oil leak at turbo = ?

[BrApple]

is it normal for oil to sometime get into the turbine or leak out between the turbine housing and the center cartrige? I am assuming not.

last friday I bypassed the turbo and was idling the engine and reving the engine. I was doing some data logging and the car started smoking. now every so often recently I have gotten alittle smoke off the turbo, was thinking it was the oil drain leaking alittle as it has been doing that. well after it smoked I turned it right off.

first drive after that with everything back to normal it smoked for a few minutes lightly and then cleared up.

last night when I drove it I didn't note any smoke at all.

now I do know it hasn't been making as much boost as it had been at part throttle. full throttle is fine, but I attribute that to the leaking wastegate gaskets.

so what I observed when I pulled the turbo tonight was oil had been leaking out between the center cartrige and the turbine housing. I did not note any oil in the exhaust.

now could it be that the oil just got to hot and leaked out? I am running 5w-30 mobil 1. should I be running a different weight oil? I know that a few time on one tune the turbine got extremely hot, more so then normal. recently it has been pretty steady.

also I take it play in the turbine side bearing isn't normal is it?

 

[TUFTOUR]

don't know, can it be rebuilt?

 

[DemonSVT]

If the oil pressure to the turbo is "too high" (i.e. did not use an inline restrictor!!!) then yes you can easily get oil passing the inner seals. Some times they will re-seal if the pressure problem is solved. Good luck.

If it is blown seals then a cartridge rebuild is required.

 

[BrApple]

If the oil pressure to the turbo is "too high" (i.e. did not use an inline restrictor!!!) then yes you can easily get oil passing the inner seals. Some times they will re-seal if the pressure problem is solved. Good luck.

If it is blown seals then a cartridge rebuild is required.

there is a restrictor in line. as I noted it doesn't seem to be a constant thing. however I have noticed that some time getting into boost that the oil pressure reading on the gauge will go up.


edit: now that i re-read everything I made it sound like it was leaking all the time. This is not the case that I can tell. What I observed when I took the turbine housing off was I could see where oil had gotten out between the cartridge and turbine housing. There was a residue from where it had gotten out and burned off. I believe this is why occationally recently I have gotten a little smoke out from under the hood after running the car hard. otherwise I haven't noted anything.

but is also sounds like I might still have alittle to much oil pressure getting to the turbo?