After the massive job of removing my up pipe I've dismantled the turbo since it had to be removed

Does it look ok ?

Not much movement in shaft which is good ?

 

It looks like the turbine is or has contacted the exhaust side heat shield, that could suggest more than acceptable axial play I.e. worn trust bearings. I'm in the process of rebuilding my vf43 with new internal parts, new exhaust heat shield and billet compressor. Bought the parts from turborebuilder (UK based) on Sunday and they arrived today! Pretty good and much quicker than parts from eBay.

Their rebuild kit has everything you need bar the copper crush washers for coolant pipes and a flat washer type thing that sits inbetween the 2 (presumably much softer material) thrust washer faces. It doesn't seem to to have worn so I plan to reuse it.

As a tip, if you plan to take it apart, be sure to soak the compressor housing bolts with wd40 for a good while before hand and use a manual impact tool to remove most of the screws, otherwise they tend to round off. It worked ok for me so far! Also the compressor shaft nut is righty loosy, opposite of normal!

For assembly you can search Google for the screw, nut and bolt torques, there is a link in one of the forums. Torques are all pretty low so I bought a cheap torque screwdriver 0.5-->5nm for it.

 

What technique did you use to remove the exhaust/turbine housing? I'm trying to strip an old TD04 and mine seems to be rusted solid.

 

Once the clamp was removed I levered it off with a crowbar a little where i could get purchase, and tapped it with a hammer to remove

 

I've left mine soaking in ATF and thought I might have to look into applying some heat to it but sounds like I need to just get medieval on it instead.

 

Sometimes a little brute force and ignorance is good... but not too much otherwise you could crack the housing!

Correction to my previous statement, the rebuild kit from turborebuilder actually does have the metal washer thing, now I've opened it....

 

Is there any benefit to putting a billet wheel in if you're stripping and rebuilding anyway? A quick look on ebay says they're not that much money.

 

There is, yes. You'll need a map tweak afterwards though.

 

Billet compressor wheel is certainly lighter, the 7+7 blade one I ordered from Turborebuilder is 5g lighter than the stock (6+6 blade) piece. So mechanically, at least, it has the potential to spin up faster.

They sell 2 types, 7+7 and 11 blade. The 7+7 has 7 large and 7 half size blades, and the 11 I believe has all the same size blades. It seems pretty complicated around which is "better" but from what I've gathered the 7+7 gives better spool up but less potential to make more power at the top end, and the 11 blade makes more power at possible expense of spool up. That's my take on it at least but the information that I've found doesn't seem to be very clear. I really want faster spool over (potential for more) top end power from the stock turbo so I've ported the turbine inlet, headers and fitted a harvey trick up pipe.

 

Which turbo is it?

 

stock turbo on my UK spec hawk sti is ihi vf43

 

cheers, i did notice that but having a wiggle of the propeller blades not much movement, it has done 110k so hmmmm.

A simple job of up pipe replacement cant evolve into a turbo rebuild, the missus will kill me lol

good luck with yours bud

 

But if you've got it in bits anyway, and a new turbine blade and rebuild kit costs about the same as a night out...

 

yes, they are lighter, stronger and can flow more - but it does depend which one you go for, like everything there is plenty of **** about, but thats doesnt mean there aren't good value for money parts out there.... I went with a CR Turbo's comp wheel and had them fit and balance it and was about 200 from memory, was a few years ago and a hectic time so price might be abit out

running big boost on stock impeller can cause the fins to bend 'open' and catch the compressor housing, maybe that is what has happened to yours. If you put the compressor housing back on and by hand push the wheel outwards as you spin it slowly does it catch the housing?

ideally you'd want to balance the turbo assembly once the new compressor wheel has been fitted

 

It's not just the kit tho , as said above you then need it all balanced etc so that's finding somewhere etc

I am running 1.3 to 1.4 boost so maybe it's been that , was running good before so as no major damage etc will reassemble and get her back on the road

 

Thinking some more about this , I might rebuild the turbo , the lighter turbines interest me as I'm fitting a Harvey up pipe for quicker spool also

Is it easy enough to replace parts or is it worth paying the £320 odd for the pros to do it with all parts etc ?

Parts cost what , £150 ? So £150 for labour ?

As also said balancing it afterwards is tricky to get done and not something that should be skipped

Cheers

 

I paid about £135 for the parts all in. The annoying thing is that it's not particularly difficult to do but I'm really struggling to find a company willing to balance a core that has been brought to them rather than one from a turbo they took apart. So on that basis alone it might be worth it for the lack of hassle.

I've approached a generic dynamic balancing company to see what they say next week, if not I'm going to have to chance it and put it back together anyway as I need the car back on road....

 

personally i would

send the tubby to these guys
http://www.crturbos.co.uk/index.php/...charger-parts/

put it back together with harvey up pipe myself

then take it for mapping, remembering to keep it off boost. If you take the actuator arm off then the wastegate penny flaps in the breeze and doesnt make the turbo produce much boost, (bypass always open) so you can rev the engine a bit more without producing much boost, it might sound like a ticking metallic sound as the penny hits things but rather that than boost n boom

 

lad called craig bellworthy on facebook might be worth a shout

 

ace, I will check him out. Cheers.

 

Ok guys, i checked out Turbo Dynamics website , they have a price from £250 + vat for upgrading turbo turbines etc. so ive messgaed them for a quote

anything over £300 and its out of reach for me , will pop a video up later of the movement on my turbine

i see these for sale, 9 blades rather than 12 for quicker spool h, hmmm ????

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Turbo-Turb...YAAOSwBahVIf74

 

How do you post a video ?

Cheers

 

if you have a Google drive or similar you can upload it there and create a 'shareable' link and put that in the post?

 

Ok will try, i have it uploaded to my facebook account but when i put the link in a post on here it doesnt appear, maybe it thinks its a virus or something within the forum code ?

Anyhoo , after some more research, i phned Turbo Dynamics, they dont offer the lesser finned Turbine wheels as these are cheap chinese crap on ebay lol so they wont install these, they do the Billet compressor wheels but again, after reading up on Billet Vs Cast compressor wheels i see no real gain apart from ligtening my wallet really.

The axial play (end float) on mine is virtally 0, the Radial play is what i was trying to put a video up of, in it i have to really grip onto the turbine to get the movement i do get, if i use light pressure like they say it hardly moves.

So on that basis im thinking of leaving the turbo alone, as you mention in your 1st post Bazil SW, a couple of Turbine fins do have marks on but im putting that down to dust or excessive boost pressure im putting through it at times i cant see any wear on the housing itself

cheers

 

Right, got there in the end

Heres the turbine Radial movement on mine, now, this is me gripping the turbine pretty hard and making it move, if i use finger tip pressure theres not much movement

 

And compressor wheel

 

Have seen worse but a bit excessive on the exhaust side.

 

I'll be interested to know how you get on when you've fitted your turbo and had it mapped, thinking of getting my VF43 rebuilt with a billet wheel when i get my engine rebuilt, be nice to know what spool is like compared to standard and what power it makes, good luck with the build.

 

I'm not that experienced, but certainly that is more freeplay than on mine. According to turborebuild website for a diy rebuild it can be enough to mark the parts for reassembly assuming you keep the same turbine and compressor. Or for 50 quid they can balance the turbine and compressor assembly (not the whole core) if you send them the parts, which is also good enough apparently. That's the route I'm heading down now.

By accident I've ended up with 2 vf43 rebuild kits so got one going spare if you did want to rebuild it.

 

Aye will do, cheers. Before the ongoing engine rebuild I had ported stock headers, Harvey up pipe and a turbo blanket on for 1 week and it was hitting full boost (~22psi) by about 3050rpm - it was a turbo nutter! Running with my own tune at around 350hp I reckon, but I never dyno'd it; but I'm hoping for good things after this rebuild!