How to pack turbos for shipping

bison

Moderator
Staff member
TurboBuick.Com Supporter!
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
I never thought id see such a problem with this but its there. Ive received 7 damaged turbos in the last year. Ive probably shipped close to 100 in the same time. Zero were damaged. The only time ive seen them damaged is when the unit or part(s) were not properly packed. If the items arent packed correctly it is not the carriers fault. You have to pack it to be subjected to the worst conditions in transit. This means being thrown around and falling off conveyors onto concrete floors. A little extra time will prevent a lot of of damage. Look at the pics below to see how you SHOULD pack one of these:
packing1.JPG
packing2.JPG
packing3.JPG
packing4.JPG
packing7.JPG

Find an appropriate size box that the turbo can be shipped in. This one wasnt ok till i removed the ORM-D designation from it. It was used to ship aerosol cans at one time which are regulated. Since we arent regulated with the turbo i simply removed the designations off the box with a case cutter. Notice the thick corrugated cardboard flats. They are fit into the box and will add at least 1" of cushion on all 4 sides of the turbo as well as tighten up the package so the turbo cant move around freely inside the box. This is very important. If the turbo can move around its sharp edges and studs will cut through or puncture the box. They also increase the impact resistance tremendously. It takes a lot of pressure to get through all of that packing! Ive never had it fail on me. Not that it couldnt but it sure is unlikely.
 
i have shipped hundreds of parts including more than a handful of turbo's. bubble wrapped with styrofoam. take no chance. that carboard looks good to me but abit more can never hurt..lol
 
I dont like styrofoam because it breaks into little bb's and they float around in the box and make a mess when unpacking. Pics of what happens with improper packaging:
damage4.JPG
damage5.JPG
damage6.JPG
damage7.JPG
damage8.JPG
damage9.JPG
damage10.JPG


All this damage could have been prevented. The turbine that is damaged is a T350 Garrett. Price out one of those from Garrett. Not cheap. It was sent to me as a cartridge/compressor cover and no ex housing with nothing to protect the turbine in the box. It was rolling around in the box when i picked it up. Using some rigid cardboard taped around the wheel and around the entire assembly woudl have prevented it. Those empty tape rolls come in really handy for bare cartridges. The last pic is a box the the turbo with blue tape on it came in. Styrofoam peanuts and a couple pieces of paper in the box. Not packed tightly at all and only about 1/16 of an inch of cardboard between the turbo and the concrete floor it struck. Ouch! The top two pics in this post are actually different turbos. Looks like they like to fall and eat concrete in about the same spot.
 
Here is the best way to pack anything you don't want getting mess up. What you do is find a good box, then you take whatever you want to ship and place it in a plastic bag or if you want you can wrap it in Saran wrap place the item in the box and then get a can of expandable home sealing foam and squirt it around the part and the close the box up and seal it. As the foam expands it will hold the part perfectly stable.
 
Looks to me some people are just to lazy to take a little extra time to pack things correctly. Having something as heavy as a turbo flopping around in a box thats 1/16 of an inch thick is asking for it.
 
Everybody should take a lesson from Limit Engineering on how to pack a turbo. They put the turbo in a very mil bag, include vapor paper, then in a nice heavy wall box with extra cardboard on the sides, and the final touch of newspaper to take up any open spaces. I have shipped 100s of turbos fromthem to people and have had a complaint or problem.

Hope this helps, Kip
 
EVIL said:
Wow! Was any of that stuff covered? Insured?

D

Insurance doesn't cover improperly packed items. The first thing they want to see is the packing.
 
Where I work I get everything packaged for free and styroform is molded around the part. I have shipped a crank, alky pump, GN center caps and an 86 GN grill. First comment I got was great packaging.
 
hello people; We just had this conversation as we do recieve CAT parts from turbos to cylinder heads. The last group of turbos I saw where just place in a box hardly any packing to keep it nice and that was it. I should of called it out looking back at it. But a co worker just went to the supply house and he said that they deal with so many parts it's how they do it. To me it's wrong and if I see it again I will call it out.
So far no damadged parts.
IBBY
 
Top