can a shredded turbo hurt the motor?

[413turbo]

let's say i have a turbo that got tweaked, tweaked bad enough that it hit the housing. i pulled the inlet hose off and there was shiny metal specks around the inlet bell. so i know this debris got sucked in to the intercooler and motor. question is: what do i need to do now?

how do i know if it did any damage to the motor? what are the chances that it went in and right back out without hurting anything?

 

[413turbo]

come on, someone has had a turbo eat itself, what was the damage?

 

[Nick Micale]

Have you been running the car? Is anything different in the way it runs or sounds?

If trash or small pieces of metal went into the intake, most likely damage would be to the valves.

Do a compression test first.

 

[TURBOPOWERED68]

about 1/4 of my stock turbo and about a 1/3 of its rebuilt replacement went in to my engine. it sucks :wink:
but so far so good with my engine.

 

[413turbo]

i have the results of a compression test that was done a month or so ago, but haven't done one yet, since i saw all the metal, i haven't wanted to turn the motor over until i know i little more of what i'm dealing with.

when it got tweaked, it sounded terible. it didn't whine, wouldn't boost, then all the sudden it made a screaching sound, built boost and seemed fine and ok. but now i'm sure it hit the housing and see the metal specks, i'm worried.

i wasn't going to race this motor, factory un-opened. it was going to the shelf for storage, now i'm just curious what could have happened, and is it more likely that something (valves), got damaged, or that it could be perfectly fine?

 

[SS_Sean]

I had the same thing happen to my turbo...I pulled the motor and had to flush and push fresh bearings in...better safe than sorry. I suppose I could have flushed the motor and ran it, but the bearing life would have been halfed-at best. So it all depends on the damage, the condition of your bearings and your acceptance of the facts.

 

[Turbo6Smackdown]

Wouldn't the pieces have just went thru the air intake path and got booted out? How did it get into your oil?

 

[DailyDrifter]

I think you'll be ok. The intercooler might have trapped alot of it, and whatever went in the engine was probably just burned up. There may be valve seat damage.

 

[charlief1]

Kinda what I was thinking Drifter. I'd bet the intercooler has most of the debris but some of it could have made it into the engine.

 

[turbo6man]

There are two different things being talked about here. One is the metal that could have been sucked into the intercooler and passed thru the valves and into the combustion chamber. The other issue is this: Why did the impeller hit in the first place? This is usually caused by the thrust or the shaft bearings in the center section going bad. The problem now becomes that these are fed by oil pressure to the top center section of the turbo and then the oil is gravity fed back into the block just under the front of the intake manifold. So the most common scenario is this: The bearings or the thrust goes bad. Then the metal shavings are washed back into the oiling system contaminating it. Then when the bearings or thrust gets so bad the wheel will start to scream which caused the metal in the intake track you are talking about.

 

[Turbo6Smackdown]

Ohhh. The fluid bearing... forgot that contamination can get in thru there. Is there some sort of filter one can run in that line, to prevent this?

 

[meanchicken]

I thought the turbo drained back into the inlet to the oil filter, thus protecting the motor from any major damage from contaminated oil coming from the turbo....????

 

[TR87386]

I thought the turbo drained back into the inlet to the oil filter, thus protecting the motor from any major damage from contaminated oil coming from the turbo....????

The oil from the turbo just drains back into the front of the block. Above the front cover.

 

[BrentNKC]

I went through this a year ago. There were really good posts on how to deal with this.
In a nutshell, purchase and install a PTE remote oil filter (better filtering than stock), disconnect oil cooler lines from the radiator as there is know way to clean metal shavings in radiator. As far as the engine, I drained oil, removed valve covers and oil pan, and flushed the engine with mineral spirits, cleaned oil pan and put back together. So far so good....

 

[forcedfedv6]

If the metal parts were just shavings the size of dust or sand you be okay, it just goes into the chamber and gets thrown out the exhaust after combustion happens, if the pieces get bigger than the size of a bean what can happen is you will break the exhaust wheels as the pieces make thier way out, anything bigger will probably get caught by the intercooler, my opinion i think your engine is going to be just fine.. dont worry about it

FYI: having pieces in the inlet bell does not mean they contaminated the oil, that is why there are seals between the 2 wheels and the center section to prevent debris from mixing with the oil.