Hey guys, I bought my R2 recently and I was racing one night against a newer BMW 2 dr coupe, anyways that night the car was boosting at 15 psi which was the normal boost when I bought the car the car detonate. Im a VW tech for a dealership and I have owned two 2nd gen rx7 turbos. Well at about 140mph the car hit some sort of boost cut, it seemed normal and thought it was the normal fuel cut, but then as I was gaining on the BMW I totallly lost power of the whole car. It seems like the whole car lost total gas and no power whatsoever. Well to make a long story sort, I have towed the car in my shop and took the engine off. When I took the engine off I of course lost one APEX SEAL. I took the engine to this place that built the engine before, inspeded it and said the engine is in really bad shape. He said the car detonated really bad and actually 3 apex is broken on one is missing. So now he is currently building my engine again. I soon to find out I have a PETER FERRELL piggy back installed in my stock ecu, which I didnt know about so that couldve explain why i was boosting about stock and probly the reason why I lost my engiine. When I inpected my twin turbos I have found my TURBINE SIDE has chipped on the edges.... I was wondering if I can still reuse my TWIN TURBOS, being the TURBINE chipped fins????? There not much end play at the shaft... So Please if anyone has tried to put there STOCK TWINS turbo after a bad experience like what i had. And If the TWINS are still reuseable with CHIPPED TURBINE FINS.

 

I wouldn't use them with chipped fins. I've seen some pretty ugly ones continue to produce good power on a 2nd gen but I'm not the sort of guy that likes to use questionable/bad parts.

 

hell no, put them in da garbage! they could be out of balance and explode on u next time u boost

 

Don't reuse them. They are unbalanced and spin at many many thousands of rpms. If you use them they will eventually spin so out of balance that you will totally trash the turbos. Doing a turbo R&R with the motor in the engine bay sucks.

There is a very steep learning curve with these cars, especially with modded FDs. Proceed with caution.

Also, what other mods do you have to go along with running 15 psi? Sounds like you need to get to know better what parts on are your newly bought R2

 

I was also tryin to debate on whether to have this rebuild for cheap if possible and save up for single turbo, or keep the twin setup and replace these bad ones with EFINI TWINS??? and if I go SINGLE sounds like my emission wont pass anymore do to where the single turbo sits with no room for the air pump. and If I go EFINI TWINS i could possible still pass emission and take the emission off and tune it with POWER FC. But I will definitely take the piggy back FP out and replace it with POWER FC reguardless.

 

Are you sure they were chipped through accidental causes or are they chipped because someone did work on the turbos?

I'm no expert however i have worked at a race shop for some years in the past. I've seen alot of turbo kits where parts of the turbo fins are grinded down for balancing.

Make sure you find out before throwing out a good set of twins.

 

that maybe true, but when you lose an apex seal, especially all three from the rotor going full clip, the seals don't tend to stay in the engine and get discharged threw the exhaust port and through the turbo fins.

Any "lost" apex seals can sometimes be found rattling in the cat.

When I lost my first engine, the turbo looked like a rat took bites out of the fins. When we unhooked the cat and shook it....it sounded like we were playing yahtzee and rolling dice.

 

oh no these are different chipped all the way around on both TURBINE. so No way in hell its reusable with out breaking the shaft seal huh?

 

yeah that was probably the small melting pieces of apex seal going through there

you cant reuse them and I suggest taking the engine to someone else this time and also not running 15psi on the street thats WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much I don't know how else to say it. 12max

 

blah what do you mean 15psi is way too much for street use Yanni I don't think so, as long as you have the supporting mods needed to run that much boost.

 

actually, pulling turbos w/ the engine in only takes 2 hours me and my brother did it twice.


Jack the car up, pull out the cat/midpip and DP, you can access the top screws on the DP by removing the UIM, I'm not sure if we pulled the LIM.

Anyways, its a pretty simple operation to do, and we did it laying on our backs like everything else!

 

ahh maybe if you have a pfc its cool but no way in hell on a piggyback like pettit m2 or pfs ecu

and this guy doesnt have upgraded injectors either im sure and what about intercooler!

you gotta admit at 15psi those tiny turbos arent going to last long at all
I think 12 is enough or maybe im just jealous that ive never run twins past that

 

I agree, without the supporting mods 15psi is a very very bad idea. I've been running about 14-15psi for a couple months now. And from what I understand that is basically the limit if you want any sort of longevity from the stock twins.

 

I know this is an old threat but the same thing just happened to me and my 3rd gen RX7. Something might have gotten into my air filter and it got into my brand new (5 days old) T4 turbo and destroyed the fins. However, what I am really worried about is if the fin's particles could have damaged my engine. I checked and cleaned my IC (V mount) and I found many of the fins broken particles at the bottom of it. I guess my questions would be:

-do you think any particles could make it to the engine or they should stay in the IC? If so, what could happened, damaged the seals?

-What steps should I take besides cleaning the IC?

-The car iddles good at 700rpm, and it also iddles good at 1,000 rpm with the fans on. What are signs of a bad apex seal?

-The car has a very subtle zooming sound when I reach 30 mph approx but I think it might be the damage compressor making the sound, however what do you guys think?

-Any ideas where I could send the turbo in the US to get it repaired?

I know you guys must be all busy but I truly appreciate any feedback on this. This was my own christmas gift and you could imagine how upset I am.

Thanks!


Juan

 

Could they make it into the engine? Sure! What would happen? Its possible that they exit the exhaust without doing any harm, or they could damage the rotor and/or rotor housing surface.

Do a compression check on the motor. If you can, it would be ideal to pull the turbo/manifold off, then using something to peak into the exhaust ports to see if you can examine the rotors and at least part of the housings.

I would get all the intake parts cleaned out first, then compression test the car and go from there.

You should check in the Single Tubro section:

https://www.rx7club.com/single-turbo-rx-7s-23/

They should be able to answer any single turbo specific questions.

 

Thank you for your reply. I will sure take all steps necessary since I rather play safe.
Also, if the engine lost compression? wouldn't the iddle on the car be unstable and different? or not being able to start at all? Excuse all the questions, as I am still in a learning process.

JL

 

It really all depends on the failure. Yes, a motor that has significantly lost compression will either barely run or not at all. However, motors with some lost of compression (but not a lot) can and will still run, but be low on power just like a worn engine.

 

I went ahead and got the IC cleaned and put it back on the car. I started the car just to see if anything is different. It starts and iddles in a normal way. I just reordered a new turbo, once I install it I will go ahead and take the car for a compression reading just to be on the sure side. I'm keeping my fingers crossed here.

JL

 

Well I wanted to give everyone an update on my chipped turbo fins nightmare. My new turbo arrived and I already installed it. I cleaned the IC and checked compression, and thank god everything is ok. These past 30 days have been pretty intense hoping that my engine was not affected. Good thing I was one of the lucky ones after all. On the other hand, I ordered a new set of header gaskets which I needed to replace anyways, so I guess I took advantage of the situation. Here are some pictures of my destroyed turbo and the new one. Thank you all for your good feeback back then when the nightmare began.

 

Wow, that compressor wheel was pretty trashed. You are planning on running an air filter on your new turbo, correct?

 

I hope an Air filter... :P or at the least one of those crapie mesh screens...

only other thing i can sugguest from my lucking around the forums... is get T-Bar Clamps (is that the right name?) for the charge side (pressurised side) to hold....

then you wont have the tubes getting chewed up from your current ones.. and they can hold alot more pressure...

if you dont run high PSI its not as much of a concern but i would do it anyway... they look better :P


Prôdigy

 

Nothing went through your air filter...the turbo tore up because it's one of the chinese SSAUTOCHROME turbos.



Look familiar? http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/T-70-...ayphotohosting

They are known to be bad out of the box, or to fail shortly after. Apparently they're made with inferior parts, and balanced poorly. The shafts can break, or at best the wheels/shafts will wobble and something somewhere will give. Odds are the compressor fins were rubbing the housing and broke off.

Anytime you see the tag that says "turbocharger" and nothing else as far as brand name, it's some of the ebay stuff. The tag is sometimes different colors or in different places, but any turbo that doesnt say "garrett", precision, innovative, turbonetics, etc. is probably chinese.

http://www.bblgroup.us/ssautochrome.htm

http://forums.freshalloy.com/showthread.php?t=139762

http://search.reviews.ebay.com/SSAutochrome

http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1323296




Go with a better turbo next time.

 

I know, you should've seen my face when I first saw the compressor wheel destroyed like that, not a good experience at all!. I always run the turbo with a filter, I just took it off for the picture. I always use a HKS filter but at that time I had a used K&N filter which I put it on temporarily while my 4" HKS filter arrived from the US. The thing is that down here in Peru you don't find any parts, specially for the Rx7s, so everything I need I have to import it from the US, and since I couldn't wait an extra week for the new filter to arrive, I went ahead and used my FD with the other filter. However, I still don't know for sure what got into the wheel, Im starting to think it was just the cheap turbo.

Juan luis

 

[QUOTE=RotaryResurrection]Nothing went through your air filter...the turbo tore up because it's one of the chinese SSAUTOCHROME turbos.



Look familiar? http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/T-70-...ayphotohosting

They are known to be bad out of the box, or to fail shortly after. Apparently they're made with inferior parts, and balanced poorly. The shafts can break, or at best the wheels/shafts will wobble and something somewhere will give. Odds are the compressor fins were rubbing the housing and broke off.

Anytime you see the tag that says........... [QUOTE]

Hey RotaryResurrection, you are ABSOLUTELY right. I guess I learned the hard way. I was checking the links you sent me and I can't believe how cheap and how many complaints there are of similar cases. Good thing mine didn't turn out to be a major nightmare with apex seal affected, etc. I just wished I would've cheched with you guys first before I purchased it, but I wasnt a forum member at the time.
I guess its all a learning experienced.