Turbo Questions

[chris piazza]

Okay I got a few questions on a Turbo on a 8-92. About a month ago after a run from Detroit to Bay City I was checking the engines over and noted a small pool of oil on top of the intercooler were the pressure hose from the turbo connects, Also than noted a very small amount of blue smoke when running that engine. I have OEM CCV and checked this to make sure that it was not plugged, it wasn’t. I took off the canister and looked into the turbo with a flashlight from the intake side and it appeared in good shape with only a small amount of film on the blades. Now my guess would be a seal failure on the pressure side of the turbo. I am going to go to the boat this weekend and remove the turbo and intercooler on that side and inspect the fins to make sure there is no damage and clean everything up. Am I missing something here? Is there something else I should check? I am aware that if there is damage to the pressure side of the turbo that means that something went into the exhaust from the engine. (I hope that’s not the case, WHICH sounds expensive) I may one call to a Detroit place up here and they told me a rebuilt was around $1250!! Any comments to make sure I am going the right directions with this would be appreciated. Also anybody have a less expensive source for the turbo?

Chris
Superior Nights 53c

 

[Genesis]

Pull the outlet off and see what the outlet looks like. If you've got a bunch of oil (cooked or liquid) in there and not in the intake, it has to be coming from the seals.

If the seals have failed then you've got a problem you have to fix. It will get worse, not better. No way around it, and no, the price isn't nice - but it has to be done.

 

[luckydave215]

$1250 is about right. I paid $1300 each for 4 new ones recently. Rebuilt ones from Garret would have been $150 cheaper (each), but they had none in stock, so the lead time was 8 weeks. I said what the hell, $$ spent on boats doesn't count, and bought brand new. It's easy to justify spending too much on toys.

 

[Banshee36]

You may want to price a set of turbos from a Local place on the eastern Shore of Maryland called Parks Turbos & Injectors. They have been around a long time and have a good reputation.
Worth a call anyway.
JW

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Chris,
Check with Michigan Turbo in Grand Rapids. We have bought turbos from them in the past for some of our construction equipment.

 

[chris piazza]

Sky,
Good call on Michigan Turbo. Price was $250 cheaper than Williams Diesel. Also they were very helpful. Spoke with there tech Kelly, he stated that if I sent in my core first that he would see if he could just rebuild that, if there was no major issue with it at a substantially lower price. Also that galley maid you sold me worked great! Thanks again.

chris

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Glad to help. Good luck with the turbo. Keep us posted on how you come out with that.

 

[Capten]

I need to double check but it seems to me that we have been paying around $800-$900 (with core return) for rebuilt turbos on our 1983 8V92s with dry exhaust.

 

[Genesis]

That sounds about right. The 6v92 ones run about $600.

BTW, if you're blowing these up and have Airseps, I can tell you how to STOP IT. After implementing the fix I didn't have ANY further failures, and a friend of mine who did things a bit differently (but to the same end) hasn't had any more EITHER.

 

[Capten]

That sounds about right. The 6v92 ones run about $600.

BTW, if you're blowing these up and have Airseps, I can tell you how to STOP IT. After implementing the fix I didn't have ANY further failures, and a friend of mine who did things a bit differently (but to the same end) hasn't had any more EITHER.

I am (and I'm sure others are) interested in hearing about the fix. Let me guess, Racors......

 

[Genesis]

Or anything that does the same job.

The problem is the ingestion of oil. Turbos get HOT. That oil gets behind the wheel and carbons up, which restricts rotation of the wheel. This starts the process of destruction as temperatures go up and ultimately you end up with a dead turbo.

The airsep is a crap design. First, it relies on what amounts to steel wool in the cannister to coalesce the vapor - which just isn't enough to do the job. There is no real barrier there.

Second, it relies on the vacuum limiters to control how much blowby gets sucked in, and their design sucks. They love to stick and then you have essentially unlimited suction.

Third, the suction is controlled by the restriction on the air filter elements. Bad news as well.

A friend of mine plugged the returns on his AirSeps and then put together a contraption that amounted to an oil filter (empty, of course) connected to the valve cover ports. It worked, although you lose the negative pressure advantage (cleaner engine room) this way.

The Racor system stops it too.

Bottom line - IMHO the Airsep system sucks and in my personal experience was responsible for several turbo failures. I got tired of them lasting two years or less - ripping out the Airseps and replacing them with the RACOR CCV system stopped it entirely - no failures since.

 

[MikeP]

C'mon Karl - stop beating around the bush, what do you REALLY think of Airseps?


I've had the Racor CCVs since a few months after we bought Brigadoon in Nov, '04 and I concur totally with Karl's recommendation. I bought them based on his input while originally planning to purchase Airseps. At the time I had not heard of the CCVs and the Airseps were "the thing to have."

A CCV and a pair of K&N (or similar) air filters are a definite engine pleaser! Since installation the turbo compressor blades stay perfectly clean. Excellent product!

As a side note, it's interesting how many companies have some excellent products and some that are just OK. Eg, the CCV is a superb Racor product, while the ubiquitous Racor fuel filters are OK but certainly not as effective and easy to service as the fleetguard fuel system. I don't mean to pick on Racor at all, it's just a good illustration.

 

[bobk]

The soon to be OUR 1981 48 MY with 6V92's has a newer version of Airseps. My guess is less than 6 years old. We'll run her like a trawler at 8-9 knots, 1000-1200 RPM. Is it worth replacing the Airseps? And what do they cost?

Bob

 

[Genesis]

I don't believe the Airsep design has materially changed - they still coalesce the oil vapor in the air filter housing. If I'm correct, that's a problem.

You could just buy the CCV cannister re-plumb the system, so that you run the vapor through there, getting rid of the vacuum limiters and then going back to one of the intake filters (plug the other one) That'd work and be cheaper.

BUT - I like the Racor air filters too. The elements are cheaper and you can get much bigger ones (more airflow) as well. I put the whole enchilada on Gigabite and it made a huge difference - it also made the air filters 2 year service interval things instead of annual or every 100 hours, just due to the higher flow / lower velocity over the elements.

 

[Passages]

You could just buy the CCV cannister re-plumb the system, so that you run the vapor through there, getting rid of the vacuum limiters and then going back to one of the intake filters (plug the other one) That'd work and be cheaper.

That's what I'm doing. I installed AirSeps immediately after purchasing Passages 2 1/2 years ago on the advice of a mechanic. The "new" Airseps are as Karl describes. After 2 years, I noticed oil accumulating on the compressor blades. Cleaned it up best I could and am placing an order for a RACOR cannister with Tony Athens of Seaboard Marine. (Great guy, very helpful) Tony agrees with Karl that the RACOR system is superior to AirSEP, but you will get satisifactory results replacing the AirSep vaccuum limiter with a RACOR cannister and keeping the AirSep Filter. Cannister cost for a 6-71TI is $300 delivered.

 

[Genesis]

The Airsep was a sop to the EPA just like returning the airbox drains to the crankcase. Both of those "decisions" will cost you money.

Both were stupid decisions and both were things you can and should fix immediately if your engines have these "features".

 

[chris piazza]

Karl,
Question on the Racor CCV. Can I just purchase one canister per engine and than connect both vents to a T-fitting? Also do you recommend the K&N filters? If so where is the best place to purchase these? Do you have any pictures of your installation? Thanks in advance
Chris

 

[Genesis]

Correct - the installation kit includes a T-fitting; you only need one cannister per engine.

I used the Racor air filter replacements; they have a nice whine "silencer". They don't shut it up entirely but the engines were noticably quieter with the Racor air filters on them than the Walkers. I had to buy different hump hoses though to connect it all up - found 'em online and ordered 'em up - they were cheap.

I don't think I have pics of the install but will look - boat's not mine anymore....

 

[MikeP]

Don't know if this helps but here's a pic of the CCV and one of the K&Ns on our 53MYs port 8v71Ti. The red arrows on the hoses point toward a T fitting which is out of the picture. The third hose on the T mounts to the Vent cap on the valve cover. The blue hose is the drain hose for the CCV. In this installation, it routes to the same can to which the inboard airbox drain tube runs.

The second pic shows the T fitting and most of the engine. The CCV is hidden under the coiled blue air hose.

 

[chris piazza]

Ok I am pretty sure it’s a bad turbo. I took the canister off and the housing for the pressure side. The blades on the pressure side were not coated in oil but had places that you could barely wipe off the oil residue, Very sticky oil. Looking into the intercooler it was black and reaching my fingers inside they came out coated with oil. So I tried to remove the turbo after taking the oil lines off and it appears to be stuck in the exhaust housing. After two days of WD-40 it’s still not budging. How do I get this darn thing off! I got five of the six bolts off, the sixth bolt is loose but of course you can’t completely get it off because it hits the oil return port!