skiddusmarkus
Active Member
From what I remember the oil return is very short anyway and the gt3071 makes it even shorter and changes the angle to make it more likely to slightly kink. Not duress how braided lines would help there.
FAO anyone with a GT series turbo without a metal bearing cage
- Thread starter MarkTurbo
- Start date
red reading
Active Member
It's none of those mentioned,there is a tin heat shield on the turbine side of the turbo, that degrades and then the exhaust heat makes the bearing cage brittle...it fails...these are not just happening to the gtir it happens to all eventually, if you spec it to the turbo companies they will change the bearing cages to phosphor bronze.....there is also another fact with the gtir and that is the oil filter housing has two bypass valves for over pressure that bypass the oil filter ( this is to stop your engine from failing if you have a blocked filter) with age and new built engines having high pressure and thick oil on start do get bypassed and small media makes it way to the turbo and big end bearing (as well as everywhere else) and are another cause of ball bearing turbo failure as it blocks the oil feed to the turbo, bb turbos have oil restrictors built into most cores which is tiny compared to a journal bearing turbo and once blocked kills the bearings...
so to save your turbo fit a inline oil filter from the turbo company (easy in a braided oil line) and get bronze bearing conversions fitted and if you have the money get the tin heat shield replaced with a billet stainless 3mm thick one. (The core needs machining down to fit this).
so to save your turbo fit a inline oil filter from the turbo company (easy in a braided oil line) and get bronze bearing conversions fitted and if you have the money get the tin heat shield replaced with a billet stainless 3mm thick one. (The core needs machining down to fit this).
So to clarify, if I wanted to order a 2871 turbo from Owen Dev or Turbo Tech's, to make it worth while/last, I should spec a bronze cage, heat shield and an in-line oil filter in a braided oil line for a BB turbo?
Dannys post hits the nail on the head, i know there were no oil supply/water cooling issues on mine its just down to a material thats not upto the job being used and if you speak to the right people the problem is fairly common and garrett are well aware of it which is the annoying thing!
Fitting a bronze bearing cage from the start would be such a minimal cost compared to the price of a turbo that its crazy they don't just fit one in the factory :roll:
Fitting a bronze bearing cage from the start would be such a minimal cost compared to the price of a turbo that its crazy they don't just fit one in the factory :roll:
Basically yes. The extra cost makes sense, just wish i was aware of this issue before i fitted mine. If you don't you run the risk of ending up with a big mess like i did!
I've mentioned it to them when enquiring about a turbo (cage and heat shield) they were quite lax, but agreed that it would be the sensible option (why they didn't mention it beforehand I don't know?).
I asked if there was anything else I needed and they said "no that will be fine" So my question is, should I have the in-line oil filter in a braided oil line fitted as mandatory and can they can supply such an item? (I've never known or heard about this filter item before?)
My main issue is I don't want to have the same misfortune as yourself Mark and spend £££'s on a new unit for it so shit itself 6 months later!
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red reading
Active Member
Andy if you fit all that has been mentioned then there is no reason why baring total catastrophic failure from something silly like a piston breaking up, that any harm should come to the turbo....it is the only way I would fit a bb core turbo to anything now.
111mattin111
New Member
Hose solution do braided lines and can fit mini filters in them
red reading
Active Member
Ps I have learnt all of this from having the same issue as mark....3 fucking times! I then asked Owen developments the best way to do it...and more importantly listened, they could have said nothing but then they would have lost a customer as turbo dynamics did from not being helpful enough.
red reading
Active Member
The filter I have I think is 40 or60 microns mesh and is about 4 inch long and 1 inch diamiter, have a massive filtration area to stop it getting blocked and is cleanable and reusable.
Figures used for example purposes (as I don't know them for real)
Extra cost of bronze bearing £50 - Total cost of turbo sold £1050
Turbo with normal bearing £1000
New turbo to replace blown turbo £1000 - Total cost of turbos sold £2000
I think it's quite obvious they don't fit the bronze bearing as standard as it would lose them sales on whole turbos due to increased reliability.
Maybe I'm just a cynic.
I think there is a few here that come across as cynic's , but in fact we a realistic as to the way the world and traders work!
Its OD I've been speaking to. Are they the best people I should speak to regards this filter?
red reading
Active Member
Well it's where I got my inline filter from, my thinking was they know what size is best !
skiddusmarkus
Active Member
Yeah I've read before about the bronze cage but for people who've already fitted it, the cost of removing,, sending away to get it sorted, refitting again is hundreds of pounds. My point aboutthe oil return is to make sure as much heat as possible is taken away so wear isn't accelerated.
red reading
Active Member
It's not wear that is the issue, it's using brittle plastic for a ball bearing cage.
Plastic is from petrochemicals... oil is from petrochemicals (well, mineral oil is anyway). - Not really surprising that hot oil makes plastic go brittle and fail; especially if nobody went to the effort of specifying the right type.
I'd guess that the types of plastic that have good chemical resistance have poor wear resistance.
I'd guess that the types of plastic that have good chemical resistance have poor wear resistance.
skiddusmarkus
Active Member
I know Danny but surely the cooler the oil and faster it flows through the turbo, the longer the plastic will last?
What about when you turn off the engine and that plastic has no oil flowing over it but still has all that heat to deal with! From an engineering point of view using that material when there's a better alternative (bronze) is just stupid. It's either done to cut costs on production (highly likely) or to make money from when it fails prematurely.
Let's give them the benefit of the doubt; cost over trying to generate more business from failures. - I think you probably can find a plastic that works, but that requires doing some real product development... and plastic is always going to have less temperature resistance than metal (or ceramic).