Blade damage

[Lebaronguy2001]

Well during the down time on my lebaron i decided to start tearing an 88 2.2 t1 daytona parts car apart, and i know before the car began to KNOCK....and boy does it knock, it boosted good. i bought the car a month or so ago the motor was knocking a bit, and it got worse as expected, but when i took the little mitsu off i noticed somthing i wasnt expecting....the compressor wheel appears to have gotten in a fight with somthing....not the blade tips, as if the were hitting the housing, but there are several "dings" on the blade edges...nothing that really misshaped them, but maybe 1 or 2 mm wide dings, like i said, the blades themselves are straight and other than those dings everythign feels good, which makes sense knowing the turbo pushed good before the car blew up...so my question is, exactally how bad is this damage?....i know thats kind of vague, but does anyone have expirience with using a turbo with similar damage. will it still boost alright, im sure it would effect airflow somewhat, but will it be anything drastic...any advice would be appreciated....

[Una]

Doesn't matter really, once you have a rod knock, the turbo is shot. The metal shavings from the engine kill the turbo with a quickness.

[xrattiracer]

thats not at all true una. and besides, he is talking about the compressor. its pretty hard to get foreign matter into the compressor because of a rod knock.
and if you are getting metal shavings into the turbo bearings, you really need to switch oil filter brands.
sounds like foreign object damage to me; at some point the engine injested something it shouldnt have, possibly from not having an air filter. the only real effect from minimal damage like that is a slight loss of efficiency, which you are not likely to even notice.

[Jckrieger]

I agree, the turbo will still work fine. I think it was Gus who had a T2 turbo that had a chunk missing in one of the blades, so he cut off a piece of a blade on the opposite side to keep it in balance. You will loose some efficiency, but you won't notice it.

[Lebaronguy2001]

cool...glad to hear it....im upgrading to a garret on my lebaron, but i know this mitsu is good, just wanted to make sure if i need it that it should be ok...thanks all...

[Una]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xrattiracer thats not at all true una. and besides, he is talking about the compressor. its pretty hard to get foreign matter into the compressor because of a rod knock. and if you are getting metal shavings into the turbo bearings, you really need to switch oil filter brands. sounds like foreign object damage to me; at some point the engine injested something it shouldnt have, possibly from not having an air filter. the only real effect from minimal damage like that is a slight loss of efficiency, which you are not likely to even notice.

It may not be the same on your damn fords, but it's been documented time and time again that when a TD has a rod knock, the turbo will be billowing smoke within 3k miles of the repair. Be it new rod bearings, rebuild, or new engine. It's inevitable. But hey, feel free to try, you'll get a good 3k out of it sometimes. Ask "MoparFreak" who just discovered this. Unfortunately he got about 200-300 miles out of his turbo after the rod knock. Kind of a bummer.

[turbovanman]

If theres chunks missing, the imbalance will destroy it in short order. I had some chunks missing on my turbine side due to piston chunks going thru and it lasted a month before the bearing wore out, cocking the compressor wheel into the housing and snapping the shaft.

[Phreakish]

borrowed time... YMMV. There is almost no way to tell how damaged it is already from the knock, and the vibration... Some people might not have trouble for the life of their vehicle after replacing the bearings and keeping the turbo, most will be pulling the head to do the turbo the next month

[Putter]

The compressor damage is due to intake particles, can be smaller than a grain of sand, but the insane linear speeds at which the compressor moves can make dust eat it away. K&N air filters in dusty environments are a sure fire way to destroy a turbo, I've seen quite a few replaced because of it.

Small dents and errosion is pretty normal for a high mile turbo if air filtration has been neglected. They don't help anything, but if they are small, they shouldn't hurt anything.

http://www.axode.net/pictures/TD%20s...sted_turbo.jpg

You can see the errosion and damage caused by normal intake particles if they get by the air filter.