Hi all,

 

You may have seen previous posts from the back end of last year...

 

I thought my turbo was on its way out (100K covered) and a mechanic verified this.  So, I took onboard some recommendations and bought a recon turbo.

 

Originally, the mechanic didn't clock the turbo housing and instead created an outlet pipe to fit.   With boost problems, and at the other end of the country a day later, I took it elsewhere.  They removed the turbo, clocked it and replaced all the lower boost pipes and oil feed pipe.

 

Turbo still wasn't right - police siren and generally just incredibly loud and harsh sounding.  Being customer supplied, I (understandably) couldn't just return it and say 'please can you resolve the issues' as it wasn't supplied by the garage.

 

So, I've since taken it elsewhere, to a recommended chap on this forum who runs a garage part time.  He identified that the outlet housing had minor damage and was causing a boost leak.  He also suggested this could be the cause of the incredibly loud police siren noise.

 

I've been back in touch with the seller of the turbo, got a replacement casing and had the turbo removed, outlet casing replaced and turbo refitted.  No boost leak (at last) but the incredible whine and noise remains.  It's done about 7K in total and I think is progressively getting worse.

 

So.  Here is my dilemma.  I've now spent £1600 (turbo been fitted 3 times).  I've since realised that the turbo I bought isn't a Garett refurb but an imitation.  I perhaps should have realised this because it was cheap, but I didn't.  The turbo is out of warranty and although I've not contacted the seller to follow up that I'm still not having success, I'm not sure I want to incur further costs of chancing a replacement and forking out the labour if I was offered it. (And that's part of the dielemma)

 

But... I spend a great deal of  money maintaining the car.  I'm proactive despite it being worth little money (157K on the clock).  Part of me says drive it until it fails and then replace with genuine but caring for the car, I feel nervous driving it and booting it.  I don't want to end up triggering more damage with the turbo actually failing and sending itself flying through the engine.

 

So I've learnt my lesson...  But if any mechanics could give their opinion about continuing to drive it (and hope) or finally putting it right with a genuine turbo, I'd be grateful.

 

​Sorry about the incredibly long post.  I'm rather down about it all as you can imagine!

Help and guidance appreciated

 

If it's a cheap copy I'd remove it soon as you can afford to.

When a turbo fails it can wipe out boost pipes, intercoolers and engines.

I'd consider a standard or slightly hybrid (xman pd170) around the £400 mark.

They are quite easy to remove and refit so labour shouldn't be much. Could be a diy job if you have some tools.

I once put a cheap Chinese turbo on my 206 hdi gti and it was a mistake from the start same symptoms you got i replaced it with a genuine second hand 1 2 yrs on and 30k still going strong in the ownership of my brother  

Probably a good chance the actuator or stop screw have not been setup correctly which can make the turbo boost and sometimes overboost very badly.

If you have VCDS lite then log group 11 using 3rd gear at WOT from 1500 to 4000. Check if actual is going above requested and what the duty cycle is at 4000 rpm.

I bought a second hand garrett turbo off eBay from a car that had done 180k (think the auction said it came off a golf and this would explain how it was clocked). The turbo obviously hasn't done the full 180k but the seller wasn't sure at what point it had been replaced on the car.

Turbo is in very good used condition and really solid, no play or damage whatsoever. I've done over a thousand miles on it now and it's going great guns. Clocked and fitted it myself and it owes me £117 plus gaskets and an oil change.

I suppose I'm trying to say that sometimes you can have more confidence buying good used second hand parts rather than spending more on refurbished parts that may not be refurbished to a very high standard.

Also if you can get stuck in and do the work yourself you'll save yourself an absolute bloody fortune!

sent from my Galaxy Note 4

Buy cheap, buy twice or even thrice.

 

It sounds like your new turbo is an 'orrible chinese gary glitter!

Thanks for all the support.

 

It's not an eBay job - I paid about £400 but don't wish to name where it was purchased as it may that I'm extremely unfortunate and its just a bad one.  But I was told by a mechanic it was an imitation Garrett - I've no clue to be honest!

 

I'm going to run logs as I do have VCDS Lite.  I have asked for this to be checked when originally fitted but with the problems I've had, I can't verify the stop screw and actuator have been checked.

 

I am wondering about going down the used route.  Fitting myself wouldn't be such a bad thing if I knew it would go without a hiccup but If I can't shift a bolt then I'll just get incredibly wound up!  Thats the problem with having the current one removed and refitted three times.  Labour and boost pipes has come to about £1200 of the £1600 in total.

 

Wish I could roll back 7 months.  It seems Darkside sell a new Garett 1749VA for £550.  

I'm a bit surprised your original mechanic didn't seem to know how to clock a turbo? Literally takes 60 seconds to clock a garrett.

The only thing regarding stuck nuts etc is that all the exhaust manifold nuts are all copper and if they are a bit stiff, a quick squirter of WD40 and they fall off (well, not quite lol).

I stripped mine the evening before doing the turbo swap so any stiff nuts were left with a squirt of WD40 on overnight.

Are you able to get the turbo air intake pipe off and have a nosey in there with an inspection mirror? Also see if there is any wiggle on the turbo core with your finger?

I have a PDF'd guide someone did on here for changing a turbo and I could also direct you towards a good video on YouTube which I used for a bit of reference before doing mine.

sent from my Galaxy Note 4

https://app.box.com/s/jj3zur5ogtemoi7hmuc1x178clk7yr2q

I found the video useful for reference even though some people may be inclined to pick fault with it

How to remove a VW TDI Turbo Charger:

sent from my Galaxy Note 4

I'm a bit surprised your original mechanic didn't seem to know how to clock a turbo? Literally takes 60 seconds to clock a garrett.

 

 

It was a mechanic recommended to me by family.  I took it to him a, explained it needed clocking and he said fine.  But it turned out he didn't clock it at all.... Bizzare I know, as I've read on here its just a few bolts to loosen.

 

Thanks for the guides .  I'll take a good long look at them tomorrow alongside running the boost logs.  

 

Last mechanic would have probably told me if there was shaft play as he couldn't believe the noise and so whipped it off and did the outlet alloy replacement.  So I doubt there is shaft play.. which makes me wonder if it is bearings or its simply unbalanced properly.  But I'm literally guessing at this point simply from the bits I've read online!

I don't know how long an unbalanced turbo would last and I think the compressor blades would get damaged if this was the case (maybe) as there is literally hardly any room for wobble between the compressor blades and the compressor housing.

Just out of interest, could you post a sound clip of the noise your turbo is making?

This is the noise mine was making...

https://app.box.com/s/hduoybs3fz6kfnwxk46u

And this is what was wrong with it lol...

sent from my Galaxy Note 4

That looks a bit shredded!

 

I would say mine is worse however (noise) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9932810/Turbo.mp3

 

Was yours the original on the car (above picture) or had you purchased a refurb elsewhere to begin with and faced a similar problem before going down a good used route?

Edited 13 March, 201511 yr by Dave89

Funny you should ask! Lol

The turbo you can see above was a refurbished unit supplied by a third party warranty company and the turbo was fitted by Skoda in Derby. What I believe was the original turbo, died shortly after I bought the car from available car in Sutton but I had purchased an extended warranty hence got it replaced through that.

It has made a faint whizzing noise since the day it was fitted, Skoda maintained it was fine and was perfectly normal, however the louder noise you can hear on the above clip has been present since the day I had it mapped at shark.

To be honest I think the refurbished turbo was shot/on its way out since the day it was fitted and the remap just made the noise more prominent as it was running more boost.

I ran it for 30k miles before finally thinking it was time to sort it. I have however been keeping my eye out for a good second hand one for quite sometime and was just biding my time waiting for a good looking one. I did purchase one through eBay which went back as it was completely dead lol. I've ended up fitting a garrett whereas the old one was a KKK.

sent from my Galaxy Note 4

I would have thought that you are covered by the sale of goods act. If the item was advertised and purchased as genuine, and infact turned out to be an imitation, it was not as described and quite obviously not fit for purpose.

With this in mind you should also be able to claim for costs incurred in fitting and refitting.

How would one go about confirming it isn't genuine though?

If you buy a remanufactored Garrett turbo, how can you tell its fake?

I just assumed the op had some sort of evidence as he knows its an imitation.

With the siren noise the turbo can last quite a while, it will be off balance and will eventually just kill the bearings, easiest way to check how long you have left is to get under car and check play in the shaft. If there is little play you should be fine for a bit.

I have had a few turbo issues myself and i know how you feel, every time it makes a noise you get paranoid, so for piece of mind I would just change it.

Well I've had no luck with VCDS lite this weekend.  Currently no access to a windows machine and it is unresponsive using parallels on a Mac.  So I'll hopefully borrow a laptop and get some readings done next weekend.

 

The fact that the turbo is a refurb does suggest it isn't Garett, and I do accept that.  But I assume quality parts are used when they are rebuilt (Garret or equivalent spec).  I have been told that there are signs that suggest otherwise, but I can't say if this is the case or not.  This is just what I've been told from a recent mechanic who has had the car.

 

I'll report back once I've some results and a graph. 

 

Perhaps I should just lease a GTD.  With some of the cut-price lease deals, I think I'd actually save money than persist with this issue!