Blown turbo advice sought

[Tuning Alliance]

Shoot me a PM and we can discuss your options.

 

-Brian

[Dujo]

^ This is the right answer.

[Max Capacity]

I hope you appreciate the help your going to get. Remember them when it comes time to buy parts.

 

Your going to want to learn from one of the best.

[OUBob]

I hope you appreciate the help your going to get. Remember them when it comes time to buy parts.

 

Your going to want to learn from one of the best.

 

Amen, brotha. Really exciting prospect, these cars.

[OUBob]

www.romraider.com

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Dude, that is sickeningly, disgusting sweet.

 

Too bad I can't use that on my ol' 99 OBW. Pretty sure I can't F that car up. Pretty sure I could use sand as oil and Great Stuff as coolant and not F it up.

[JimInTaos]

New to all of this-my girlfriend has a 2005 Legacy with a very noisy turbo in failure mode. I am in the process of pulling it now to see what all I am dealing with. I did check the bottom of the oil drain pan and can see a fine film of metal particles-looks like brass. Any advice on what I should be thinking about in terms of making this car run for at least a couple more years?

[JimInTaos]

I am also wondering if anyone has had any experience with the turbos being sold on Ebay for 300.00 or less. Thanks

[xtea]

I am also wondering if anyone has had any experience with the turbos being sold on Ebay for 300.00 or less. Thanks

 

Those brass particles are an aneurysm waiting to happen. The best thing short of buying a new engine is to flush the ever living crap out of it, then do it 3 more times. Replace all parts connected to the oil system, and then flush again.

 

You still will probably need a new engine in 20k or less.

 

Ebay turbos usually lead to more problems.

 

I would sell the car as is fully disclosing the issue, including the particles in the oil pan. Then take the 1-3k that you get for it and buy a na forester. She can drive that for 2 years or more and you get out without much hassle, cost, or guilt.

[JimInTaos]

Thank you, XTEA. That brings to mind a couple of new questions. First would be where the best place to get a replacement turbo would be? and the next is if anyone has any experience with having a power engine oil flush done and how well that works in clearing the debris out of the system. Thanks again for you advice.

[Max Capacity]

Thank you, XTEA. That brings to mind a couple of new questions. First would be where the best place to get a replacement turbo would be? and the next is if anyone has any experience with having a power engine oil flush done and how well that works in clearing the debris out of the system. Thanks again for you advice.

 

Contact Brian at www.tuningalliance.com for your turbo and tuning needs and just about any other part your car needs. Yea, really they are that good.

 

 

That power flush might be good, but have the car flat bedded there don't start the engine again. Metal can get trapped in the oil cooler and release it at a later date, taking out the new turbo.

 

depending on how much metal is in the system...its a crap shoot...

[JimInTaos]

Well, that was interesting. I got the turbo out of the 2005 Legacy a little while ago. The exhaust side blade looks like a very crisp little rose with all the blades neatly curled over. The shaft had sheared off on the exhaust side and while there is some play on the air blade side it hasn't done much damage to the housing. With a bit of modification I think I might be able to hook up an electric motor to it and use it to drive the burner on my aluminum foundry. Now to decide what to do about the engine and if it is worth putting a new turbo into it. Any thoughts? I also want to thank Max Capacity for his link and comments. The Tuning Alliance turbos look sweet but 2 grand might be a bit too rich for my blood. Any thoughts or links to a less pricey but good turbo for this car?

[Max Capacity]

You may have got to the BB Garrett turbo, contact Brian at TA and talk with him for pricing on a turbo for your Legacy.

[OUBob]

I'm replacing the CHRA (center housing rotating assembly) with a stock VF40 unit from Rotomaster. They supply OEM turbos for John Deere and are based in Canada.

 

I'm going to clean everything thoroughly, removing the oil pan, windage tray, intercooler, oil cooler and supply lines, and all intake piping including the manifold. I figure I'll have at least three cans of brake cleaner on it.

 

After reassembly, I will install a Purolater Pure One oil filter, bring the engine to operating temp, let it run for a few minutes, then drain the oil, inspect it and change the filter. Next oil and filter change will be a few hundred miles, then again after 1000. Each time inspecting the oil for metal to determine if I will need a rebuild in the near future.

 

HIGH QUALITY COMPONENTS ARE IMPERATIVE!!!

-Do not use Chinese turbo components! This is the equivalent of a mechanic at a dealer using Harbor Freight tools. It will work for a while, but the end result is always the same.

- High quality oil! Anti shearing additives (zinc) are a must. Diesel synthetic oil seems to contain high quantities of these addditives. This makes sense, the addditives literally cushion the blow created by combustion on the rod bearings. Due to MUCH higher compression ratios and boost levels in diesels, this makes sense.

- High quality oil filter! FRAM HAS PROVEN TO BE JUNK! The Purolater Pure One and Mobil 1 filter have high pass effiency (measured as percentage of particles of a certain size filtered per pass through the filter medium). These filters are in the ballpark of 90% PE @ 20uM and 50% at 2uM.

 

ALSO: In my experience, the fine particles aren't a major deal for the engine, provided they are filtered, and are not continuing to be created (I.E. the engine isn't grinding itself to death). THEY ARE A HUGE DEAL TO THE TURBO BEARINGS! If the thin film of oil on the turbo bearings becomes contaminated, even with very fine particles, it will become abrasive, increasing temps leading to failure, and the cycle starts again.

 

I my situation, I have seen very little in the way of metal in my oil, I'm going to gamble. The stakes? The engine AND the new turbo...

[JimInTaos]

I am following up on your suggestion for a rotomaster cartridge. I called and left them a message and then realized it is Saturday and probably no one will get back to me anytime soon. What kind of price are you looking at for the cartridge?

I have also been wondering about using a high quality in line filter for the turbo. Seems that several companies offer such a device but one does have to pay attention to changing out the filter every time one does the normal oil change. Anyone out there have any experience with this? Seems like a damn fool sort of design failure to build a system that can be completely brought down and potentially destroy an engine as well simply by not adding in a filter for a part that is so sensitive to contaminated oil.

[ehsnils]

Don't forget to add a magnetic oil plug. Anything that's caught on it that you can feel is a sign you didn't clean enough.

[Max Capacity]

A good in line filter would be a good idea in your case.

[OUBob]

I dropped about $275 on the CHRA.

[JimInTaos]

Thanks to OUBob I started looking in a new direction. The folks at Rotomaster didn't get back to me and after about my tenth call someone answered and told me I had to go through a distributor in Phoenix who told me I could buy the cartridge through Autozone or NAPA. In the meantime I found a thread arguing the merits of the Garrett and the Rotomaster so I started searching out Garrett-again I got sent to a distributor but this time it was a really informative guy at Central Motive Power who provided me with all kinds of useful information and a price of 328.32 for the cartridge. It is a direct replacemtnt for the IHI turbo and meets the original OEM specs. I'm going to give it a shot and do a thorough flush on the engine and everything that might trap particles. I am also looking at putting a canister oil filter on the supply to the turbo--still have some questions about that. I may even look at installing a much larger Mobil 1 oil filter instead of the dime sized filter Subaru wants to use. I'll send in progress reports and let you all know if there is a catastrophic failure and the car ends up getting donated to NPR after all of this.

[JimInTaos]

Well, that took a while. Just finished it and as the song goes, "I really learned a lot."

I ended up going with a Melett core which cost about 310.00. I also ordered an inline oil filter from Summit Racing but when I got it I found that it only filtered down to about 800 microns-roughly the size of a grain of sand. Yuk. So I found some 25 micron stainless steel screen on Ebay and after a whole lot of fiddling around I simply cut a disk of it and put that on the upstream side of the 800 micron filter.

Then I was ready to put it all together again and happened to be on line looking at YouTube videos about why turbos fail-Reason number 3--and you all will want to pay attention to this-a fouled catalytic converter. It seems that all of that oil from the failed bearing gets into the catalytic converter and turns into burned black sludge and creates a whole lot of back pressure that will eventually cause the new turbo to fail. Wow. So back under the car, pull the cc and try and shine a light through it. Nothing-not even a glimmer. OK-order a new cc and pay 450 for a brand new Magna Flow CC for AutoZone. Direct OEM replacement. True enough-if you don't want to put on the heat shielding. If you do and decide to take the heat shielding off the crapped out CC then you've got some grinding and cutting to do because the Magna Flow has a much larger pipe going down to the lower flange. The shielding won't fit without modifications and some new refractory blanket and some new metal and a bunch of large hose clamps. Oh-then when you get it bolted in and go to hook it up to the turbo--the mounting bracket on the side does not even come close to allowing it to get close enough to the transmission to make the mate up with the turbo-cut that off and then find that the bottom piece of heat shielding won't fit because of the modification to the heat shielding around the CC.

Then-along the way I read that some of the old bearing particles can get trapped in the oil cooler and that it is a good idea to clean that out as well. So far so good. Test drive when great but I found that when I fought the @#$$% oil cooler back into place the gasket popped out and got pinched and leaked like a damn sieve. In this town the nearest one is 6 days out so I ended up refitting the old one while I wait on the new one. Yup-I get to do that job for the third time some time next week. But-all that said, the car is running fine and no codes. I'll do an oil change in 100 miles, then do another at 200 and another at 500 and then another at 3000. Hopefully the car will do the next 2 to 3 years or longer.

Next project-replace the front axle/cv joints once I am confident that the 1000.00 turbo fix is good to go.

Thanks to all who offered their thoughts and advice.

[OUBob]

Wow, you had a rough go at it! Mine is all back together stock, ran it last weekend. Seemed to work well. I was soft on it though. I got a bit nervous when I leaned on it a bit, it only revved to about 3k and held it. I thought "why isn't it revving?" Then I looked down and had gone from 20 to 65. This trans is smooth!

 

Notes from me:

-I can see why people say the intercooler is tough to clean. It is. If you try to wash it out in the bathtub, make sure your significant other is gone, that way you will get praised for cleaning the tub, as opposed to "Oh my god, you are making a sh*t mess!"

 

- I flushed the oil, before I installed the turbo. I installed a new oil filter and attached a hose to the turbo oil supply line. I pulled the fuel pump fuse and filled the crankcase with cheap Rural King oil. Cranked until I had about 3 quarts out.

 

-Jim, if you are concerned about oil filtering efficiency, I found a much more efficient filter from www.synlube.com., J20ns model. I bought 2, one for the flush/first 500 miles or so, then one for the regular oil change oil change interval after.

[JmP6889928]

Interesting claims on the SynLube filters. Sounds extremely intriguing for all of my vehicles actually. Does the SynLube filter have a check valve located at the bottom of the inlet as the Subaru oil filter does? If so, it may be the next go-to filter.

 

Digging on the magnet wraps too. I have built something like that my self but only uses to larger magnets. I think it's a key component in engine health.

 

Excellent find on this company. I'll be doing a lot of research into their products.

[JJr]

The magnet wraps are interesting, waiting for your thoughts on the wraps. Thx Jim & Bob.

[OUBob]

UPDATE: After a flush and fill and about 20 miles of driving, I drained the oil, this time I found a few flakes of metal with a copper color to them. Figured that would only come from the bearings and I better prep for a rebuild.

 

So I got the engine out and torn down. I am damn glad I did. Nothing inside was destroyed, but the limits of the components appeared to be taxed. Bearings weren't falling apart, but had a good deal of metal embedded. Crank was visibly scored, but polished to a mirror finish. Cylinder walls and piston skirts looked good, evidence of debris was seen in the cam journals as slight pitting around the oil holes, mild scoring on the journals of the head and cam. Scoring on the cam journals on the heads came out with a toothpaste rub and the cams themselves polished up nicely. I didn't worry about the divots near the oil ports as they are indentions only.

 

Got it all buttoned up today, cranked it until the oil light went off, gave it a rest and cranked another 15 sec. When it fired up there was a good bit of clatter/tick/knock/other not good engine noises for 3-5 sec. Then everything sounded fine (This is my 4th Subie, all have had above average valvetrain clatter/racket, I assume this is normal?). I let it reach operating temp blipping the throttle to 2k occasionally. NO CELs! I don't even know how that is possible...

 

ALSO: If you are rebuilding one of these engines, be prepared for damn near HALF of your budget to be spent on replacing the ENTIRE pcv system. Every gd thing broke except the valve itself, which I probably should have replaced.

 

AND: Replace the turbos oil drain line with a high quality, high temp, oil resistant hose. The OEM drain hose was the cause of the turbo failure. Split open like a baked potato.

[MilesA]

Thanks for the update. Sounds like you caught it before things hit the fan. Congratulations on a successful rebuild.

 

Will be keeping an eye on the turbo drain hose. On the PCV, I thought that was just a $30 assembly that included valve and hoses. Bit of a pain to replace, but why did your replacement cost so much? Thanks.

[OUBob]

GD it! Why would I say something like "yay, no CELs!"? P0131 and P0725. Looks like I am out another front O2 sensor (looks like I banged it against the car removing the engine), no idea why the P0725 is recurring. (returns after battery disconnect).

 

As far as the pcv cost, there are 7 hoses, 1 PCV valve and a plastic tube thingy that attaches to the rear of the intake manifold, all sourced from the dealer due to the bends in the hoses. Maybe I exaggerated and 40% of the cost is more accurate. I didn't replace my pcv valve, it survived.