Can't figure out what I did wrong installing turbo.

[Zeta30]

I replaced the turbo in my '09 OBXT with 150K miles. I bought a new OEM turbo. Installed it but the new one gets extremely hot. So hot it smokes a lot. The smoke is not oil or coolant, it smells like hot metal. The engine itself does not over heat. The temp gauge is right in the middle.

I checked the oil supply line and it is pushing out oil. (removed the line and the fuel pump fuse and attached a baggy to the line. Then cranked the starter to get some oil into the baggy). It is also pushing out coolant. I did the same thing with the upper coolant line as I did with the oil line.

Here is a short video of it smoking. It looks like it's coming from the back of the turbo so this weekend I'm going to remove the heat shields and crawl under to take a look and double check that I torqued everything properly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6FGnre3Cs

[silverton]

How many miles have you put on the new turbo? doing a turbo swap is kind of messy with the coolant and the oil, I'm wondering if it's just remnants burning off.  I know you say it's worse with your eyes, and it does actually seem pretty bad on camera...

have you verified the actual temperature of the turbo cartridge? or are you just going off the fact that it "smells hot"

[Zeta30]

I just went a couple of miles due tot he fact that at that point it literally looked like my radiator blew and smoke was coming out the hood scoop. Fortunately I live on a hill and was able to just coast home.

I did take temps with a digital thermometer and on the exhaust side it is about 200 F moving forward to where the coolant line is the temp is nearly 2000 F. Yes 2 thousand not hundred.

[silverton]

According to this, temps up to 1050C is normal, which works out to a smidge more than 1900 in freedom units.

https://www.garrettmotion.com/news/newsroom/article/turbo-tech-turbine-housings-101-garrett-performance/

If nothing else seems weird about it, and the car isn't struggling and the turbo isn't making weird noises, it's likely just the finish coating cooking off.

[KZJonny]

1 hour ago, silverton said:

According to this, temps up to 1050C is normal, which works out to a smidge more than 1900 in freedom units.

https://www.garrettmotion.com/news/newsroom/article/turbo-tech-turbine-housings-101-garrett-performance/

If nothing else seems weird about it, and the car isn't struggling and the turbo isn't making weird noises, it's likely just the finish coating cooking off.

Tend to agree. If you’ve got oil and coolant for sure, and there aren’t any strange noises…. Unless you’ve got a pretty high cost thermometer, those ones are not terribly accurate.

On the other hand… what caused the turbo failure? You are sure the root cause of that was solved?

[Zeta30]

11 hours ago, KZJonny said:

Tend to agree. If you’ve got oil and coolant for sure, and there aren’t any strange noises…. Unless you’ve got a pretty high cost thermometer, those ones are not terribly accurate.

On the other hand… what caused the turbo failure? You are sure the root cause of that was solved?

I believe the failure was clogged screen in the banjo bolt. I never removed the screen until this happened and when I did it appeared to be pretty clogged up.

[KZJonny]

That would probably do it, yeah.

I imagine you did, but I am thinking of the downsteam effects of the dead turbo. Metal from bearing wear getting into the oil and therefore the main bearings, oil cooler, ocv’s etc…

Unless you confirm there was no foreign material contamination in the engine when the turbo failed, there are plenty of stories of people replacing turbos and changing the oil only to have the replacement turbo killed by metal/forbidden glitter that was hiding out in the engine and not removed by an oil change.

If you did all that, then disregard the above, just hate to see a second turbo die on you for lack of some investigation.

[Zeta30]

11 hours ago, KZJonny said:

Unless you confirm there was no foreign material contamination in the engine when the turbo failed, there are plenty of stories of people replacing turbos and changing the oil only to have the replacement turbo killed by metal/forbidden glitter that was hiding out in the engine and not removed by an oil change.

If you did all that, then disregard the above, just hate to see a second turbo die on you for lack of some investigation.

Here's the story on that.

This is actually my second replacement turbo. I had to return the first one because it was not producing any boost at all. Not sure what was wrong with it but the car would not go faster than 25mph. This was actually a good thing in disguise because I did multiple oil changes with this turbo. The first was was before it was installed, then again after it was pre-lubed and I idled it for a few minutes, then the last was after the first test drive when I realized it was faulty.

So the first oil change there was definitely some metal dust in the oil. The second one I couldn't tell if there was any or not, so I changed it one more time to make sure. The oil filters were changed each time as well.

So any metal dust that was in the oil went through the first, faulty turbo.

I'm a little paranoid right now about oil starvation and have read some people bypass the stock oil feed from the head. Does anyone have any opinions on this and if positive any suggestions on kits?

Edited May 6, 2023 by Zeta30

[KZJonny]

Well, factory oiling is pretty good, unless on an aftermarket turbo that needs more so, it’s probably not money well spent. (Assuming you’ve removed the banjo filters…)

As far as glitter in oil, and subsequent turbo failures etc… It may be worth you time to send a current oil sample out for analysis before driving the car a whole lot more. (Or at all…)

I’ve not been in the situation personally, but depending on the degree of metal contamination, it’s pretty common for people to also replace the oil cooler, have the heads cleaned (avcs system trapping metal, etc…..) change ocv’s….

Sometimes a new short block is called for if the contamination was severe, or happened over a long enough time to damage the main bearings, cylinder surfaces, etc….

the small money to send a sample of oil to Blackstone (or whoever….) might be worth saving money throwing money and parts at an engine in serious trouble?

[m sprank]

If you could see metal in the oil you are fucked. You should have stopped then knowing the engine required a tear down.  You CAN NOT clean out the engine with oil changes. Your oil cooler alone is full of contamination right now.  You are just continuing to destroy everything old and new.  This car needs an engine rebuild and new turbo at a minimum. Buyers be aware.

Edited May 7, 2023 by m sprank

[Zeta30]

59 minutes ago, m sprank said:

If you could see metal in the oil you are fucked. You should have stopped then knowing the engine required a tear down.  You CAN NOT clean out the engine with oil changes. Your oil cooler alone is full of contamination right now.  You are just continuing to destroy everything old and new.  This car needs an engine rebuild and new turbo at a minimum. Buyers be aware.

You having a bad day there m sprank? So you decide to make a statement of buyers beware where no where in any of my posts have I came close to insinuating that I wanted to sell the car, which I don't. Or is it that you are warning that buyers should be aware ta stay away from your business because you go about trolling other peoples threads?

 

 

[subaru-tech]

General (with brand new cast iron) they will smoke . Your burning the oil and impurities off of the metal. I've put quite a few new turbos on to have them do this. It will stop when all the impurities are burnt off.

[m sprank]

Mods deleted my response.  

Cost to repair car will exceed value of car. 

Engine requires rebuild and turbo requires replacement. 

Repeating the same process expecting a different outcome.  Insanity.

[silverton]

23 hours ago, m sprank said:

If you could see metal in the oil you are fucked. You should have stopped then knowing the engine required a tear down.  You CAN NOT clean out the engine with oil changes. Your oil cooler alone is full of contamination right now.  You are just continuing to destroy everything old and new.  This car needs an engine rebuild and new turbo at a minimum. Buyers be aware.

Accurate.

22 hours ago, Zeta30 said:

You having a bad day there m sprank? So you decide to make a statement of buyers beware where no where in any of my posts have I came close to insinuating that I wanted to sell the car, which I don't. Or is it that you are warning that buyers should be aware ta stay away from your business because you go about trolling other peoples threads?

 

 

Not a bad day, just reality of knowing things and watching others shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly and wondering why they have a bunch of holes in their foot.

1 hour ago, m sprank said:

Mods deleted my response.  

Cost to repair car will exceed value of car. 

Engine requires rebuild and turbo requires replacement. 

Repeating the same process expecting a different outcome.  Insanity.

True.

[KZJonny]

Well, all that aside...

 

No matter how it's phrased, some of the above above is true. I was attempting to be a little more politic about suggesting that you will need more than just an oil change or two to fix the problem, if you had metal contamination in the oil. Perhaps in future I should swear more to get attention.

Sorry to hear about the turbo going and most likely taking out the engine. LOTS of information in the Rebuild thread should you go that way, and currently Rumbly XT has been journaling a VERY good photo story of his EJ20X engine swap into an OBXT, if that is something that would be an option for you. They seem to be readily available and a lot cheaper than sourcing a short block + head work to restore the EJ25.... If it isn't used for racecar purposes, then you'll probably not notice the smaller displacement anyway, but your bank account might stay a little happier.

Guess it comes downt to how much you like the car. I think the arguement that "repair bill will exceed the value of the car" is a little weak these days. There was probably a time when that carried more weight, but these things (GT/XTs) are worth so little now that any reasonable size repair will fall into that category. I got a small hit to my fender last year, which required it to go to the panel beaters for body work, paint and having the bumper and wheel also repaired and painted. This minor collision body work cost more than what I paid for the car! So, while that may be factually true, it doesn't carry weight as an arguement the way it does for cars that are still worth, 15-20K used.

Plenty of folks here will help you out if you decide to rebuild. Equally probably quite a few buyers for parts if it isn't worth your time and money, and all you're going to get is scrap value. Catalytics alone these days are worth half the price of an old GT/XT in parts.

[blackobxt]

Lots of foreshadowed YNASB (you need a short block) in this post. Turbo failure in these cars more often than not is accompanied by engine failure. You can send an oil sample to blackstone, but you’re checking all the boxes for the typical engine failure post. Unfortunately I agree with M sprank that as soon as you saw metal in the oil that you should have expected the worst and started diagnosing with the mindset of “its IS fucked and likely needs an engine”

[blackobxt]

And these things are getting more and more expensive. A friend back in wyo took his 2015 Sti to Subaru because it was knocking and they quoted him $11,400 to go through the heads, new short block, oil pump, oil cooler, timing belt, new turbo, etc etc.