I have aquired a volvo xc90 D5 with a timing belt failure and im putting a new lump in it,

 

While i was in process of stripping today i removed turbo and noticed actuator arms abit stiff and i have seen a few of these with sticky vanes recently and while its off i thought i would have a bash at stripping and cleaning it,

 

I am a techie but working at a dealer we don't seen may when they get to the sort of age where vanes start to stick and we don't really have owt at work to clean them out apart from the usual carb cleaner etc and going on past experiance trying to clean EGR's out with it am not holding my breath,

 

I know alot of people use mr muscle but this is usually when its still fitted to car, anybody used it when turbos been sat on bench

 

I don't know if this has any history of throwing itself into limp mode but am thinking preventing before it starts as i don't envy 6 hours to remove it again in the future as i do intend to run this for a while once i've put new lump in it

I'm beginning to think there may be a problem with Mr Muscle. Some of the local Golf boys have tried it, had problems again and some have found that there is some pitting around the vane shafts. I suspect this is because it is difficult to get the stuff out of there and who knows what happens to Mr Muscle at EGTs.

The guys who pulled the turbo and used a different method had longer lasting results.

I've seen people steam clean them, stick them in a parts washer or use carb cleaner and a toothbrush. I don't see any benefit using Mr Muscle if the the turbo is on a bench.

Ill pull it apart and see how bad it is then go from there

Have you tried red diesel. Cleaned my egr with it last week, came up spotless.

Caustic soda lol. Breaks the carbon down a treat. We use it at work (glass factory) to clean the moulds which are covered in a graphite based lubricant. Everything comes up spotless.

Day