Jump to content
SAU Community

Water cooling on turbos - do u need it?

ookami

By ookami,
in Engines & Forced Induction

 Share

Recommended Posts

ookami Experienced

ookami

Posted
Posted

If there are posts on this can someone please point me in the right direction as when i searched i couldn't find much.

Anyway when my 33 got here from japan it had no water lines connected to the turbo and they were simply blocked off. The turbo is a HKS2835R Pro. My mates R33 also had a GT3037S and it had water lines disconnected too. My car was apparently built by a fairly reparable japanese tuning house so i'm not sure why they would not connect them. Any ideas? What are the pros and cons of connecting them? I was reading on another forum about how the water flowing through them does shorten the life of the turbo, but i'm just not how? surely water flowing through the turbo wouldn't wear away the centre that quick if at all?

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/57569-water-cooling-on-turbos-do-u-need-it/
Share on other sites
GTR-Ben Proficient

GTR-Ben

Posted
Posted

Most samller ball bearing turbos will have water cooling due to there being less oil flow for cooling because of the restrictor.

Saying this I have seen cars with the water blocked off. Maybe on a drag car or similar they don't see the same heat as they are only going for a few seconds?

I guess it all depends how it's designed and what it's being used for.

It was a lot of extra work running the pipes etc on my car for the water and oil.. but I think it's worth it.. and it looks good too :D

discopotato03 Grand Master

discopotato03

Posted
Posted

Water has a high thermal mass - it takes a lot of energy to boil it . If the turbos bearing housing can be kept at or below 100deg C the lubricating oil flowing through it will not burn or solidify killing the bearings . This is most likely to happen when the engine is shut down hot , the bearing core hanging off a potentially red hot exhaust manifold and turbine housing can roast any oil present . Contrary to popular belief many OEM water cooled turbos don't have water pumped through them but have one water fitting higher than the other to allow thermosyphoning . It does not take much water volume to maintain a safe temperature in the turbos water jacket for the 3-5 min after shut down that is critical . When I fitted the GT28RS to my old FJ20 I used the blocks drain plug hole for the water inlet and drilled / tapped the head behind the thermostat for the hot water outlet . After shut down you could hear water boiling in the turbo , the bubbles rising up the high pipe , out through the thermostat and rad cap into the overflow recovery bottle . Obviously the boiling water was being replaced by cooler water lower in the cooling system untill the bearing housing got down to or below 100 C . I think all turbo SR's and RB's had factory water cooled turbos so the inlet and outlet should be there . If you can use it because its cheaper than fried turbos .

Can you post pics of the exhaust housing side of your turbo please , I'd like to see what sort of dump pipe pattern the HKS GT Pro housings use .

Thanks A .

ookami Experienced

ookami

Posted
  • Author
Posted

yeah i will post pics later on today of the dump pipe when i get a chance to take photo's. It is a strange pattern though. Its the internal wastegate version too.

discopotato03 I see what your saying about the water lines though. I'm guessing my car was previously used as a weekend track car of some sort going by the size turbo (not drag spec is it) and lack of lag and the rubber it had on it (falken azenis) and the larger aftermarket radiator and the alloy coolant surge tanks it has. I still can't understand why they just wouldn't hook them up.

JCMarshall_Law Proficient

JCMarshall_Law

Posted
Posted

I can think of one reason not to connect the water lines, the cyclic thermal stressing of the turbo housing would surely reduce the life of the turbo. It would not be a problem if the engine always ran at steady state, but they never do, full throtle, fullboost, off boost, high rev, low rev, low trotle, idle, you get the idea.

Water running through the turbo would create huge thermal gradients as the turbo rapidly heats and cools as hot exhaust gasses and cool water flow through the housing. the thermal stressing could posibly lead to cracking of the housing and distortion of the bearing surfaces.

Now that is a reason I have thought of, the engineers who design these things are very clever people and they most certianly thought of these things. I am saying that manufactures of performace parts are usually looking for performance (supprise!!!) rather than reliability. So water cooled turbos obviously work and I think they probably work better in the short run for high performance applications but in the long run realability could be a problem.

Having said all of this I cannot say I have ever seen a turbo fail from causes which can be directly linked to the turbo being watercooled. Just a posibility.

discopotato03 Grand Master

discopotato03

Posted
Posted

Thanks ookami , off topic I know but I need to see one as the T3 flanged GT3037 Pro S probably uses a similar integral gate version of the housing and dump .

I've been told that on race cars the water cooling is sometimes deleted to reduce complexity and long term reliability devices are not needed .

ookami Experienced

ookami

Posted
  • Author
Posted

thanks guys, i think i'll be connecting them back up once i get my car back. I just can't see a valid reason as to why i should not connect them up. After thinking about it for a while could it possible that the coolant lines were not connected to help keep engine temps down? I mean my car has a larger alloy radiator and 2 coolant surge tanks so it must have run pretty hot to need that? The coolant that was in there was like a aqua colour and burnt the hell out of my skin too :(

discopotato03 Grand Master

discopotato03

Posted
Posted

Actually Pat it works the other way . The thermal mass of the bearing housing is quite small and with water in it it never gets red hot . With todays iron alloys the heat to the bearing housing is not a problem . Its keeping the oil temperature below the cooking temperature that is the issue .

The exact reason why car manufacturers do it is so that turbo engines can be shut down like any other engine and not have heat related turbo failures . Manufacturers put long waranty periods on new cars and todays drivers don't want to be bothered with tiresome idle down antics . Another thing to think about is todays lean burn engines exhaust gas temperatures are highest in highway cruise mode . Full load and boost EGT's are significantly lower .

KamikazeR33 Grand Master

KamikazeR33

Posted
Posted

u dont need them connected... the water cooled turbos are usually only the bb turbos

btw if its not connected im sure there would not be anywhere to connect water to it as they would have done this otherwise

  • 2 weeks later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • sunsetR33
      Unpeeling the Orange

      By sunsetR33 · Posted

      Update 3: Hi all It's been a while. Quite a lot of things happened in the meantime, among other things the car is (almost) back together and ready to be started again. Things that I fixed or changed: Full turbo removal, fitting back the OEM turbo oil hardlines. Had to do quite a bit of research and parts shopping to get every last piece that I need and make it work with the GT2860 turbos, but it does work and is not hard to do. Proves that the previous owner(s) just did not want to. While I was there I set the preload for the wastegates to 0,9bar to hopefully make it easier for the tuner to hit the 370hp I need for the legal inspections that will follow later on. Boost can always go up if necessary. Fitted a AN10 line from the catch can to the intake hose to make the catchcan and hopefully the cam covers a slight vacuum to have less restrictive oil returns from the head and not have mud build up as harshly in the lines and catch can. Removed the entire front interior just shy of the dashboard itself to clean up some of the absolutely horrendous wiring, (hopefully) fix the bumpy tacho and put in LED bulbs while I was there. Also put in bulbs where there was none before, like the airbag one. I also used that chance to remove the LED rpm gauge on the steering column, which was also wired in absolute horror show fashion. Moved the 4in1 Prosport gauge from sitting in front of the OEM oil pressure gauge to the center console vents, I used a 3D printed vent piece to hold that gauge there. The HKB steering wheel boss was likely on incorrectly as I sometimes noticed the indicator reset being uneven for left vs. right. In the meantime also installed an airbag delete resistor, as one should. Installed Cube Speed premium short shifter. Feels pretty nice, hope it'll work great too when I actually get to drive. Also put on a fancy Dragon Ball shift knob, cause why not. My buddy was kind enough to weld the rust hole in the back, it was basically rusted through in the lowermost corner of the passenger side trunk area where the wheel arch, trunk panel and rear quarter all meet. Obviously there is still a lot of crustiness in various areas but as long as it's not rusted out I'll just treat and isolate the corrosion and pretend it's not there. Also had to put down a new ground wire for the rear subframe as the original one was BARELY there. Probably a bit controversial depending on who you ask about this... but I ended up just covering the crack in the side of the engine block, the one above the oil feed, with JB Weld. I used a generous amount and roughed up the whole area with a Dremel before, so I hope this will hold the coolant where it should be for the foreseeable future. Did a cam cover gasket job as the half moons were a bit leaky, and there too one could see the people who worked on this car before me were absolute tools. The same half moons were probably used like 3 times without even cleaning the old RTV off. Dremeled out the inside of the flange where the turbine housing mates onto the exhaust manifolds so the diameter matches, as the OEM exhaust manifolds are even narrower than the turbine housings as we all know. Even if this doesn't do much, I had them out anyways, so can't harm. Ideally one would port-match both the turbo and the manifold to the gasket size but I really didn't feel up to disassembling the turbine housings. Wrapped turbo outlet dumps in heat wrap band. Will do the frontpipe again as well as now the oil leak which promted me to tear apart half the engine in the first place is hopefully fixed. Fitted an ATI super damper to get rid of the worn old harmonic balancer. Surely one of the easiest and most worth to do mods. But torquing that ARP bolt to spec was a bitch without being able to lock the flywheel. Did some minor adjustments in the ECU tables to change some things I didn't like, like the launch control that was ALWAYS active. Treated rusty spots and surface corrosion on places I could get to and on many spots under the car, not pretty or ideal but good enough for now. Removed the N1 rear spats and the carbon surrounding for the tailpipe to put them back on with new adhesive as the old one was lifting in many spots, not pretty. Took out the passenger rear lamp housing... what do you know. Amateur work screwed me again here as they were glued in hard and removing it took a lot of force, so I broke one of the housing bolts off. And when removing the adhesive from the chassis the paint came right off too. Thankfully all the damaged area won't be visible later, but whoever did the very limited bodywork on this car needs to have their limbs chopped off piece by piece.   Quite a list if I do say so myself, but a lot of time was spent just discovering new shit that is wrong with the car and finding a solution or parts to fix it. My last problem that I now have the headache of dealing with is that the exhaust studs on the turbo outlets are M10x1.25 threaded, but the previous owner already put on regular M10 nuts so the threads are... weird. I only found this out the hard way. So now I will just try if I can in any way fit the front pipe regardless, if not I'll have to redo the studs with the turbos installed. Lesson learned for the future: Redo ALL studs you put your hands on, especially if they are old and the previous owners were inept maniacs. Thanks for reading if you did, will update when the engine runs again. Hope nothing breaks or leaks and I can do a test drive.
    • Kapr
      What brakes on R34 GTT(Europe)

      By Kapr · Posted

      No those pads are DBA too  but they have colors too. I look at the and imo the green "street" are the best.
    • wizlb
      Who has a Infiniti Q60, Q50 (V37)?

      By wizlb · Posted

      I’m not sure what happened I told them about sonic tunes free OTS tune and the next the I know .. I was booted..   To funny 
    • Kinkstaah
      Starting again

      By Kinkstaah · Posted

      Yea - I mean I've seen my fuel pump which is decades old and uh, while I'm not saying this with real knowledge... but I sure get the ick at using anything in the fuel system that produced the state of that pump. Many years ago I went through multiple pumps (and strainers) before I dropped the tank to clean it out with extreme violence. I'm talking the car would do maybe 50km before coming to a halt, which resulted in me cleaning out the filter with some brake cleaner and going on my way. None of my stuff ever looked like what came out of your fuel tank. I don't think I'd be happy with it unless every single component was replaced (or at least checked/cleaned/confirmed to be clean here).
    • GTSBoy
      What brakes on R34 GTT(Europe)

      By GTSBoy · Posted

      I'm not going to recommend an EBC pad. I don't like them. Just about anything else would suit me better. I've been using Intima pads for a while now.
×
×
  • Create New...