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Chinese turbos

volvorod85

New member
Joined
Feb 21, 2003
Location
Sunny Socal
So ive been toying with the idea of a chinese turbo, but im hesitant for a few reasons...one is that there really isnt any grading of metals in china, so im worried bout a compressor wheel exploding. Ive got a stroker motor ive put some money into, and i do not want to worry bout throwing metal through it. Now im sure some of you are gonna say then I've answered my question. But what are the thoughts on a chinese turbo? Replace the seals bearings and have the wheels balanced before use? Buy it, and run it? Dont go near one? Discuss

Mark
 
What I hear from most is to just rebuilt it once you have it and have it rebalanced, after that you are good to go. Tho depending on how much all that costs ($150 for new turbo and $200-300 for rebuild and balance at a proper shop) you might as well of just dumped the $350-450 into a proper turbo.

OR you can just buy one from a seller that others have had good luck with and just replace the seals ($20) and run it
 
Turbos are really quite simple. With full-floating sleeve bearings, they should work as well as any other turbo. At least for a while.

Much of the expense in buying turbos from mainline manufacturer are the R&D and expensive alloys not needed for use on street cars. It's much, much cheaper to copy a turbo than to design and build them. I would never use any cheap turbo for serious racing.
 
I've rebuilt the one I have, so thats not a problem Its a home brew garret t3/t4....but my turbine housing is trash, and my compressor wheel also has a small chip missing from one blade. Its a T03 .63 hot and a T04b cold side. A T04e is they way i want to go and it seems cheeper and easier to just get a chinese one for the cost. But if I do it seems I need to replace all the innards, as I don't think I'd trust the chinese wheels at all. I can prolly reuse my turbine wheel though, im just trying to weigh my options as I dont want to worry about blowing one up, and i dont have $700 to spend on a new turbo.

Mark
 
my Honda friend has one on his b16, HE RAG's THE crap out of it, doesn't turbo time it and drives the car everyday... I dont know how its holding up. but it is.
thats my experience with a Chinese turbo.
 
A friend of mine bought one of the chinese kits a while back for his DSM and the compressor housing fell in half before he made it out of the parking lot.
Not surprising since it was glued together.

But others have had better luck.
 
messed with a couple over the years, I haven't had much luck with the hot sides, but I used the '57' compressor side with a genuwine stg2 hot side and it wasn't that bad. Other people have had worse luck and some people have had great luck, so I'd say YMMV. I chalk that up as "I don't have the money to do it right but I have the money to do it again".

besides, if you're spending the money to do everything else right, why cheap out on the part that really makes the package? best case scenario you don't get a junk turbo but it might not be sized for your application.. and it will suck. worst case scenario you end up with random turbo parts in the oil going through that new pump, etc.
 
I've got about 6000, 6500 on my Chinese knock-off dual ball bearing GT3076R knockoff. Just slapped it straight on the car, have had no issues with is so far.

Might replace it with a better manifold and real Garrett at some point.
 
Ive got 7,000 miles on the motor, i just dont wanna mess it up at this point, heh.....it seems as though i may want to stay away from them then...to unpredictable

Mark
 
Check out the vids of Chinese turbos on youtube, lol. Some funny stuff (if it's not your car). Sometimes it costs a lot more to use them, lol. I work part time at a shop where most of what we do is turbo kits and such, we always warn people about those things because they are hit or miss. Some aren't bad at all, others are laughable build quality. Since there is no name brand, how do you know? The standard joke is "We'll see them in a few months for a real turbo." To be fair, none of the failures seen yet at the shop have damaged an engine.
 
there really isnt any grading of metals in china,

Obviously that's not true because there is some world-class stuff coming out of China, but not at an e-bay price-point. Chinese merch is basically all over the map. Everything from trinkets to space-worthy components. If you pay a trinket price, you're going to get a trinket turbo. Very high quality components are available from China but they are not cheap.
 
There was a seller on ebay a while ago that sold a complete T3 or T3/T04 rebuild kit for $75-80 and offered free balancing if you mailed the rotating parts to him.

I would at least open it up and see how it looks inside.
 
The turbo is possibly the single most influential component with respect to the characteristics and performance of the engine. I'd find somewhere else to save a few hundred bucks. Yeah they work for some folks but IMO it's not really worth it.

If you really want/need to go cheap get a holset.
 
There are lots of options out there. Not all china turbos are the same, we can get some pretty respectable stuff for a bit more than ebay prices. You can also get a legit Garret turbo for $600.
 
If you really want/need to go cheap get a holset.
Just not a variable gate one - the hotside is HUGE. :lol:

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Do believe all Garret turbos are now made in china or mexico. Keep that in mind. What i've heard from a few people is the chinese turbos work fine if you put an oil restricter in the feed, though I am not sure how true that is. They only seem to be getting better, in another few years i think the chinese turbos will be something many people will run
 
Do believe all Garret turbos are now made in china or mexico. Keep that in mind. What i've heard from a few people is the chinese turbos work fine if you put an oil restricter in the feed, though I am not sure how true that is. They only seem to be getting better, in another few years i think the chinese turbos will be something many people will run

all garret turbos are made in mexico and is owned by honeywell aerospace one of many of my works costomers
 
Do believe all Garret turbos are now made in china or mexico. Keep that in mind. What i've heard from a few people is the chinese turbos work fine if you put an oil restricter in the feed, though I am not sure how true that is. They only seem to be getting better, in another few years i think the chinese turbos will be something many people will run

My chinabay "50trim" ate a bearing without a restirctor. Looked like it just got hot, not like oil starvation. $30 rebuild kit and it going strong again.

This is a difficult dicussion because its not that cut and dry. You can get crappy parts made in the US. You can get turbos that are made in china that are fantastic and you can get some that are giant waste of time. We are testing some new ones this week.
 
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