Turbochargers have been in use in the United States since the 1930s and are more common on heavy-duty vehicles than on light-weight cars and trucks.  They are essential to modern trucks because they increase the efficiency and power of the engine by forcing extra air into the combustion chamber.  This gives more power than a naturally-aspirated engine because the combustion is limited or improved by the amount of oxygen available.  Forcing more air into the combustion zone gives you the ability to have more combustion reactions (for lack of a better way of putting it).

How Much Does It Cost To Fix A Failed Turbocharger?

As essential as these pieces of hardware are, they are expensive to fix or replace.  You’re looking at a couple thousand for a car turbo, up to five figures for the turbo on a modern diesel big rig truck.  Because this is such a large outlay, it makes sense to stay on top of the common causes of turbo failure and what can be done to prevent damage.

Turbocharger Faults

Turbocharger units themselves rarely fail (less than 1%) because of a manufacturing defect. They are very reliable pieces of equipment. Yet something causes them to fail. And when they fail, your budget knows it.  Most of the time, a turbocharger failure is due to

• Oil starvation
• Oil contamination
• Damage from a foreign object

If you’re replacing a failed turbocharger, your mechanic should tell you to find out what caused the first unit to go bad. You don’t want an unresolved problem killing your second unit.

‘Damage from a foreign object’ kind of runs under the classification of ‘a tree fell on my car’.  It’s not something you can normally avoid.

But the other two are oil-related and very much preventable. How does these conditions happen? Why do turbochargers break down under their influence?

First, understand what a turbocharger has to do in order to do what it’s supposed to.

When it’s working properly, a turbocharger will turn at extremely high RPMs –  some units exceeding 100,000.  The Garrett VNT15 turbo runs at 180,000 rpm.  At such excessive speeds, bearings would be useless and would not hold up to the stress.  So the unit uses a bronze and brass bushing that is bathed in a constant supply of oil.  The unit also has a shaft with an exhaust-driven impeller on one end, and a fan (compressor) on the other end  that makes up part of the air intake system (remember the turbocharger’s purpose of forcing air into the engine).  This fan also floats on a film of oil that is essential to its working life.

Oil Failure Means Turbocharger Destruction

This is why oil health is so important to keep a turbocharger in working order. The demands on the unit are so great, that any oil failure means destruction for the unit.  If you start to get wear on shaft and bushing, the shaft will start to wobble.  This causes oil to go past the seals on either end.  Or the oil can start to leak out and get into the exhaust/intake manifolds where you witness an oil consumption problem.  In either case, it’s an eventual death sentence for that turbocharger.

How can these kinds of failures happen when these turbo systems obviously aren’t designed to let that happen? They happen when unexpected wear appears on some of these essential parts.  The oil gets dirty or contaminated from long-term use, leading to bearing scratching and scoring.  This inevitably leads to excessive wear, followed by failure.

A bigger issue is what can happen when there is momentary lack of lubrication. A turbo spinning at 180,000 rpm is going to suffer tremendously from even the most momentary of drops in oil pressure.  Overheating comes on in a blink of an eye and essential parts are destroyed.

The Worst Thing You Can Do To A Turbocharger? Revving The Engine Before You Shut It Off

You know what’s the worst thing you can do to a turbocharger? Putting it another way, if your goal is to destroy your turbo in as short a time as possible, what should you do? How about keeping it running after you shut the engine off? Or revving the engine right before shutting it off. Truck drivers have a habit of doing that. And it’s terrible for the turbo. 

In both of these cases, once you shut the engine off, the turbo is still spinning.  But there’s no oil pressure now. Scoring of the metal parts can eventually happen in this case.

What To Do To Extend Your Turbo’s Life

The best thing you can do in this case is idle the engine for a few minutes before shutting it off completely.  This allows the turbo to slow down before the oil flow stops when the engine stops.

Another thing you can do is try an oil treatment like X-tra Lube. We formulated X-tra Lube to apply micrometallic particles to the metal surfaces for added protection in situations such as loss of oil pressure as we’ve described above.  X-tra Lube Oil Treatment is tremendously effective at maximizing turbocharger life because it protects, better than anything else, against these catastrophic dangers that shorten turbocharger life.

Having a turbocharger is a great way to give your vehicle a boost in performance. But if you have a turbo, you need to be aware of potential issues. So let’s take a look at a few warning signs of a failing turbo.

Decreased acceleration: Having a turbo is going to allow your vehicle to go faster and accelerate quicker. So if you’re noticing that your vehicle is accelerating slower and showing a lack of power, this could mean your turbo isn’t working as it should. So check your turbo for signs of damage or wear and tear and start considering looking at truck parts online.

Extreme exhaust smoke: Excessive exhaust smoke is a surefire sign that something isn’t right. A malfunctioning turbo can cause more exhaust smoke to be produced than normal if there is oil leaking into the exhaust.

Loud noises: If your vehicle has a bad turbo, you may hear loud noises that sound like whining or screeching. So if your vehicle is running and you hear a loud whining sound that increases in volume as the problem goes unfixed, this is most likely to do a turbo problem.

Increased oil use: When a vehicle uses more oil than normal, this is a big warning sign that something isn’t right. If the turbo is leaking oil, you can see it inside the turbine. Increased oil use is common for a gradual turbo failure, but should still be fixed promptly so take a look at big machine parts sooner rather than later.

Check engine light: Perhaps the most obvious sign that something is amiss with your vehicle is when your check engine light comes on. Unfortunately, the check engine light can come on for a variety of reasons, like a loose gas cap. But it will come on to signal a failing turbo, too.

As you can see, there are a lot of important warning signs that a turbo may be failing. So if you notice any of these signs, make sure to get your vehicle looked at. And if you’re in need of big truck parts and accessories call Big Machine Parts to learn more about our products and services.

So where to from here then?

Turbochargers are one of the more common turbomachines out there today! As everyone is making efforts to lower carbon dioxide emissions in automobiles, and the automotive OEMs engage in a “horsepower war”, the turbocharger will likely continue to grow in popularity for both civil and commercial uses.

But how did these machines get so popular? That’s what we’ll be exploring in this blog miniseries! Today’s blog will introduce the concept of the turbocharger, and the beginnings of its development around the turn of the 20^th century.

Turbocharging engines and the idea of forced induction on internal combustion engines are as old as the engines themselves. Their intertwined history can be traced back to the 1880’s, when Gottlieb Daimler was tinkering with the idea of forced induction on a “grandfather clock” engine. Daimler was supposedly the first to apply the principles of supercharging an engine in 1900, when he mounted a roots-style supercharger to a 4-stroke engine.

The birth of the turbocharger, however, would come 5 years later, when Swiss engineer Alfred Büchi received a patent for an axial compressor driven by an axial turbine on a common shaft with the piston of the engine. Although this design wasn’t feasible at the time due to a lack of viable materials, the idea was there.

Turbochargers vs Superchargers

What idea was that, exactly? And how did it differ from supercharging?

I think it’s important to quickly go over the basic differences between turbocharging and supercharging. Both offer “forced induction” for piston engines. A naturally aspirated engine simply will draw in atmospheric air as the intake valve opens, and the piston travels down to bottom dead center. A forced induction engine, pushes more air into the cylinder than what the dropping of the piston would pull in, allowing more air to be combusted, and thus generating more power and efficiency. While turbochargers and superchargers are both forced induction , how superchargers and turbochargers go about compressing that air is different. Superchargers are driven by the engine themselves, typically via a belt or gear. This uses some of the engine’s available horsepower, but doing so provides more horsepower back to the engine. The compressors can be either positive displacement configurations (such as a Roots or Twin-Screw), or a  centrifugal supercharger.