I need my wastegate porting - new turbo needed!

[Rice crispy]

Paul, correct spray it with it closed so you have a line to stay inside of.

[Jeemy]

You can also trace round it with the white pencils they use to mark stages, or just a normal graphite pencil dependent how dirty your bits are o.o

[paulous]

Bad news! Having spent all morning doing what they decribed as an absolute b&st&rd of a job the garage have discovered that my wastegate is badly cracked and therefore can't be ported...



Also the fins on my turbo are pretty well knackered too...



All in all it means I need to replace my turbo

Any advice!!!?? I'm awaiting a call from the garage as they are trying to source a reconditioned or new turbo. Right now my car is in bits and I'm reluctant just to put my turbo back on as it is becuase I'll have firstly wasted £200+ in labour charges having it removed and secondly it doesn't appear to have much life left in it based on the cracks on the wastegate and pitting/damage on the fins (also slight scoring around the edge which can't be seen in the photo)

Where's the best place to get my hands on a replacement turbo?

[paulous]

Answering my own question... my garage are sending it here to be completely refurbished... http://www.aet-turbos.co.uk/

They'll confirm costs once they've inspected it but apparently they can bore out the cracks in the wastegate and also replace all the necessary parts in the turbo completely overhauling it, so although it's now turned in to a very costly exercise I should end up with a 'as new' turbo, wastegate ported and all . Just have to wait a week or two for it all to be done now . And of course part with £££'s more than I expected.

[ccb056]

How are they repairing the cracks in the cast iron?

[paulous]

How are they repairing the cracks in the cast iron?

I have no idea. All I was told was they would bore them out, which I presume is actually the same as porting. At the moment however all of this is based on a telephone conversation between my local mechanic and the turbo specialist (AET) who are 200 miles away. So my turbo is being shipped to them tomorrow and once they actually have it they'll inspect it properly and advise on what exactly can or can't be done with it, which parts need to be replaced etc and most importantly how much it will cost. Generally speaking they said it's usually more cost effective to ovrehaul/refrubish an existing turbo rather than buying a new one, especially with old turbos like this that are now difficult to source. So I'll reserve final judgement until they've actually got their hands on the turbo later this week. As my options were very limited (i.e. my local garage are quite capable of removing and replacing a turbo but certainly not able to replace internal parts of the turbo) I figured letting a specialist assess it properly was the best way to go.

In the meantime if anyone has a new or reconditioned turbo they want to sell please let me know asap!

Thanks,

Paul

[cliff]

I am not an expert but 2 of those cracks look pretty terminal.

It should be possible to replace that part of the turbo, maybe someone on here has a scrap one lying around.

[Brit-Car-Nut]

If anyone does, i have been begging for one for 3 years. Matt said he sent me his, but sent it to Canada by mistake and they kept the wastegate housing. I bought one from Andy, but it is too badly damaged to be useful.

Stef still has her original Turbo. She bought a used one and had it rebuilt rather than have her car sitting while the original one was being rebuilt. I believe she is asking 350.00GBP.

Steve Strange has some...

[paulous]

I am not an expert but 2 of those cracks look pretty terminal.

It should be possible to replace that part of the turbo, maybe someone on here has a scrap one lying around.

I've got to admit it doesn't look good. I'll have to wait and see what they say.

If I were to only replace that part of the turbo is the correct term for that part of the turbo the "wastegate housing" ? If I were to ask the likes of Steve Strange etc I need to know what I need!

[epipete]

I'd be very surprised if DVB would break a Turbo for you, they'll probably charge a fortune for a complete unit but worth asking them I guess.

Be interesting to know what causes fractures like that though.

[paulous]

Be interesting to know what causes fractures like that though.

I agree! Any suggestions? The garage thought it was due to overheating. I'll find out what the turbo specialist say and post it here. My car has done 73k miles, genuine mileage as far as I can tell from MOT's & service history, so the turbo wear and cracks were a bit of a surprise. Slightly worrying too. AFAIK the rest of the engine and in fact the rest of the car is sound. I would have been happily oblivious to the turbo damage if I hadn't gone for wastergate porting.... could turn out to be the most expensive wastegate port ever!

[Jeemy]

My fans were as bad as that and now look pristine after CR turbos rebuilt mine. Cost was £240 as far as I recall, might have been £340.

No cracks like that in my wastegate - they do look bad, and its a bit of a mystery quite why yours are so bad. Nobody has answered my posts about the cracks in my manifold, but my gut instinct is that although not ideal, under heat, the parts expand and the gaps become fairly immaterial, but the more heat/cool cycles the unit goes through, the worse these cracks become?

Looking at the pic it implies the porting/boring will make most of them disappear apart from the left/10pm one? Do post up results, its intriguing.

[rob/d]

Did you get the cracks sorted ?
I sometimes have daft ideas but what if you had a stainless steel disk , very similar to a washer , inserted over the wastegate face and plug welded in .Ream out to 25mm from the casting before and then insert 22mm centre dia . " washer " after grinding all surfaces flat .
Just a thought .

[paulous]

Apologies for not updating on this....

My car is now fully back on the road with it's refurbished, ported turbo and quite frankly it's awesome Smile emoticon. It pulls like a train, sounds great (turbo spin up sounds better somehow) boost stops at 0.65 as expected, no matter how hard I try I can't get any boost creep.

It took a while (about 4 weeks) but my local garage eventually got my turbo back, see pics below. It looked like new. AET Turbos did a great job. They completely overhauled the turbo, ported the wastegate, ground out the bulk of the cracks and machined the wastegate flap to ensure a clean seal when closed. All in the cost of the turbo refurb was £420 with a 24 month warranty. There are still small surface cracks visible one the wastegate but they are just on the surface and AET Turbos assured me they are absolutely fine.

Where things started to get a little more expensive was the absolute pig of a job my garage had refitting the turbo and heatsheilds. Firstly Lotus (naming no names on which supplier they used) didn't supply all of the necessary gaskets and studs they'd ordered (as yes most of the studs snapped and had to be replaced). This delayed things by a further 2 weeks. My garage also had to re-fabricate some of the heatshield brackets as they also broke. Overall though they did a great job and I'm very happy with the end result , despite it costing around £800 in total (£420 for the turbo & £380 for everything else).

Now I plan to fit an Everest chip and probably a dump valve!









Compared to my before pics the difference is amazing.

[paulous]

p.s. as an alternative I did look at 2 secondhand turbos (in person) but both of them had cracks in the wastegate as bad, if not worse, than mine were. I also scrutinsed some photos DVB had on eBay of a turbo they'd removed and where selling which also had the very same types of cracks around the wastegate. So I'm guessing it must be fairly common.

[tb10]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed report of the experience you had. Cost of repair vs smiles per mile sounds to be worth every penny!

On the dump valve question, I'd go for a recirculating one IMHO as the 'chav woosh' will soon wear off and you'll attract the wrong kind of admirer!

regards

John

[paulous]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed report of the experience you had. Cost of repair vs smiles per mile sounds to be worth every penny!

On the dump valve question, I'd go for a recirculating one IMHO as the 'chav woosh' will soon wear off and you'll attract the wrong kind of admirer!

regards

John

Hi John,

Yep having tried a Bailey DV24 atmopheric DV I ditched that after a day or two (I couldn't handle the noise!) and have now gone for a Forge FMCL007P recirculating DV and everything I need to plumb it in to the airbox. I'm just holding back on fitting it until I've fitted my Everest chip as I want to make sure that functions correctly before comlicating things with a DV. However as per my other thread I fell at the first hurdle on fitting that as I can't stop the alarm going off when I disconnect the battery.

Anyway... once I get the chip and DV fitted I'll post some pics of how I fitted the DV (I've pondered over this a lot and pretty confident with how I'm going to do it, just need to do it now!)

Cheers,

Paul