Time for a new turbo?

I think my 110 might need a new turbo. It still pulls really, really well, but when it comes hard on boost there's quite a bit of black/grey smoke. The vehicle has also used a fair bit of oil, and if I take the turbo pipe off, I can feel movement on the turbine wheel so I reckon the bearings aren't too clever.

The engine is a 200Tdi out of a Disco...what's the best route forward here? Buy a new one, or as it still seems fine apart from the bearings do I get the current unit off the vehicle and rebuilt?

Any thoughts, experiences or recommended suppliers, please let me know!

Grey/black smoke isnt the turbos fault, its more likely a fuelling issue and as you say it pulls really really well which is not a natural state of play for the 200/300tdi I would say the injection pump has been tweaked and that the source of your problem.
Google Bosch VE pump tuning all easy diy stuff, takes minutes to tweak/untweak.

A little side play on any turbo shaft is normal (the shaft bearing is plain and the slack is taken up by engine oil pressure), the easy test is to see if the turbine vanes have been touching the sides of the alloy casing, if not its good to go.

Theres a world of difference between worn and worn out, on the other hand disco 200 turbos are cheap 2nd hand off ebay etc.

As Lynall said, side to side play is fine, In and out/endfloat play is bad.

Grey/black smoke is down to either too much fuel or not enough air, go from there.

Well you've just made my day! I will check for endfloat (don't think there is any), but for some reason I thought side to side was the bad one.

To be honest, as it seems to go like the clappers if needed (for a 30 year old Landrover), only smokes hard if you really hoof it, and goes through it's MOT fine I'll just leave well alone. Performance wise, me and the missus both reckon it's a fair bit quicker than her TD4 Freelander (which, admittedly, is an auto and in need of an EGR bypass and gooo clear out) and coupled with a Disco 2 transfer box really makes it trundle along at normal traffic speeds with no issues. Obviously I drive it with sympathy to the drive train etc, but that's reassuring news anyway!

Thanks