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failing turbo?

Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:20 pm
by Bandwidth
hey ya'll i'm curious as to what the symptoms of a failing turbo are.

also anybody have any issues with themostats? Easy to install? price? i think i need a new one , very little heat and its starting to bug the wife. HA!


cheers
D

Re: failing turbo?

Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 8:28 pm
by Mr. Flibble
Not replaced a thermostat on an L300 - or my L400 yet, but it is usually very very easy.

They generally run about $20 or so.

Re: failing turbo?

Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 9:04 pm
by CVI
Turbochargers will either be good or bad, nothing in between. Quick way to check it is to take off the air inlet hose (10mmor8mm clamp) and air filter cover (for L400) and you can see the turbo spinning right away. As turbos are very delicate piece of engineering work, it will only get damaged if it ran without oil or a foreign item gets sucked into the compressor inlet at high rpms and ruins the impeller blades of the compressor wheel.

Thermostat.... we only use OEM ones for around $40 now.

Good luck.

Re: failing turbo?

Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 10:17 pm
by quadzilla
These are the symptoms that I have experienced: 1) a failing turbo could be characterized by a noise like a rattling chain (high-pitched rattle) under the van when under load; 2) If it gets really bad, the van may increase in both rpms and speed voluntarily, which means detonation is forthcoming. When this happened to me, my van's rpms went through the roof and I had to pop the clutch to kill the motor (thankfully I was talking to Glen of CCA at the time who was yelling instructions to me through my cell phone!), and 3) prior to (or concurrent with) total failure, there will probably be a substantial loss of power and a lot of grey/white smoke from the exhaust that may be filled with oil droplets.

In the first case, it was only the noise that peaked my interest enough to get it checked out. The other two times it was obvious what had failed.

Re: failing turbo?

Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 10:34 pm
by thedjjack
Thermostat was easy to do on the L300 but I was doing the timing belt so I had the rad out ect....By an OEM as I have had trouble with cheep ones in other motors and not worth the effort to do the job twice to save very few $$$.

Good time to fix the whole cooling system (hoses, rad) if you have to drain it and add a heater core.