Disco 2 How much free play is normal in the turbo?

I was poking around the Land Rover the other day and took the inlet air hose off the turbo to take a quick look. There's a little bit (couple of mm at most) of movement in the end shaft on the inlet side of the turbo. I'm thinking its toast and needs a rebuild before it eats itself - the engineering officer at work (who to be fair was working on turbocharged and supercharged engines since before I was born) reckons it's perfectly acceptable.

What says the LZ Hive mind?

I reckon a new turbo core can be had for £100 or so, so by the time I've added some gaskets etc I should be able to get it done for £150 max. And on that basis I'll probably do it anyway, but my colleague reckons it'll not improve matters much if at all.

they do have some movement till oil pressure is supplied if its not passing oil its ok,you can check by removing the outlet hose if its not dripping oil when engines running its ok

+1, they "float" on a bed of oil, so there is always play unless there is oil pressure.

Tony

Oh well, you've spoiled all of my fun. I've never taken a turbo apart before. I may have to get a secondhand one and do it anyway, just so I've got one 'on the shelf' in case I need it.

On a slightly more serious note - thank you. You've probably saved me many hours of skinned knuckles, swearing and wondering why I thought it was such a good idea...

jamesmartin said:

they do have some movement till oil pressure is supplied if its not passing oil its ok,you can check by removing the outlet hose if its not dripping oil when engines running its ok

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I'll have the intercooler pipe off for a look then, thank you.

As an aside, my wife's doggy old VW Gold TDi was leaking oil out of it's intercooler bottom hose recently, so I may get my 'rebuilding a turbo' wish granted anyway. The 'dub is a lot more difficult to work on though - everything is buried behind something else.

Balbas said:

I'll have the intercooler pipe off for a look then, thank you.

As an aside, my wife's doggy old VW Gold TDi was leaking oil out of it's intercooler bottom hose recently, so I may get my 'rebuilding a turbo' wish granted anyway. The 'dub is a lot more difficult to work on though - everything is buried behind something else.

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take the hose off at turbo end

james was straight in there with the right answer.

If the compressor wheel looks good and the housing is scuff / mark free with little oil being passed all's well (applicable to many things in life amusingly). Props to keeping an eye on it though.

Balbas said:

As an aside, my wife's doggy old VW Gold TDi was leaking oil out of it's intercooler bottom hose recently, so I may get my 'rebuilding a turbo' wish granted anyway.

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I'd be a tad cautious about running that motor.

Al2O3 said:

I'd be a tad cautious about running that motor.

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No real need. 1) the breather hose runs into the intake system before the intercooler, so any excess oil ends up at the lowest point 2) they're known for it 3) I don't care if the hateful thing dies.

Al2O3 said:

I'd be a tad cautious about running that motor.

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This,they like to run away when the turbo is ballsed

Balbas said:

Oh well, you've spoiled all of my fun. I've never taken a turbo apart before.

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I'm currently doing just that. We have a MAN 7.5t horsebox which was getting rather smokey, and diagnosed with a possibly stuffed turbo. We took the inlet pipe off to be confronted with this:-



Nice, huh? No idea what caused it, but was probably a nut or bolt dropped in there. It doesn't seem to have got past the compressor though.
There was a fair bit of up and down movement of the shaft, which seemed to confirm things (as if the state of the compressor blades wasn't bad enough!). There's a fair bit of oil in there too, but it not clear if it came from the turbo bearings or from the rocker cover breather pipe that vents into the inlet tract.
So, having blown a sh!tload of money on a new turbo, I was a bit concerned that the new one seemed to have just as much movement in the shaft as the old one. I knew that they had a high throughput of oil for cooling, so I suspected that's how it was meant to be, but I'm relieved to hear @jamesmartin confirm it!