Blown Turbo methinks?/Does Inski still work at Patriot?!

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Dave6265

New member
Hey guys...

I don't post here often but I do lurk a bit. I'm up here every summer working. Last summer I met a few guys on here, iirc Pedro was one of them and got to meet Inski as well at Patriot. Does he still work there? I think I'll be taking a trip/being towed up there soon...

Here's the story:

I was driving up here from NJ, and smelled burning oil from time to time, but I was always behind a truck when I smelled it so I blamed it off on them. I RARELY go into boost while driving, especially on the highway. With RA gears there's really no needs. Well at the toll for 495 it's congested as always and as I stop a billow of smoke comes up through the hoodscoop and passenger side through the hood. I have the
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face and then dart off to the side of the highway. I pop the hood to see a whole lot of oil dripping down right near the turbo area. Well I was like 3.5 hours from home so the only real thing for me to do at the time was to trudge on.I guess since I was crusing at speeds between 70-75 all the smoke was not visible, cuz of the amount of air going through the area. I don't have any CELs, the temp is fine, Boost gauge shows nothing wrong, I'm just dumping/burning lots of oil from the turbo area. So I'm thinking one of the seals in the turbo broke, or an oil line got messed up somehow. I tried to put the car into boost once, just to see how it'd behave. It was extremely sluggish to 5lbs so I just backed off of it. I drove the rest of the way up here without positive pressure, using the boost gauges to have accelerated to 3psi below 0 at the very most. I nursed it home to Ogunquit, and now I have a car I don't know how much I should be driving. Car runs fine, just no power, I won't try putting it into any boost. The local guys who everyone uses around here don't even do turbo work so The only other place I knew of up here was patriot...chris do you still work there in service? care to chime in? Anyone know what kind of labor I will be seeing? If it really is a blown turbo I think I'm just going to jump on a vf34/pinks/AP setup... Would patriot have a problem installing that stuff? It's been a very long, stressful day..

Cliffnotes: Lots of smoke from oil that's being dumped and burned on the uppipe/manifold. does inski still work at Patriot? How much for a turbo install?

Thanks for any help/words of advice or sympathy haha...

Dave :-

 
IIRC if you have a bad turbo tha tmeans the turbine is leaking and oil is pasing thru so you'd see smoke out the rear.

Sounds like soemthing before the turbo is busted. Oil feed line would be my guess.

But it may not even be turbo related, the lack of boost may be a result of another porblem else where.

And yes Inski still works at Patriot and yes I doubt they'd install a larger turbo/pinks/ap.

 
get under there with a light and look carefully to see where the oil is coming from.

if turbo itself was blown, there would be clouds of smoke behind the car that James Bond would be proud of.

oil feed line is primary suspect, tho it could be one or all of several other issues.

Dr. Inski can fix what ails her

 
its probably the oil feed or oil drain line leaking oil into the header and burning off. theres no pathway from the inside of the turbo to the outside, so if one of the internal seals is blown it would only put oil into the exhaust, not under the hood. i'm guessing the boost issue is just because you were scared to go to full throttle.

the oil feed line is the one coming off the head and going into the top-center of the turbo (center cartridge), its connected by a banjo bolt. the drain line is underneath and goes straight down.

 
Seems odd for the oil feed or drain to just fail.

How many miles are on the car? Do you do the scheduled maintenance?

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say b0rked PCV dumping oil all over the back of the motor and downpipe.

Good Luck with it!

 
There's almost 79k on the car... I was thinking it was one of the lines to the turbo or the turbo itself. The oil is being spilled on the exhaust manifold/uppipe. I'm 99% sure the pcv valve was changed with the 60 maintenance I did.

Thanks for the input guys, I guess I'll give them a call tommorow first thing to see what I can do. I know since I drove it an hour and a half it's a silly question but, should I drive it up to patriot?

 
Hey Dave.

Yeah, ah, turbo cars dont commonly pooch oil all over the place. My guess would be the same as Trevors. Stuff you head in there with a pen light and see if you can see a cracked tube or hose or clamp. Check you oil level. Obviously no one would recommend driving it like that..but you've already gone so...and tow truck rides are big bucks...but turbos or engines are huge bucks.

 
Yeah I'm giving them a call today to see if I can get over there with you, I will have an extinguisher in the car, and I'll have a relative follow me up.. I understand this can be $$$, I'm hoping it is a split line or something of that nature.

 
Sounds like the oil drain hose underneath the turbo is loose/craked and dripping oil on the downpipe...I had this same exact issue on my car b/c the stock Subaru clamps on this hose are junk. I am willing to bet that this is the issue, and it's a cheap fix thank goodness.

Get under the car and look underneath the turbo and find that line that drains back into the block. If it's oily/covered in oil, I would suggest replacing it with the hose clamps that you can manually tighten rather the stock squeeze clamps.

Good luck to you.

BTW, OT but, it was good to meet you yesterday "Evan", I saw you in the No. Windham parking lot, I'm Aaron...We'll have to get together sometime and wrench or our cars or something...I have a buddy with an 02 WRX and another with an 07.

 
Yeah the oil is coming from under the turbo so that could be a good bet...

I'll be driving her up there with a fire extinguisher just in case, I'm not really worrying about fire though, if it was ok for 2.5 hours on the way up here it'll be fine for a 30 min trip to patriot. I'll be up there Mon. morning with a special request for inski. I'll keep everyone posted.. I stopped every half hour on the way up here to watch my oil levels and they really didn't change much, considering the amount of oil that's all over the header/uppipe/axle now..

 
that oil return line is subject to beaucoup heat from the hot snail and exhaust. there's a feeble sort of heat shield on it, but still...dreaded rot sets in sooner or later.

during myWRX engine swap (at 90k), the oil return line came off in pieces. new one went back on (with good clampos) and then wrapped in foil.

 
yeah from all I've been reading it sounds like it is that return line.. I'll just nurse 'er up there and bring a fire extinguisher god forbid..

You don't actually have any affiliation with prodrive do you?

 
haha yeah I guess no answer on that question...

Well I dropped 'er off today, sounds like chris got into it and it is the oil return line according to the service guy I talked with... 400-500, ouch... The service guy seemed to like to keep mentioning aftermarket parts... I think he said well you've got some aftermarket parts in there, about 4 or 5 times. They were just fine last year with the same exact parts..

Chris, I was lookin around the service bays for ya, but didn't see you in there... I know she's in good hands.

 
The leak is minor, but its still a leak onto the down pipe and up pipe. Yup, the turbo drain tube is leaking, looks like the drain tube is hard and crumbly, upper clamp is missing. And there is some goop around the oil feed tube (from the head side) so I figured we'd better do that before that starts gushing oil too. All in all you haven't really lost much oil, its just baked onto your exhaust now. I'll clean it up as I go.

 
Thanks a lot chris... I was lookin around for ya but didn't see you around there... Does the oil feed line look similar? How many hours of labor do you think will get it done? The service writer who I spoke on the phone with said the bolts were all kind of rusty, but I had that exhaust apart maybe 8 months ago, so It was a little weird to hear him talk about added on labor b/c of rusted bolts. I barely lost oil at all you're right it just sprayed all over the place.. it's still overfilled from me doin my last change haha..

Thanks to all for the suggestions and comments

 
Should be good to go tomorrow(fri). The oil feed line did crack, so I got one coming. Everything else went great. I added some nuts and bolts for the DP and turbo bracket, drain tube is on evenly with both clamps (one was missing up at the turbo side), new coolant tube (old one was fried) with new clamps, and new UP and DP gaskets, oh and new bolts for the DP-to-midpipe connection. While the DP was out I scrubbed the baked on oil off of it. It was a gooey stickey mess.

Sorry for the delay. Those oil feed tubes are brittle after 60,000miles.

 
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