I have been searching for the source of a small oil leak that has been leaving a spot or so of oil everytime I drove my car. I finally located the source, which was right at one of the intercooler couplings. Oil was entering the intake tract and leaking out through one of the intercooler couplings.
My crankcase is not vented to the intake so the only way for oil to get into the lines is through the turbo seals. If my turbo seals are bad its definatley premature since my turbo has less than 5000 miles on it with zero shaft play. Anyone know where I could take the turbo to get the seals replaced with a quick turnaround?
From my experience, seals go bad from too much boost, too much heat, or too much oil pressure (or hitting them in the head with a club). You could check your turbo for shaft play and that could give you a guess if they are physically shot or not, but unless you were baking the turbo, or over-spinning it, chances are its just too much oil pressure, like they said.
You may also want to look at your oil drain. Make sure the drain in the pan is above the oil line. Oil comes out of the turbo frothed up, which makes it harder to push into oil, so if the drain is below the oil line, it could be backing up into the turbo.
Its definately not the drain since I use the location used for the stock turbos. The feed line uses a 90 degree fitting which I believe has a restrictor on it.
If you are not using a restrictor on a ball bearing turbo then that could be the case, also check for boost leaks as that can cause the turbo to over rev and will attribute to oil leakage.
Its not a ball bearing turbo. Boost leaks would make sense, the oil was getting through the piping so obviously air was too. I was not having getting full boost but maybe my turbo was overrevving to get there.
Anyway I need to send it somewhere for repair, any sugguestions?
You can do this by using a leak down tester and a drilled and tapped pvc cap so that you can twist the leak down tester into. Attach that at the turbo inlet and then apply air pressure to the desired boost level. Go by the gauge on the leakdown tester not the car gauge you don’t actually have enough volume of air to create a large amount of boost. spray down the vacuum lines, couplers, piping welds, gaskets on the intake side back side of the compressor housing (huge leaks usually) all that and check for air leakage with soapy water. bubbles indicate air leaking.
you can also use a smoke machine instead of soapy water. Don’t try to put the smoke inside the pipes, just fog engine bay while the boost leak tester is applied. It is very easy to tell where air is escaping this way. Sometimes the soapy water can be hard to see…
And if you don’t have a leakdown tester, you can just throttle your air WAY down at the regulator.
Actually, if you have access to a smoke machine that would be the best way you. Don’t use the leakdown tester but instead fill the pipes with the smoke. You can detect leaks down to .020". This is how leaks are detected in evaporative emissions systems and it is basically the same idea.
Sooo after doing some searching about oil pressure & restrictors on supraforums I came across this post that explains I need vacuum from the PCV system for the turbo to seal properly. My crankcase vents were hooked directly from each side of the valve covers to exhaust slashcut tubes with check valves. Before that setup I had used breathers to vent to the atmosphere. So could this be a problem for the oil sealing of the turbo?
A vacuum on the inlet side of a turbo can cause catstrophic failure or a turbo. It creates a situation wherethe turbo stops sucking air and even though it continues to spin. The shaft speed goes through the roof resulting in destruction of the shaft bearings and center section.
Also a vacuum sucks…so any vacuum present pre turbo would suck oil out of the compressor housing,… that does not make sense. This is evident on a factory turbo setup on a DSM when the turbo is worn. They have the breather in the intake and you can see how much oil loads up there. Turbo is turbo whether on a dsm, toyota or mack truck.
