kpalmer

I'm in Oregon. It looks like it will be pretty tight on whether replacing the motor and selling will net me any more than just selling on Craigslist as blown turbo. The shop offered $1000 to take it off my hands, but I've had quite a few hits on Craigslist for $2500.

Welcome to the forum, but too bad this is why you're here.

 

When a turbo dies it can send very small pieces of metal throughout the entire engine. Air, coolant, and oil all run through the turbo, so the entire engine could have small pieces of metal shards everywhere. I say "metal shards" to communicate to you the serious damage that could be done if there's metal in the engine. There's no simple way to check for metal in every nook and cranny inside the engine other than totally disassembling the motor, and at that point a new motor is the cheaper option.

 

There are a ton of "if's" in that statement, and that's the end-of-the-world absolute worst case scenario that certainly doesn't apply to all turbo failures. There's just no way to know if your problem is terrible, or really terrible.

 

If you drove the 7 miles home very carefully (low RPMs, no boost, etc.) you probably didn't do any more damage than what's already been done.

 

Consider the exact root cause of your turbo failure a mystery. There are just too many factors. It's an often discussed topic on here that we'll probably never see the end of, although I think most people agree that turbo failures are usually oil-related.

 

Around half of he dealer's $7k quote is most likely labor. Find a local non-dealer Subaru specialist and talk to them. You'll probably find that you can save a decent amount just by avoiding the dealership. High horsepower builds are fun to talk about, but specialty shops are also very competent at installing stock motors. Either way you're probably looking at $5-6k.

 

Some people choose to only replace the turbo and move on with life... or sell the car and pass down the potential problem to the next owner (that's a terrible thing to do in my opinion). Sometimes replacing only the turbo is enough, sometimes it isn't. It all depends on if/how much metal your motor ingested.

 

So... do you take a chance and put a new turbo on an engine that may have metal in it, do you play it safe and replace the turbo and the entire motor, or do you junk the car? That very difficult decision is yours and yours alone.

 

If you do sell the car as-is, you'll have a reasonably good chance of finding a buyer on this forum. Many of us aren't as discouraged by potentially-blown-up motors as we should be, and I think some of us actually get turned on by it

 

StkmltS thanks for your reply! Would any of you worry about used motors pulled from a junked car or found on ebay? If this is a common issue then I wonder how to tell that a used engine has not already had metal shavings passing through it.

Hello, I have a 2005 Legacy GT. It started having power loss issues which the dealership was unable to diagnose through several visits (diagnosing as the alternator etc. when those tests were fine). Finally the turbo failed with a whistling noise and loss of power when it would normally boost. Having had issues with vacuum lines I thought this may have been the case and drove it the short distance to the Subaru shop. The technicians have told me now that the turbo failed, and that the entire engine needs to be replaced. I have a few questions:

 

1. The technician didn't say that he had inspected the engine, just that it needed to be replaced. How can I be sure that such catastrophic damage had been caused to warrant replacement of the engine.
   
2. What further work needs to be done to determine the root cause of the turbo failure? I plan on checking banjo filter when I get the opportunity.
   
3. Could this problem have cascaded to any other systems due to the distance I drove it to the shop after failure (~7 miles)?
   

 

The quote for the engine replacement was $7k so I had it dropped off at my house and am contemplating just selling as scrap. If a replacement turbo would solve this though, I would rather just do that.

 

Thanks

 

Kyler