Is My Turbo Cactus?

[BANGN]

Tis a RB25 turbo, Iv only just put the Rb20 motor and rb25 turbo into my skyline,

drove it for about 5 minutes and came home and did a check on the car to find SOMETHING was smoking from the turbo area, it didnt smell like coolant and it didnt smell like oil but it smelt like something was burning, i had antiseize on the exhaust manifold bolts and I thought that may of been the case until I took this picture.. I duno if this is normal but yeh i couldnt see where exactly it was comn from but it was smoking and was almost like not much longer and something would of cought fire

what you rekn?

Edited June 9, 2008 by BANGN

[BANGN]

i just looked at my old turbo and hte inlet looks the same on the turbo, a dark black pasty lining in there... maybe it is the bolts smoking from the silver antiseize paste :S its the stuff u get in the tins.

it was white smoke but yeh unsure what it was exactly.. didnt really smell like oil or water, smel like it was guna be fire soon sorta hey

turbo doesnt have shaft play it was fine when it was last

Edited June 9, 2008 by BANGN

[W0rp3D]

looks like you might have a seal problem in your turbo.

[WYTSKY]

Personally, I didn't think they were meant to be that oily... as soon as there is oil around your exhaust... you should start smelling and seeing white/blueish smoke at the rear... as previously said.. looks like youve done your front oil seal.... but the good hting is you prob have caught it early so can be repaired without too many headaches.

[Fixxxer]

For some reason I can't see your photo?

Anyways, when I changed my turbo I couldn't tighten a bolt very hard at all from the turbo to the dump pipe, so I thought I'd leave it and see how it went. First time after driving it it was smoking bad from the rear of the turbo, although couldn't exactly tell where it was coming from. I got a few washers to space out the bolt and then tightened it properly and the smoke went away.

The point of the story, make sure your manifold to turbo, and turbo to dump pipe bolts are all tight.

Fixxxer

[BANGN]

im wondering if I should get new washers for the oil and water lines incase i have a leak somwhere cos i just used the old ones

[BANGN]

Just spoke to turbotech, very helpful. The oil there is basically blowby from the breather as the breather line runs down there BUT he sees that there is too much oil running down so its either its pressureising from the intake plenum and pushn it through or I have too much oil in it. How could I sort this out u think? im thinkn only way is a catch can but yeh il have to check the drain on the turbo too

[bubba]

Make sure that the breathing hoses are correctly setup before trying anything else drastic.

When I bought my car the guy had them all screwed and it pumped so much oil out the exhaust he thought something was broken.

I bought it, fixed the breathing setup and all was good.

[r32woohoo]

dunno about the oil but i'm guessing you just did the turbo swap?

after i changed my turbo it was smoking as well, from the exhaust housing.

its all the grease and oil etc from touching the turbo just burning off

[BANGN]

thing is i dont see how i could get a breather setup muddled up, its all pre bent hoses, they only go on one way LOL

[bubba]

engine bay pics...

[BANGN]

i will take them tonight to be sure ay

[BANGN]

also how tight do the coolant and oil bolts need to be & done up? do they need to be at a certain tension? should i replace the washers and am I correct in there having to be a upper and bottom copper washer, thinkn i might need to do them too as i noticed a very very like bit of moisture around the washer but nothing that was seriously leakn, im unsure if those washers are like a wearing part.

[Fixxxer]

Coolant lines need the copper washers on top and bottom of each (collant in and coolant out) banjo fitting. You can reuse the old ones if they are still in ok condition. Do the coolant lines up as tight as you can.... and then tighten more, or it will leak (I just went through this).

You can reuse the oil copper washers if they are in good condition. Do this up good and tight too.

Fixxxer

[BANGN]

I got the turbo off tonight finally and yeh im guna organse some new washers for it as they look a bit worn to be honest.. also probably remove the screamer as the leakage sound is guna get me a yellow licky i rekn

but yeh getn the washers and some degreaser to get this silver antiseize off the turbo, there apears to be a bit on the turbo housing and al the exhaust man heat sheild bolts so il give it a good clean up and hopefully that will stop the smoking. then when its back together I can look at this blowby issue.

[RB SANDY]

your turbo blades looked chiped

[BANGN]

yeh they are slightly

how much oil do they get from the breather system anyway? is it much or should it only be a couple of drops or so.. cos my other RB motor seems to have same effect on the compressor housing , i supose the turbo is suckn it in from the cam covers

[R34GTFOUR]

If you pull off the intake of a 100,000km old skyline thats never been touched, and the inlet will look exactly like that. Theres always a little bit of oil coming from the breather, like a slight mist and as you would expect, with over 100,000km of "mist" there will be some oil in the intake. Like turbotech said, its more than likely oil coming from the breather off the rocker covers (or cam covers in this case). When oil seals go, they tend to leak out the exhaust wheel and pump out a shit load of smoke from the exhaust, not the inlet side.

If its definately the oil coming from the breaher than that can be a result from two main areas (this is if you have cleaned the inlet before you installed the turbo and it looks like that with in a short period of time):

1. Your engine is really tired and loose (ie its high km or had a hard long life), if theres heaps of piston blowby then it will pump oil in there

2. You've filled the engine up with too much oil and its just blowing it out the breather.

So firstly, i would see if the dipsticks been blown out at all, then i would see how much oil it had in there. If there was too much, drain some.

Then i would do a compression check on the motor to see what sort of nick its in, if its only pulling 120-130psi across the board, i'd say its just a tired engine. The bandaid fix would be to get a oil catch can and plumb it in, or save up for a rebuild.

If you had the breather lines hooked up incorrectly and it was pressurising the crankcase, i would expect you to be missing your dipstick as it would of flown out..

Edited June 11, 2008 by R34GTFOUR

[BANGN]

thanks mate. i had a look at dipstick and its 3-4mm overfilled on the stick so it would be safe to say its overfilled TOO MUCH? I know any overfilling is bad and iv only had the car moving for about 5 minutes so hadnt checked the fluids at that time after circulation.. so i guess 3-4mm over filled could be enough to cause this?

Edited June 12, 2008 by BANGN

[R34GTFOUR]

3-4mm ontop the full line isnt that bad, most gtr owners do at least that to help with oil surging. if you have access to a compression gauge, give the engine a quick test