Turbo health checks

[Yuxi]

Mr2Mike said:

Yuxi said:

OK so I looked at some of the engines in our benchmark area today, both competitor engines and engines we have designed for other OEMs or ourselves. Many had turbos, none of them had any more than about 0.3mm total radial play i.e. TIR of 0.3mm None of them had more than about 0.3mm clearance between the compressor fan and the housing. The engines range from ones 20 years old to one that is not yet in production which uses a Borg Warner China turbo.

3mm!

They are almost certainly ball bearing turbos. Plain bearing turbos do have a noticeable amount of radial play even when new, IME 3mm seems entirely possible on a well used turbo, a new one I'd expect to be rather less than this. Axial play should be almost non-existent though.

Edited by Mr2Mike on Thursday 30th June 13:28

I will have a look tomorrow, I have the drawings of most of them, seems odd that they would all be ball bearing types though. Plain bearing ones must very inneffiecent because of all the clearance required between the compressor fan and the housing to allow 3mm of movement, none of the ones I saw had more than 0.3mm radial clearance.

[MattYorke]

After a little bit of pontificating on my part, just got round to sending it off to owen developments. Great job from them, came back looking better than new - even the old bits. Thank you Dave.

Pumaracing said:

I don't normally like giving recommendations. If the job goes well you get nothing out of it and if it goes badly you get blamed. However I'd suggest Owen Developments if you want a turbo rebuilt. At least you'll know it's been done properly on state of the art equipment rather than being cleaned up and slapped back together.

http://www.owendevelopments.co.uk/index.asp