Ebay Turbo

[AngryRB]

This thread brings great sadness to me, its like hearing about animals being abused, seriously dont do this to are beloved RB's , they deserve more than this...

if you cant afford to do it right, then please go buy a magna or falcon shit box, dont bring shame to our RB's...

this is a nightmare...

[headwithbeard]

Not all cheap turbos are bad, without even thinking Kandos and hypergears are proven performers without the price tag.

as with most things of a "cheap" nature it can be one or a mix of things you have mentioned that cause premature failure. the failure can range from oh my turbos making a funny noise to why is there no boost, right up to i think a piston just shot through the side of my block.

From what I have seen, the particularly bad ebay turbos are not balanced (or balanced at a low rpm to claim a low failure rate) - which is not a hard thing to do and is essential to ensure to the functionality and longevity of a turbo. you simply take it to a turbo shop and they attach it to a manifold in store and spin it right up to it's max rpm to ensure it spins freely and centered. if it is unbalanced they can cut small bits from the inducer or exducer to ensure it i within 0.00000 something of a gram off weight.

all the more mid range to expensive turbos will have slight bits of metal shaved off, thats not a manufacturing fault. If it is unbalanced with a cheap material or a cheap bearing, at a high rpm the fins start rubbing against the housing and anything from some of that dust getting sucked into the motor to a single fin to the entire set of blades flying off at crazy speeds can happen extremely easily.

Some other cheap exhaust housings leave large amounts of space between the exducer and the housing to mask this problem as well as other things and that causes positive boost to come on really late and gives you a useless powerband.

makes sense, one other thing I've seen is the castings of the housings are quite thick, i'm thinking to avoid failures due to core shift, that causes flow problems, you can fix a lot of it, but there's only so many places you can reach with a die grinder. luckily you can open up the waste gate easily.

what else needs to be done to get these going well?

[R31Nismoid]

Several issues…

A turbo will spin over 100,000rpm. In some cases over 150,000rpm. Poor balancing or tolerances of parts will result in cartridge failures

Then there is heat. Poor quality metal/material that is used in a lot of copy turbos, is just that – poor quality. Put 600 degrees through the exhaust housing, this heat is obviously transferred to the turbo core/bearings, which overtime fatigue can set in.

And then there are the wheels… They are using ‘70s & ‘80s wheels from the T04… Garrett GT wheels for example have undergone significant redevelopment since their earlier versions so offer better flow and spool for a given target, all of which improves performance.

Then move onto the seals and surfaces not being perfect. Another failure point over time.

The main issue with a lot of the China turbos is the consistency. 10 turbos might be fine, 2 maybe not so.

If you happen to purchase one of the 2/10 that fails after 1,000kms, even 5,000kms – You’ve gotta pull the setup apart, buy another turbo. So you are already behind as it’s now cost you double (new turbo), and it’s also cost you time to replace it all.

The poor man pays twice – Seeing it more and more these days here on SAU unfortunately.

All well and good for a new product to come along and it be tested by a few people… Unless you can afford to do this however, spend the money on known products first.

[headwithbeard]

awesome. to me it initially looked as if there wasn't a constructive argument going on. but it's good to see the wealth of knowledge of the users of this forum has come out.

makes sense that you get what you pay for. thanks for the information.

[Dearlove]

so kando turbo's, as in kando dynamics on ebay?