ok heres the story car has been down for over a year now, motor is a fresh rebuild after destroying the last one due to an apex seal failure. i went single turbo. i did my break in period and was ready to get a tune, it was the begining of winter so i figured was goona wait till spring time, i would start it up once every week or so during winter, then one day it was really cold outside motor almost flooded had to give her a lil bit of juice to get it going once it ran i walked away into the house to let it warm up dumb me should of payed attention to my gauges its why i put them in there. the oil pressure shot sky high i assume and caused a weak link to go the oil filter gasket. i came back outside hoped in and off i went to the gas station a few blocks down driving easy. still not paying attention to my oil pressure gauge let the car idle a bit while i fueled it drover her home and noticed the swamp of oil that had all of a sudden appeared on my parking spot outide the house i then looked at the gauge and freaked out, the next day got out of work came home to find were the leak came from had to run it again adding oil to it of course found the problem fixed it, i did a compression test for the hell of it all checked out good. i havent bothered with it since just been sitting there makin me angry at my self lookin at it. the weather is nice now here in new england, should i pull the motor back out and inspect?

 

Here's for the sake of everyone else.

just make sure there are no more leaks, and if the comp test looked okay, at least probably didn't dry it out enough to damage the seals. Fill'er up with oil and continue driving.

 

what about my engine bearings how long could those go with no oil, i still need to drain the oil n look for shavings if that checks out should i be ok?

 

Engine bearings and turbo bearings are what you have to worry about.

This is also why it's a good idea to have the stock oil level sensor working. If the car is low on oil, the light on the oil pressure gauge will come on and you'll get a super annoying BEEEEEP. All for a good reason .

It's impossible to tell what damage has been done if any. Low or no oil won't affect compression any, just the health of the bearings and turbo bearings.

Dale

 

It would be impossible to check the conditon of bearings without pulling something major apart. What's done is done, you can either just fix the leak and fill it back up and drive it until it dies or if you are really concern and can't sleep at night, the only thing I can think of without completely tearing it down would be to drop the tranny. Pull the rear stationary gear out and check the bearing for scoring. It should give you an idea if any damages were done to the bearings.

 

ok here is an update its been nice out so i changed the oil no debree or metal shavings in the oil ran a magnet through it too, on the other hand i ran the car for about an half an hour and moved it around a bit not far. i pulled the air filter off the turbo (i run a gt35r), and now im scared there was a thin film of oil in the compressor housing of the turbo as it cones into the compressor wheel, now i have ran my oil metering nozzles vaccum lines like the factory and into the air filter but i did not see oil in the vaccum lines. think i destroyed the turbo's seals?

 

Good to hear the motor is still good.

 

highly likely you did zero damage to anything.

A couple years ago I was changing my oil. Something got pinched under the oil filter as I had tightened it (boost gauge line). I started the car up and drove it up to the street to the gas station, without noticing the massive leak. It idled and drove up to about 2500 rpm with that leak (no boost). As I was filling my tires at the gas station, I noticed a bunch of oil and freaked out once I realized what happened. I figured I had just trashed a bearing or something. I drained the rest of the oil (only half a quart was left) and filled it back up. There were no metal shavings in the pan. The car was completely fine after that, no damage to the turbo or anything. A year later I tore the engine down and all the bearings were perfect (they had been replaced not long before that original incident).

Just keep driving it. Since you didn't drive it hard, as long was there was a little bit of oil in there for the pump to draw there was probably no loss of lubrication.

 

thanks arghx for the insight my motor is good but the turbo not so good, is the gt35r suppose to run an oil restrictor?

 

your lucky, I did the same thing (except it was an oil line that burst) and dropped all 4 quarts on the highway. She died and locked up on the offramp. I never even knew what happened. Part of me thinks I could bring it back to life now that its cooled down, but there is no way there isn't permanent damage that will toast it in a few thousand (if not hundred) miles. The new motor goes in this month, I think I'll tear this one down just out of curiosities sake to see what zero oil does. The fact that it locked up leads me to believe the rotors or plates swelled enough to seize, which I'm sure would leave all sorts of interesting patterns on the plates. Or a threw an apex seal that is lodged in a way that the starter cant overcome.

 

I think every ball-bearing turbo requires a restrictor. You should consult the turbo's manufacturer for the size of the restrictor

 

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-Geoff