Turbo Blown? Yeah, but wait.. theres more..
 

Long story short... t04e... motor blew, car sat for a year, turbo ran for 10 minutes, sat for another nine months..

Just swapped in another motor and got it running today.. Idled high yada yada

Started billowing smoke out of the exhaust under all rpms, so i was pissed. I look under the car and where the dp bolts to the cat-back, theres a huge puddle of oil, like at least a 1/8 quart, and this was only after not even 2 minutes of running

But... There was also oil in the hotpipe, and intake pipe. But no oil in the cold pipe.

The turbo also has no shaft play, now to me this doesn't sound right, how could this much oil be coming out, or the exhaust and intake side of the turbo, without and oil traveling through into the throttle body?

Im gonna pull the plugs to see if theres any oil in the chambers but have any of you heard of a turbo going ape shit like this?

M'Talon

I've heard various rotary authorities (including Racing Beat, Gotham and Atkins) advise people to do a thorough cleaning & inspection after an engine failure. It's possible for pieces of the old apex seals and bearing parts to cause trouble with the newly rebuilt engine.

The two main culprits were the oil system & intake/exhaust system.

-Replace oil cooler, remove & clean all oil lines. Material that has been ground away due to bearing or oil failures can travel through the oil system and cause trouble later.
-Remove & clean intake manifold, IC, turbocharger(s) and exhaust manifold. Apex seal shrapnel can be shot out of the intake and exhaust ports.


Good Luck,
-s-

well thats the thing, the intake manifolds were find, i had them off and they were beautiful and clean, the oil was clean. The turbo also looked good from visual inspection, ie.. no shaft play, bend fins, scratchs or anything. Im going to pull the plugs today and see if that oil is coming from the engine instead of the turbo, but i highly doubt it.. Its alot of oil though

do yo know if the exhaust had in oil after the motor blew? Or oil in the intercooler. I remeber when my evo blew its turbo..the intercooler was full of oil up to the in and out pipes of the cooler.

Every issue I've seen like this has been a direct result of unrestricted oil pressure in the turbo. When you introduce 60,80-100 PSI of pressure to seals that are only rated at 40PSI of oil pressure, it's probably going to blow oil.

Check with the turbo manufacturer and find out what the required oil pressure should be in order for the turbo to effectively lube and cool itself, while maintaining the seals.

No, there was no oil in the exhaust.. aka downpipe cause i had the motor out, it was dry, along with the intercooler.. There is no oil getting from the intercooler into the intake, i checked that after the smoke and oil from exhaust. It was bone dry, the hotpipe didn't even have oil in it more than 6 inchs from the turbo

well i know the engine was only running 40psi of oil pressure when it was running.. 40-45 and its a garrett t04e, one thing i was thinking of is the oil drain might be restricted and causing it to back up?

Agreed fully.

Very possible, and also install a catch can if you don't have one already.

i know where to connect a catch can on a reg turbo engine but no idea on a rotary. But as i said before.. i gotta further examine the problem.

heres a big big big possible solution to your problome !!!
 

hehe, i know this sounds stupid but up untill about two days ago i was having the same dam problome. i was getting so fu*&ing pissed and was seriously considering rebuilding/ swaping/ running my car into a wall... now ready for the good part?

what do you know about pcv valves? well normall the vent something called crank case pressure and up untill two days ago i had no clule what the hell that even was on a rotery. it ends up my issue was because i had caped off what was known as my pcv valve, aka that little extra nipple on the end of the oil filler neck. i was just messin with my car and i jsut couldn't resist driving it so i took it to a shop who i asked how crank case pressure vented on a rotery. they told me and i was like.... well its possible...:uhh: .. so i went out and took it off and totally forgot about it untill i started driving home and there ended up being absolutly no oil poring from everywhere!!! i was so happy i couldn't believe it. so if by chance you took off the rats nest and accidently plugged that tube. check it. and remove it.
Ryan

This is where you would run the catch can. With one hose venting under the car somewhere.

is it the one actually on the oil filler neck? or the nipple at the base mounting plate? Cause i think i have those both plugged up

I didn't even know rotaries had a pcv valve.... stupid me

i owe you guys a beer.. once i unplugged the nipple on the filler neck the smoke for the most part cleared up.. I still think the seals are alittle shady on the turbo anyways but its not a smoke screen :-D

Thank you rx7club

now i gotta figure out why i can't idle under 2k... blah

one more note to self..dont plug that darn oil filler nipple

freakin sweet lol, ive never actually thought i could give usefull advice... and its the one on the oil filler neck.
have fun boostin man
-Ryan

lets see, also, if your having trouble ideling under 2k several things come to my head. 1, your spark plug wires could be on the wrong spark plugs, 2 leaky or totally fubard primary's ( go get them bench tested and have them cleaned with heptaine) 3. you have a vaccume leak somewhere ( most likley). 4 spark plugs or coils could be fubed. or.....

5!!!! its an rx7 lol, jk, im just venting right now cuz my pos wont fing boost and for no appearent reason.

well its kinda hard to mess up the plug wires.. trailing on top, and number one plugs go to the front, and 2 go to the back :-D

Fuel leak, maybe but it doesn't smell like its burning rich so i don't think so.

Vacuum leak.. probably since there are 5 million damn vac lines on this car going to all sorts of electronics including fbc, ebc, and stuff.. So i guess alittle trial and error will fix things..

Under 2k it seems like its missing.. It will idle under 2k but sort of chugs and shakes a bit.

well i hate to kinda say it, but you should do a compression test on both rotors.... i dunno really what els it would be, leaky injectors can sometimes be the culprit, its relativly in expensive to have them tested and just a little bit more money after that to have them rebuilt. i dunno, you may wanna try that/

yeah, ya never know.. the gas is old for one.. like 1.5-2 yrs old, but it also starts right up, no problems what so ever

i heard you arent suppose to use old gas..on any car..worse a rotary. Two stories: I guy here had his benz parked for a long time with the gas in the tank and all kinda of corrosion and shit and settling of any crap in the gas happened being parked so long and it just jammed up his fuel pump.
second story, the horror, another guy here has a skyline gt-r had it parked for a while as well. decided to take it for a drive one day, drove out and went on boost and boom..bye bye rb26..gas must have sepearted from sitting so long or summen..so try and change the gas and clean the tank.

gas normally goes bad after about 6 months iirc.

well i drained most of it, and put about 20 bucks in premium in it.. hasn't really helped idle yet, ill change the filter, and set the tps, since i haven't yet.. then go from there