Turbo failure...bad

[tractside]

So last year I picked up a ’64 Spyder convertible from an estate. Not much known about the history of the car. Painted at least once, straight and solid. Brought it home to discover after a few weeks that the clutch was slipping when the boost came on. Clutch replacement was in order, and while I was in there…you know the rest.
One of the things I did was rebuild the turbo as it was leaking oil into the cross pipe, and this is where I went off the rails. After about 400 miles on the car this summer I noticed that the boost wasn’t coming on as I thought it should and that I was consuming some oil. (used none in the first few hundred) . I pulled the turbo to find that the bearing (once new from Clarks, part of the kit) was shot and as a result had allowed the impeller to ride on the bearing housing basically destroying both. I followed the service manual instructions and watched the videos before trying any of this work and was equipped to do it. But for some reason, the thing fell apart after a short time. I have enough spares to make another complete unit but I am a bit gun shy as the parts are hard to find. It seemed straight forward enough and nothing presented an issue, still the ending here has me nervous.
So I guess I am throwing this out her looking for advice / tips / recommendations. Anything would be appreciated. Thanks

[thewolfe]

Can you post some pictures of the damage?

[bbodie52]

I don't know if you've seen this video, but it has a lot of good assembly tips...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEHiZ4P4_NU

[tractside]

I am working on getting some pictures up. And yes I did watch that video. Really, I can't figure out where I went wrong.

[tractside]

Couldn't figure out the method to display photos so put some in a Google Drive location... https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1gF4 ... npqSEhSck0
Thanks for taking the time to look.

[bbodie52]

To have the ability to upload pictures, use POST REPLY, not Quick Reply, as your full editor. Here are your pictures...

[tractside]

Thank you sir.

[Scott V]

guessing here..........

maybe the turbo was really out of balance.
maybe the new bearing was bad.......too soft material.......or made wrong.

can you get a pic of the top of the bearing.......looking inside?

when you rebuilt the turbo............
what was your end play?
what was your radial play?

-Scott V.

[thewolfe]

Were the blades of the turbine touching the exhaust housing? The edges look shiny like they had ground on something. And the bearing housing has damage on the top of it. My best guess and the only way I could think those two things happening is that the turbine was not seated in the bearing housing all the way and the little piston ring was riding on top of the housing and not inside of it. This is easy to do when reassembling. You have the little plastic retainer around the piston ring then push it into the housing which pushes the plastic piece off and now the ring is in the hole. If you accidentally let the turbine back out just a little while putting the compressor wheel and nut on then the ring will pop out of the bearing housing and you have to take it back out and put the plastic retainer on again.

[tractside]

According to what I had written down I had about 0.003" shaft to bearing and 0.002" bearing to housing play. Looks like I had a need for a 0.017" shim for the impeller clearance. Probably used a 0.015" shim ( not near parts at the moment ). The math seemed to line up ok many a little loose on the clearance but nothing rubbed when I reassembled it. I think the scoring on the side of the impeller was from the super large clearance when I pulled it apart. The impeller had worn the bearing so bad that it was basically flopping around. I didn't measure radial play after assembly because the bearing was new.
The comment about the plastic ring makes some sense as a possible cause. I will determine the clearances of the impeller to the bearing housing and make sure that it is seated all the way.