a HKS 2530 shit a ball bearing and the whole turbo ate it's self. I was only boosting 1.1 on my CR-X back then. also you can't get them overhauld, because HKS won't sell the parts.. I've also seen at least 3 other ones that have done the same thing... when the bearings go they drop the balls in to the center housing and from there they go threw the oil drain in to the engine.. I got lucky, but a kid over here with a RB26 in a sylvia found out the hard way and lost his engine w/ the turbo...

So don't buy the HKS ball bearing turbo's, not sure about the turbonetics they use a diffrent set up in the center housing...

E6KT2 where in Illinois are you from?


I've never had one shit a bearing on me but hey if dragon says his did it did;, I figure if it does thats the price you pay to play and I don't think there are "rules" shit happens, although it is cheaper for guys who do their own work.

I have a Garrett GT30/40 "600hp" dual cartridge ball bearing turbo in my RX-7. These are EXCELLENT turbos for the street or the circuit, mainly due to the very quick spool up times. The boost threshold is also quite low.

My car generates boost at around 2000rpm, and 15psi is around 3500rpm depending on load etc. This only tells half the story though as the main advantage is that as long as you are above the boost threshold basically as soon as you go WOT you have positive manifold pressure. Looking at my datalogs the next log (1/20th of a second) will show positive pressure as soon as you go WOT :)

There is also a larger "700hp" GT35/40 Garrett turbo. This was not available when I first purchased mine but would be a good choice if you are chasing even more power. There is also a brand new "1000hp" version, however this would be too big for most 13Bs I think.

At the moment my car is making approximately 550hp (flywheel) and has run 130mph down the quarter :)

I've had my turbo for 2+ years now and it's fine. Note that the turbonetics Ball Bearing is not the same as the Garrett version.

It's all about the area under the curve....

I am fascinated by this as i was always of the opinion HKS turbos were Garretts with the compressor housing cast with an HKS raised lettering? Surely HKS do NOT make their own turbo centre housings? Like HKS plugs are just re badged Denso ones, i thought the same applied to all their turbos?