Just got the car finished up today and took it out for a spin. Sounds and pulls sooooooo nicely. I have a pretty big problem though. I bought a rebuilt Garrett T3, and there is oil leaking from the center housing on the exhaust side. Below is a pic of a normal T3 turbo, where I circled the area it is leaking from.
I looked at the rebuild diagram for a T3 turbo, and there are no seals or O-rings on the exhaust side to replace. How can I fix this problem??? And yes, ALL 6 bolts are very tight. From what I can tell, there is no oil INSIDE the exhaust. It is simply dripping down and onto my downpipe, burning and smoking like crazy when I 'get on it'. After the car warms up, the leak seems so bad that there is only about 5 lbs of oil pressure showing on my gauge. However, when the car is cold, the oil pressure shows ~90psi and drops to about ~50psi or so when it warms up. I have a .060" ATPTurbo.com oil inlet restrictor installed, also.
My laptop is at work, so I don't have a program to compress this image any more. It's a bigger file than it should be. Anyway, here it is:
did you let it warm up before you drove it? if not then you may have broken it . 90+ psi will destroy a turbo very quickly. Take it apart and look for oil inside the turbine housing or around the cup next to the turbine wheels. you may not be burning it yet or even notice it but it can still be leaking into there . SOrry to tell you but it has to come off again.
01 Z24 Turbo
The area you circled, are you 100% sure that is where it is leaking from? There is no oil on the other side of that to leak. You have the heat shield for the turbine and then the actual turbine wheel. The turbine has an oil seal on it that uses the center section as a carrier, it doesn't have a thrust collar set-up like the compressor side does. If there were to be oil leaking through where you circled, you've got a pretty big problem because it means the heat shield is filling up with oil. The turbine housing presses the outer ring of the heat shield against the center section, so I guess it
could be possible to leak there and not burn oil, but the likelyhood is sooooo small that I personally would not even take it into consideration without eliminating all other possible causes first.
You say your gauge is at points reading only 5psi oil pressure? Where in the system is it getting its oil from? With the restriction in place, it doesn't seem possible to lose that much pressure. I'd look into that as a different problem. Change your oil and see if there is any coolant in it. This thins out oil very badly and indicates usually a blown headgasket. It could also explain some oild getting by the seals being it so much thinner.
If you can, take a picture of yout return line.
For future reference, turbos need to be broke in just as engines do. Run low boost for a little while and don't get so happy on the throttle. The oil seals need a chance to make a small bore to sit in.
Pretty much check all of the oil lines to make sure the oil is leaking from them, check the return and take a picture if you can (it needs to be as straigh a shot as possible to the oil pan, clock the turbo if you must and take a picture of the actual leak if you can.
Make sure you check out your oil too.
Cardomain|
Myspace
I didn't let the car 'warm up' before running it.
I never knew I had to. I don't have any friends that have turbo's, and have never owned a turbo'd car, so I never knew I had to do it. I did, however, know about letting the car idle before you shut it off so the turbo can cool down.
I've determined that running it on high oil pressure is probably the cause. It could have even been running at 10psi oil pressure at idle, I don't remember. It was pretty low. I just know when I 'got on it', oil leaked out of the turbo (because the oil pressure raised) and onto my downpipe and smoked like crazy! But when I was driving normal, it didn't smoke at all. There was absolutely no oil on the feed or return flanges of the turbo.
Anyway, the turbo is off the car now and getting ready to be sent in for a rebuild. Hopefully, a rebuilt turbo and my learning from experience will remedy this whole situation. We'll see.
Thanks for your help guys.
your welcome man I hope it all works out for you.
01 Z24 Turbo
yea, I'd put an oil restrictor on the feed line, to keep the pressure down going into the turbo.
SPD RCR Z -
'02 Z24 420whp
SLO GOAT -
'04 GTO 305whp
W41 BOI -
'78 Buick Opel Isuzu W41 Swap
See that's the weird thing, it had one.
I'm thinking it wasn't rebuilt correctly before i got it.
^^^The only way it could have not been built correctly and done that was if they snapped the oil seal ring or left it out all together.
Cardomain|
Myspace
or never rebuilt it in the first place and just cleaned the heck out of it.
01 Z24 Turbo
