Oil Leak on exhaust downpipe from turbo

[kevboost7]

Hi guys, its me again. I was underneath the car today because i noticed oil on the garage floor. I did some spirited driving yesterday and noticed the oil this morning. After tracing the leak, i found that its coming from the exhaust side. It's dripping down the downpipe. It looks like its coming from the front turbo. 

Any ideas what this could be? 

#1 is the front turbo and you can see the oil leaking down

#2 is the rear turbo and its dry

Everything up top on the engine bay looks clean

[Murray_Calavera]

Did you not just say you traced the leak back to the front turbo? I don't understand what your question is. 

[joshuaho96]

You should probably get a good light and look up from below. You'll probably be able to spot the leak.

[kevboost7]

On 11/19/2022 at 11:47 PM, Murray_Calavera said:

Did you not just say you traced the leak back to the front turbo? I don't understand what your question is. 

Yes, the leak is coming from the front turbo, but i did some research and came across numerous videos where they mentioned that if a turbo is leaking; a common misconception is that the seals are bad, which is not true, because the turbo seals are more like piston rings and there are oil guide channels that sling the oil away from the seals. But this was generic turbo information and not specific to the RB26. 

There isn't too much information on the internet regarding the twin turbo setup on the RB26, so was curious if anyone else has experienced this issue. Or if there was commonly known issues that you guys know and could share with me.

[kevboost7]

Additionally, if i'm going to have to remove the turbos, would this be a good time to go to a single? 😀

[Duncan]

Its never a good time to be single 😛

It *looks* like the front turbo seals are leaking, and I'm assuming you've had a good look at the rear and no such trouble. That rules out general problems like breather plumbing or really high pressure for some reason because the rear doesn;t have the same issue.

Therefore....I'd drop the front pipes and check out the rear wheel of the front turbo for movement, and remove the front drain.  Either the core and it's seal is in bad condition, or the oil return to the block is kinked or blocked preventing oil draining out freely

[GTSBoy]

An external leak is so much more likely to be an external leak (drain, etc) than internal seals.

[joshuaho96]

12 hours ago, kevboost7 said:

Yes, the leak is coming from the front turbo, but i did some research and came across numerous videos where they mentioned that if a turbo is leaking; a common misconception is that the seals are bad, which is not true, because the turbo seals are more like piston rings and there are oil guide channels that sling the oil away from the seals. But this was generic turbo information and not specific to the RB26. 

There isn't too much information on the internet regarding the twin turbo setup on the RB26, so was curious if anyone else has experienced this issue. Or if there was commonly known issues that you guys know and could share with me.

You really want to get more specific than that, as others have mentioned usually the leak is coming from something external like an oil feed or drain. Internal turbo seals leaking usually manifests as a ton of oil in your intake or spewing oil out the exhaust, not so much an external leak dripping down the side of the engine.

Going single turbo is likely to not be a cost effective repair but if you really want to you could go for it.

[kevboost7]

20 hours ago, Duncan said:

Its never a good time to be single 😛

It *looks* like the front turbo seals are leaking, and I'm assuming you've had a good look at the rear and no such trouble. That rules out general problems like breather plumbing or really high pressure for some reason because the rear doesn;t have the same issue.

Therefore....I'd drop the front pipes and check out the rear wheel of the front turbo for movement, and remove the front drain.  Either the core and it's seal is in bad condition, or the oil return to the block is kinked or blocked preventing oil draining out freely

Haha, very true, especially this time of year, definitely cuffing season. 

 

But thanks, i will do this when i get a chance. 

[kevboost7]

What turbo setup are you guys running?

[joshuaho96]

On 11/22/2022 at 7:37 AM, kevboost7 said:

What turbo setup are you guys running?

I recommend always quoting whoever you want to ask that question to, I didn't even see this post. My car currently has HKS GTIII-SS turbos on it. I went with those as the smallest possible step up from the stock turbos in size. It's somewhere between a Garrett GT2554R and GT2560R in size.