How hot is too hot? Did I catch an early turbo meltdown scenario?

What says TurboBricks?

Problem or not?

See inside the housing on the machined lip above the impeller - does that look just shy of melting into a puddle to anyone?

Or am I merely paranoid and this is normal?

Input welcome. This was boost limited to 15-16psi.

I just see and old turbine housing. I don't recall how old that thing was.

As I mentioned before, it might be good to fatten things up under boost a bit more.

Check spark plug condition. If no issues there, figure out what caused this.

Too rich will also light up a turbo.

My MAP hose fell off once!

Chuck W said:

I just see and old turbine housing. I don't recall how old that thing was.

As I mentioned before, it might be good to fatten things up under boost a bit more.

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Thanks for the input Chuck. I appreciate you helping out with the back-history on Delores as I run across stuff like this.

I started out pulling the alternator for cleaning and testing, end up doing crack repair on the exhaust manifold. Typical old car adventures, fix what need fixing.

lummert said:

Check spark plug condition. If no issues there, figure out what caused this.

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Good advice. Never hurts to do a plug reading. Thanks.

Dirty Rick said:

Too rich will also light up a turbo

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That it will. I don't see any signs yet of an overly rich mixture, there were a couple of manifold-to-turbo studs that broke recently though. Reason number 2 for pulling stuff apart for inspection, "while I'm at it" strikes again.



I suspect Chuck is correct and this is just an old turbo housing with associated wear.

I don't want to ignore anything I could have easily fixed before catastrophic failure either.

Yeah, I just don't remember what it looked like when I put it together. It could've been that way all these years. I'd been looking more for cracks.

Scope creep will get you every time.

I don't see anything out of the ordinary. Besides, the turbine outlet is colder than the inlet: that's the turbo's job, to pull heat out of the exhaust. If you're going to melt something, it's the inlet side of the housing (or the wastegate).

Looks like normal used turbo to me.

No picture yet, but I found a good sized crack on the hot side inlet, between the wastegate and the inlet path. Will post it later.