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Well, for whatever reason it looks like the turbine seal on my T04E has bit the dust. I am getting copious amounts of white burnt oil smoke only on deceleration. Anytime there is engine braking, say coasting to a stoplight, upon stopping there will be a few good seconds of heavy smoking. It will then clear up and not smoke again unless I engine brake. There is no smoke on startup or under boost. I just want someone else to second my notion that it is probably a bad turbine seal. I have already ordered a rebuild kit and it will arrive tomorrow so I can do a quick and dirty rebuild. What say you?

Must be from that low flying hood you hit

Sorry I couldn't resist.

When my old T04E lost the turbine oil seal I got the smoke on spoolup. It produced a very slight amount of smoke at idle, not even noticeable, and I couldn't see it in the rear view mirror until I stepped into it. As soon as I could hear it spooling it was billowing.

Smoke on engine braking doesn't sound like a turbine seal. The one thing you do have during engine braking is high manifold vacuum, which will pull oil in from anything and everything it can. Depending on your particular crankcase breather design, that could be the culprit. It could also be bad things like ring lands or valve guides/seals.

You're running a catch can right? How do you have that plumbed?

Chinese turbo? Mileage?

Yikes, hope it turns out to be something simple.

In my experience, bad rings/ring lands led to scored cylinder walls, bad compression and eventually a fouled plug. I had oil throughout the intake, but it never smoked out the tail pipe.

It's a Brazilian made Master Power turbo with about 25k miles on it. I had a turbo go bad in another car and the symptoms were similar - no smoke during spoolup or under boost, but smoke on the overrun and as it got worse, some at idle.
Either way, I will have a rebuild kit tomorrow and we'll see if it fixes the problem.

Master powers, are fully Garrett internals if i'm correct. So it's not like it was one of those random e-bay turbos. I hope its that seal, that is a fairly simple fix.

Keep us posted!

Rebuild kit is in my hot little hand. I'm going to try to pull the turbo off the car tonight and get an idea of what happened.

Hey I never knew you were running a Master power... What wheel sizes/turbine housing are you using?

If you got the turbo new have you considered sending it back to Master power USA(warranty?)

Well, my diagnosis was correct. The turbine seal was leaking like a sieve. There was oil dripping from the the turbine wheel and there was oil in the downpipe. When the turbo was disassembled, you could see that the exhaust housing was wet with oil as well.











It looks like I was getting a bit of leakage through the compressor as well. The back plate of the compressor was clean and free of oil though.



I'll be cleaning all of the parts today and should have it reassembled tonight and back on the car.

outstanding, easy fixs are always welcome...
RussC

Turbo is back together. I should have it back on the car tomorrow morning. I stopped tonight because I need to cut out a new piece of turbine blanket and I didn't want to be covered with fiberglass at bed time. The turbo spins super smooth, let's hope it doesn't leak.

well, it looks like I fixed the problem. So far the turbo rebuild appears to be a success. No more oil smoking and everything seems to be working as it should. It took a while to burn off all of the oil and cure the new fiberglass insulation but after it had I tried to make it smoke to no avail. Lets just hope the fix lasts.

All right!

Coldswede wrote:All right!

Now I just need to keep an eye out for low flying hoods and I should be ok.

Are you running an oil restrictor in the line to the turbo?

Good & Tight wrote:Are you running an oil restrictor in the line to the turbo?

No, I'm not. It's just a journal bearing turbo with Garrett guts. I have a -4AN line feeding it. Should I be running a restrictor?

Big Bronze Rim wrote:

Good & Tight wrote:Are you running an oil restrictor in the line to the turbo?

No, I'm not. It's just a journal bearing turbo with Garrett guts. I have a -4AN line feeding it. Should I be running a restrictor?

I have always used a restrictor and have never blown seal. I solder up the fitting that screws into the center section, then drill a 3/32" hole through it.
Your turbo is fairly new right?

I hate to sound like a doubter here but, can we have some documentation of the restriction idea. Please

I would also like to see this.

Cummins had a similar fix on the big cam 3 or N14 for oil leaking into the exhaust housing.

Well done!

Hey brad...I think my seals are on the way out too.. Now that i think back i remember i was getting smoke on decel(that went away) but now i get smoke about 5mins of warming up and idiling but if i drive the smoke goes away.

Where did you get the seals from and how much were they? How hard is it to screw up if a first-timer is doing it and what about re-balancing afterwards, is it needed?

I'm considering a restrictor after as well...

I wouldn't want to run a restrictor on a journal bearing/oil cooled turbo unless it was definitely necessary. I dont think it is with a -4 feed line on our engines, nor do I think an unrestricted feed would cause accelerated wear and not a nearly immediate failure.

If you guys start going through seals then it might be something to look at but I think the failure of the original seals may be due to crappy seals more than anything.

I got my kit from a local shop that rebuilds turbos and diesel injection parts.
M & D Distributors
They got me the kit for about $70 and it's much nicer than the cheap "made in China" rebuild kits on ebay.
Rebuilding it is extremely easy if you take your time and are careful, taking extreme care with the turbine and compressor wheels. As for balancing, there are two ways it can be done - each wheel individually or as a rotating assembly. One of the easiest way to tell is to see if the nut on the compressor is cut for balancing. When this is the case you MUST make sure that you make timing marks on the turbine shaft, the compressor wheel and the nut. If they are balanced separately as mine was, they could theoretically be reassembled in any way however, just make timing marks on the compressor wheel and turbine shaft and reassemble it as carefully as you can. One thing to note is that you will need a set of snap ring pliers with extremely small "pins" as the snap rings that hold in the bearings are small. Otherwise, you should be fine. [/url]