Is my Turbo on its last legs? Leon Cupra 1.8t

[AlexMG]

Hi all,

After looking at the pcv breather hose I found lots of little shards of metal in it. This raised alarm bells and I wanted to check further.

I found quite a lot of oil in the engine bay above the transmission link but no signs of where its coming from.

I took it further and wanted to check of any oil was in the turbo but its not easily accessible.

Can someone let me know if the silver pipe at the back of the coils is leaving the turbo or entering it and if the amount of oil in the pipe is a concern?





Thanks

[chammyman]

The metal pipe is from the turbo to the intercooler.

Its normal to have oil in the pipes with a stock breather setup.

[AlexMG]

chammyman said:

The metal pipe is from the turbo to the intercooler.

Its normal to have oil in the pipes with a stock breather setup.

Cheers!

It's just ticked over 100k and I don't want to be one of those people in a few months putting an advert up for a car worth a bag of sand and saying "thousands just spent!"

trying to weigh up all the different areas of it.

[anonymous-user]

Pop the intake pipe off the front of the compressor, reach in, and try to waggle the compressor, both in-out and side to side. There WILL be some play, but you generally shouldn't easily be able to make the compressor wheel hit the walls of the compressor housing. If it's loose as a loses thing, say more than about 3 or 4 mm sideways play, then your bearings are on the way out. However, because the orbit of the compressor wheel, shaft and turbine is complex, and changes with the rotational speed, generally a loose shaft doesn't cause an immediate failure. But as the wear continues, suddenly you'll find the rotating orbit changes from spinning around it's CofG to bouncing round inside the bearing. At this point, the oil film breaks down, and shaft loads climb rapidly, generally resulting in a failure, either through the compressor touching the housing, the shaft snapping clean in two, or the sealing system failing, and pissing a LOT of oil into your intake (enough to cause clouds of blue smoke out the tailpipe)

As std, the 1.8 doesn't run a lot of boost, so thrust wear (play in the in/out direction) is usually quite low.

AT 100kmiles, with typical driving, i'd expect the turbo to be "past its best" but not actually knackered.

ETA: that silver metal pipe is compressed air from the turbo, and routes round to the intercooler mounted behind the front bumper. The intake air comes in from the plastic airbox in the rhs (as veiw from in front of car looking into eng bay) inner wing area, and down the "corrugated" plastic duct, just visible in the rhs of your pics

Edited by anonymous-user on Saturday 29th October 12:27

[S0 What]

IME for a 100K vehical thats a pretty cleean boost pipe, seen a lot worse! but as Max says the wiggle test is the real health test.