Remapped and now turbo has gone

[TheBinarySheep]

As the title says. Car remapped a week and a half ago. I lost all power and smoke was pouring out the back!

 

almost £1000 for a new turbo and I’m guessing I have no comeback with the place that did the remap.

[fluffmeister]

I guess it depends on who did the map, and a million and one other circumstances. 

[TheBinarySheep]

Sorry my first post was short, I was walking back from the school run.

 

I've spoke to the guy that did the remap, he's said £750 + labour to fit a new turbo. He says the OEM turbo is weak and that I must have had a really weak one. I've rang another remap place, I've explained to them that I'd had my car remapped by an Audi specialist, the turbo has gone and they've said the turbo's are weak. Is this true... his first response "Was it remapped by XYZ", I said "Yes! How did you know", happens all the times with their remaps.

So now not only do I need a new turbo, I'm going to have to pay to have the car remapped.

I don't know where I stand in regards to getting any money back from the original mapper.

[UndertheRadar]

Have the turbo removed and rebuilt with stronger internals. Also replace feed and return pipes. When running again, check and see how much boost it’s running. 

[TheBinarySheep]

2 minutes ago, fluffmeister said:

I guess it depends on who did the map, and a million and one other circumstances. 

It was a VAG specialist near me, they have their own 4x4 rolling road. Car is a 2018 model with 20,000 mile on the clock. It's done about 200-300 mile since the remap.

[shyVRS245]

So who did the remap that probably used too much boost and put the turbo under too much strain? Think you should name them and how much it cost so others can avoid using them and saving them from extra expense.

[TheBinarySheep]

Just now, UndertheRadar said:

Have the turbo removed and rebuilt with stronger internals. Also replace feed and return pipes. When running again, check and see how much boost it’s running. 

I was told it was tuned to 1.6 bar. which I believe is standard for stage 1.

[Bigeater]

Sorry to his this TBS :(

 

Did you sign a disclaimer before the remap?

Edited 18 November, 2020 by Bigeater

[TheBinarySheep]

7 minutes ago, Bigeater said:

Sorry to his this TBS :(

 

Did you sign a disclaimer before the remap?

I didn't sign a thing.

I don't think I'm going to have any comeback, but it would be good if I could even get the remap cost back. I've had issues with this VAG specialist in the past, and I've found their customer service to be terrible, so it's my fault for choosing them.

[UndertheRadar]

9 minutes ago, TheBinarySheep said:

I was told it was tuned to 1.6 bar. which I believe is standard for stage 1.

Firstly, I suspect they’re running it too high. You will know if it’s rebuilt properly (may as well upgrade it now) and then tested, to see if it’s higher and therefore you have comeback with original map installer. 
Secondly, there’s a 4yr old S8 in the workshop getting two new turbos fitted as the strainer for the oil feed blocked with just shy of 24k miles on the car, so don’t discount starvation issues. 
I wouldn’t fit a brand new one. Should be a good few capable of rebuilding it well beyond standard spec and therefore future proofing it. 

[SkudMissile21]

If your local “specialist” has any integrity he would’ve firstly done a full health check on the car before mapping it and should be willing to warranty his work beyond 200-300 miles that it’s not gonna blow the engine up!

there are so many people on here and other forums that have remapped these engines to stage 1 and beyond yet yours is the first one I’ve heard of that’s blown the turbo afterwards.

I’d be looking at getting money back or the turbo rebuilt at his expense - how did you pay for it, credit card?

[TheBinarySheep]

1 minute ago, SkudMissile21 said:

If your local “specialist” has any integrity he would’ve firstly done a full health check on the car before mapping it and should be willing to warranty his work beyond 200-300 miles that it’s not gonna blow the engine up!

there are so many people on here and other forums that have remapped these engines to stage 1 and beyond yet yours is the first one I’ve heard of that’s blown the turbo afterwards.

I’d be looking at getting money back or the turbo rebuilt at his expense - how did you pay for it, credit card?

I paid debit card.

[TheBinarySheep]

I'm not sure now whether to have the turbo replaced and the original map put back on, because this is going to be very expensive. £500 for the original map, £1000 for a turbo and then £600 for a new map to replace the old one. £2100 in total. 

[SkudMissile21]

£500 to reload your original map??? 

That should be the least he could offer, this guy needs naming and shaming so nobody else ever has to go through this!

He should be accepting liability for blowing the turbo after such a short amount of running time and offering to at least contribute towards the repair costs and whatever else is needed to see you as a satisfied customer.

What if it had blown up while on his dyno or straight after on the way home? Would you still be accepting his word as “the turbo is weak so tough luck”???! (And pay me more to revert back to the map you already owned....)

[TheBinarySheep]

5 minutes ago, SkudMissile21 said:

£500 to reload your original map??? 

That should be the least he could offer, this guy needs naming and shaming so nobody else ever has to go through this!

He should be accepting liability for blowing the turbo after such a short amount of running time and offering to at least contribute towards the repair costs and whatever else is needed to see you as a satisfied customer.

What if it had blown up while on his dyno or straight after on the way home? Would you still be accepting his word as “the turbo is weak so tough luck”???! (And pay me more to revert back to the map you already owned....)

£500 was for the remap I got a couple of weeks ago. I'll be taking to car somewhere else to get it fixed, and they'll charge £600 to undo the other remap and put their own on, so I'll have paid £1100 for two remaps!

Then I've got to pay for a new turbo on top of that.

Edited 18 November, 2020 by TheBinarySheep

[Ootohere]

@TheBinarySheep

Did the person that did the map not mention before doing it the weak turbo that they knew about?

The same engines & turbo's that did have issues a while back, but plenty have had successfully remapped.

[TheBinarySheep]

2 minutes ago, e-Roottoot said:

@TheBinarySheep

Did the person that did the map not mention before doing it the weak turbo that they knew about?

The same engines & turbo's that did have issues a while back, but plenty have had successfully remapped.

 

No, it was when I went to pick the car up, he mentioned that the IS38 turbo is weak and can go, and said that as a result he only boosts to 1.6 bar to protect it, citing that other tuners map to 1.8 bar. Turns out that most tuners map to 1.6 bar on a stage 1 anyway.

The other tuner I've spoken to, have said that they hear of a few people that have had a remap done at the same place and their turbo goes at the end of the road.

It looks like there's nothing I can do, I'll have to swallow the big pill. I'm waiting for the other tuner to come back tomorrow with prices for an OEM turbo and an uprated turbo. My original tuner has said it's £750 + vat for an uprated turbo, but I forgot to find out what brand it was so I don't know if it's any good, plus, I'm not sure I'm having them touch my car again! 

I had a problem with this specialist with my last car as well, I had a Mk3 VRS, just out of warranty, 48000 mile, water pump went. Got them to fix it, and a day or two later the car lost all of its coolant. I took the car back and they said the radiator had a leak, so I forked out £450 for that on top of the £750 I paid for the water pump. I believe they damaged the radiator while fixing the water pump, but I had no way to prove it so had to cough up. I've also asked them for prices for upgrades on the car, and they never get back to me, I should have stayed away.

[newbie69]

I'm writing a long message, take a breath for now, it's going to be ok!

[TheBinarySheep]

5 minutes ago, newbie69 said:

I'm writing a long message, take a breath for now, it's going to be ok!

Thanks for the comfort.

The car is still under warranty as well until January.... but obviously I can't claim now as I've remapped it!

[newbie69]

Ok so first, I'm sorry to hear about this but really don't go crazy please, you're definitely not the first to have a IS38 blown sure and plenty of options down the road that will get you up n running with a much greater reliability long term.

Now, I have said it before, thing with these engines is everybody is supposedly able to tune them, and maybe they all run similar peak boost but the way the power is made and how all supporting parameters are adjusted is what makes all the difference both in end performance and reliability. Research, research, research. If you can't swear by a particular smaller tuner you're thinking about or don't know first hand the owners of the cars they mapped and how the have fared over time don't take your chances and go with a big name that at least in this platform and engine are all proven with thousands of cars around the world, especially at such off-the-shelf tuning levels of stage 1 and 2.
Don't cheap out on remaps, you are at worst talking about a mere couple hundred more for something which could have an impact of a multiple times higher cost.

That been said, yes the IS38 turbocharger is known for its shaft weakness, although as the revisions came along (there's been a few since 2014) cases were diminishing and the majority of cars post 2016 have been fine. Myself I've had two IS38 cars both mapped to 370-390bhp from two different tuners and both have been fine, plenty of others I know that are stage 2 and still fine, then I've read about stocks cars blown, it was really a lottery with chances dropping the younger the cars are... Due to this history, It's very hard / impossible to be able to categorically blame the tuner or the turbo unit, or partly both so it does not really make any sense to chase the causes of this any further as it won't get you anywhere (apart from making you mad probably). I remember in an earlier post of yours stating the tuner had trouble keeping the intake temps down which is rather unusual for a stage 1 map, more important though you also say you've had issues with him in the past which really begs the question why you took your chances with them. It's a rhetorical question, no need to answer it.

Where do you go from here:  Are you happy with the car otherwise? Do you plan to keep it for some time?

If (and only if) the answer is no then head back to your original tuner, ask them to replace the turbo with a used IS38 from the used parts market (cost around 500-700EUR) and ask them to revert the software to the stock map (every decent tuner should be able to provide this for free, especially after such an incident) and move on.
However I don't think this is what you had in mind.

If you've answered yes then the good news are that instead of a costly replacement you can upgrade your own turbo to a much greater standard (uprated shaft, bearings, balancing etc.)  and decide what power you want to run, you could simply leave it at stage 2 levels of 400bhp or go for more. For example, I've heard really good stuff about Dan (i think is his name) from Littco: 

https://www.littco.co.uk/hybrid-turbos-1-c.asp

They offer lots of very affordable upgrade options depending on what you want to do and the fact you will be sending them your own turbo to serve as the base is keeping the cost down. FYI the housing itself has no issues and can run over 500bhp, it's the core/shaft that is prone to fail so it's an easy fix for a company that knows what they're doing. 
For example the L380 MQB option with "Supercore" upgrade is just 660 GBP and you've got nothing to worry after that. I'd suggest calling them and explaining your situation and they should be able to advice you accordingly. Then after the turbo is sorted choose your next tuner wisely (a whole different discussion). 
Yes it's not for free but much lower than other more serious failures and you will have removed a known weakness of the stock engine/turbo.

In any case I think it's clear you should not even consider an OEM turbo at full retail price (there is no cost covered by the warranty obviously as you said), as even if running stock power you could end up right in the same position after a while.
Plus there is no reason to do that really. The gen3 EA888 engine is one of the most solid that have come out from VAG in terms of reliability and tuning potential with the IS38 turbo being the only real possibility for failure which at least is easily addressed.

Let us know how you decide to proceed and remember **** happens all the time, as long as it's not something terminal don't beat yourself up too much. I don't know how power hungry you are but personally I'd have seen it as the perfect excuse to proceed with my hybrid turbo plans...

[UndertheRadar]

There are specialists who will rebuild the turbo you have now to an upgraded specification for less than the price of either an OEM unit or a brand new upgraded unit. It’s not nice when these things happen, but it’s not the end of the world either. It can be fixed. The main thing is to make sure the map is reliable when you have the car sorted. I’ll be using revo as they have a list of safety features built into their mapping to help avoid over stressing units, due to muppets who nail the life out of the poor thing from cold, and ingnore spool up/down times entirely to name only a couple. 

[J.R.]

Every vehicle has its weaker points, those which are known of in standard tune are far more likely to manifest with a higher level of tune, thats the risk you take and the price we often pay in the search for more power.

 

Whilst I can understand the premature failure of many engine, transmission and driveline components when running higher than standard boost pressures what is it in the turbo itself that is put under strain and fails?

 

I cant see it being the casing, impellors or even bearings, does it push out the oil seals perhaps?

 

It has to be something quite definitive to fail within 200 miles.

 

Editted, I read the postings which overlapped, a shaft problem, I will read further on the matter as I am intending a remap once I can travel again, how can I determine if my engine has this known weak turbo?

Edited 18 November, 2020 by J.R.

[TheBinarySheep]

9 minutes ago, newbie69 said:

Ok so first, I'm sorry to hear about this but really don't go crazy please, you're definitely not the first to have a IS38 blown sure and plenty of options down the road that will get you up n running with a much greater reliability long term.

Now, I have said it before, thing with these engines is everybody is supposedly able to tune them, and maybe they all run similar peak boost but the way the power is made and how all supporting parameters are adjusted is what makes all the difference both in end performance and reliability. Research, research, research. If you can't swear by a particular smaller tuner you're thinking about or don't know first hand the owners of the cars they mapped and how the have fared over time don't take your chances and go with a big name that at least in this platform and engine are all proven with thousands of cars around the world, especially at such off-the-shelf tuning levels of stage 1 and 2.
Don't cheap out on remaps, you are at worst talking about a mere couple hundred more for something which could have an impact of a multiple times higher cost.

That been said, yes the IS38 turbocharger is known for its shaft weakness, although as the revisions came along (there's been a few since 2014) cases were diminishing and the majority of cars post 2016 have been fine. Myself I've had two IS38 cars both mapped to 370-390bhp from two different tuners and both have been fine, plenty of others I know that are stage 2 and still fine, then I've read about stocks cars blown, it was really a lottery with chances dropping the younger the cars are... Due to this history, It's very hard / impossible to be able to categorically blame the tuner or the turbo unit, or partly both so it does not really make any sense to chase the causes of this any further as it won't get you anywhere (apart from making you mad probably). I remember in an earlier post of yours stating the tuner had trouble keeping the intake temps down which is rather unusual for a stage 1 map, more important though you also say you've had issues with him in the past which really begs the question why you took your chances with them. It's a rhetorical question, no need to answer it.

Where do you go from here:  Are you happy with the car otherwise? Do you plan to keep it for some time?

If (and only if) the answer is no then head back to your original tuner, ask them to replace the turbo with a used IS38 from the used parts market (cost around 500-700EUR) and ask them to revert the software to the stock map (every decent tuner should be able to provide this for free, especially after such an incident) and move on.
However I don't think this is what you had in mind.

If you've answered yes then the good news are that instead of a costly replacement you can upgrade your own turbo to a much greater standard (uprated shaft, bearings, balancing etc.)  and decide what power you want to run, you could simply leave it at stage 2 levels of 400bhp or go for more. For example, I've heard really good stuff about Dan (i think is his name) from Littco: 

https://www.littco.co.uk/hybrid-turbos-1-c.asp

They offer lots of very affordable upgrade options depending on what you want to do and the fact you will be sending them your own turbo to serve as the base is keeping the cost down. FYI the housing itself has no issues and can run over 500bhp, it's the core/shaft that is prone to fail so it's an easy fix for a company that knows what they're doing. 
For example the L380 MQB option with "Supercore" upgrade is just 660 GBP and you've got nothing to worry after that. I'd suggest calling them and explaining your situation and they should be able to advice you accordingly. Then after the turbo is sorted choose your next tuner wisely (a whole different discussion). 
Yes it's not for free but much lower than other more serious failures and you will have removed a known weakness of the stock engine/turbo.

In any case I think it's clear you should not even consider an OEM turbo at full retail price (there is no cost covered by the warranty obviously as you said), as even if running stock power you could end up right in the same position after a while.
Plus there is no reason to do that really. The gen3 EA888 engine is one of the most solid that have come out from VAG in terms of reliability and tuning potential with the IS38 turbo being the only real possibility for failure which at least is easily addressed.

Let us know how you decide to proceed and remember **** happens all the time, as long as it's not something terminal don't beat yourself up too much. I don't know how power hungry you are but personally I'd have seen it as the perfect excuse to proceed with my hybrid turbo plans...

Thanks for that.

It's funny you mention littco, as I'm sure that's the turbo my original tuner has quoted me for the L380X. 

I'm planning on keeping the car. I've only had it since February!

The cheapest option appears to be to get the original tuner to replace the turbo (£750 + labour) and then leave the map on and assume that the map is fine and it was the turbo that was the issue. I'd expect this to total just under £1,000.

The other option is to have another tuner to the work, they don't want to use the littco turbo for some reason, and they want to put their own map on. I'd expects costs for all of this to be at least £1,600.

The issue is, I don't really have any way to tell whether the map that is on the car at present played any part in the failure. Obviously, I know the remap played a part, but is there something to this specific map that's caused the problem that another map from another tuner wouldn't have caused.

[newbie69]

12 minutes ago, TheBinarySheep said:

Thanks for that.

It's funny you mention littco, as I'm sure that's the turbo my original tuner has quoted me for the L380X. 

I'm planning on keeping the car. I've only had it since February!

The cheapest option appears to be to get the original tuner to replace the turbo (£750 + labour) and then leave the map on and assume that the map is fine and it was the turbo that was the issue. I'd expect this to total just under £1,000.

The other option is to have another tuner to the work, they don't want to use the littco turbo for some reason, and they want to put their own map on. I'd expects costs for all of this to be at least £1,600.

The issue is, I don't really have any way to tell whether the map that is on the car at present played any part in the failure. Obviously, I know the remap played a part, but is there something to this specific map that's caused the problem that another map from another tuner wouldn't have caused.

I lost you a bit on how the original tuner relates to the L380X, he suggested replacing the blown one with the L380X or...?  If that's the case, I don't see an issue apart from how much you can trust him and his map for the future. I've spoken with two people running Littco turbos on FB groups, albeit the larger L450 and L500 and have been very happy with them.

The fact he suggested them doesn't mean that if he's bad all his suggestions of other aftermarket items are of equal quality    But of-course there are other turbo specialists offering similar services.

No idea why the other possible tuner doesn't want to put a Littco turbo on but it could be that they have tuned a particular brand/model and so they are more familiar with it and have ready settings, instead of having to investigate new ones for a different unit.

Reason I suggested Littco is that with their lower models you could keep it at stage 2 levels and at a very reasonable cost. No need to be pushed to a larger more expensive turbo capable of 450+ bhp just because a tuner suggests so. Above stage 2 you need other upgrades as well...

No you won't know for sure if his map caused it but any hybrid with upgraded shaft and bearings will be able to take some beating even from a non-optimal map, but I understand you might have just lost confidence on that guy and follow another tuner's suggestions completely.

Just repeating my last point that OEM turbo does not make sense since you are already (and want to remain) tuned. 



 

[TheBinarySheep]

7 minutes ago, newbie69 said:

I lost you a bit on how the original tuner relates to the L380X, he suggested replacing the blown one with the L380X or...?  If that's the case, I don't see an issue apart from how much you can trust him and his map for the future. I've spoken with two people running Littco turbos on FB groups, albeit the larger L450 and L500 and have been very happy with them.

The fact he suggested them doesn't mean that if he's bad all his suggestions of other aftermarket items are of equal quality    But of-course there are other turbo specialists offering similar services.

No idea why the other possible tuner doesn't want to put a Littco turbo on but it could be that they have tuned a particular brand/model and so they are more familiar with it and have ready settings, instead of having to investigate new ones for a different unit.

Reason I suggested Littco is that with their lower models you could keep it at stage 2 levels and at a very reasonable cost. No need to be pushed to a larger more expensive turbo capable of 450+ bhp just because a tuner suggests so. Above stage 2 you need other upgrades as well...

No you won't know for sure if his map caused it but any hybrid with upgraded shaft and bearings will be able to take some beating even from a non-optimal map, but I understand you might have just lost confidence on that guy and follow another tuner's suggestions completely.

Just repeating my last point that OEM turbo does not make sense since you are already (and want to remain) tuned. 



 

Sorry if I didn't make it clear. Yes, the tuner wants to replace my broken turbo with the L380X. His words were that he can tune the hell out of them.

I'm assuming the L380 can also handle a small amount of tuning (it's cheaper than the L380X) so that could be a cheaper option if I don't plan on further modifications.

In terms of the L380X, if I go that route, I'm assuming that alone won't produce any extra power over and above what I already have without supporting modifications such as down pipe and inlet pipe?

I've submitted an enquiry to littco to see how many power the L380 can comfortably handle, as it doesn't say on the website.