Turbo tear down (pics)
 

I took my spare turbo apart last night in preparation for what I'm going to call a Stage 1 upgrade and HP rebuild.

I bought this turbo as a "rebuildable core" off of ebay several months ago. It's actually off of an ATS, but looking up the 16 Camaro turbo p/n shows that the same p/n is used all the way as far back as the 2013 ATS. I only paid $150 for this turbo off of ebay, not knowing how bad or even if it was bad at all. Upon disassembly, the actual condition of the turbo guts was great. The only problem with this turbo was that the connector on the valve that operates the vacuum actuator is cracked. It will cost me $120 to replace, and what Gm calls a solenoid is missing, that's another $140. I will probably just swap these parts off of the turbo currently on the car before I put this one on after its completed.

Now on with the pictures...

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Upgrade parts are on order, expected to show up next week.




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Nice!! What's the biggest size you are planning on going. I saw 67 mm stuffed in there.

Ill be trying things in stages, so for this "Stage 1", I'm not going to upgrade the compressor side at the moment. The 19t is a pretty good compressor wheel IMO, where this turbo needs help is the turbine side. I'm going to be putting in a 9 blade HL wheel.

The compressor housing was also way choked down, so I have ported what I could, and so far just testing the compressor housing on the flow bench I'm seeing an 11% airflow increase. By the time I'm done, I imagine I will pick up another 1-2%. This alone should be a big difference! I think I may test just this housing in the car by itself first and see what kind of difference it makes. If it makes a nice difference I may offer just a ported compressor housing as a "Stage 0.5" on an exchange basis.

Then I'll move on to swapping the new turbo on and see how far I can take it before thinking about moving into a "Stage 2" with an upgraded compressor wheel.

I'll be getting another stock turbo in the near future so can take before and after pictures of the porting. I didn't think to take before pics this time.



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You know, new the turbo are only $600, i see them all the time up for sale, we have some here to.

Gm list price is $1287, I can get them for about $1000. But after reading your post I looked on ebay and I see there is a guy selling them for $549. That's a good price.


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Theres a performance thread on the casdy forum and a fella mentioned the model of aftermarket drop in turbo. After reading a bit more it required a new exhaust manifold. That particular turbo was 1750 bucks. He was pushing over 400 rwhp. Borg warner turbo.

Id be interested in upgrading my turbo impellers and exhaust wheels if someone figures out the parts.

Would be nice to have a used turbo on hand to slap in if warranty work was needed

Machining is required to install the HL wheel on this turbo. I don't think there is much you can do to the exhaust side that's worth doing without machining to fit a different wheel. The intake side, you might benefit from a billet 19t wheel that should drop in... I've seen the 11 blade, and the 6x6 in billet. I would tend to think that the 11 blade will spool faster and would be better for street applications, and the 6x6 is probably better for all out high boost race. That's just my speculation at this point.

Once I get this one together and run it for a while, I will probably try the 11 blade billet compressor wheel. Might even try both at some point down the road.

The 19t w/ an HL compressor wheel should be good to at least 325 whp maybe up to 350. That's why I'm not really concerned with machining the compressor side to fit a bigger/different compressor wheel. The 19t is a good wheel.

That is about where I want to be at. Great power up top, and great streetability. Don't care much for warranty when I want to rebuild the bottom end anyway. For the rest I'll use the ZZPerformance LTG cams they offer, and rebuild the bottom end with their 4340 rods, and forged pistons.

Further cleaning up of the port work, I'm now flowing 14% better than it was stock. I still think there is about another 1-2% to be gained.

The new turbine wheel/shaft and turbo rebuild kit will be here tomorrow. So I can asses how much machining I'll have to do to put the new turbo all back together.

Jason,

Very interesting writeup about the turbo. This is an interesting thread and forgive my ignorance but would you please explain... I counted the blades on the stock turbine and I see 11. Why would 9 blades be better?

9 blades are better because it's a lighter wheel and will spool quicker for that reason, and will also spool longer (but weight aside the 11 blade will spool quicker than a 9 blade, but run out of steam on the top end). But since I am going with a bigger turbine wheel, it is also slightly heavier than the old one, so going with the 9 blade HL wheel will cut weight over the 11 blade to try and keep the wieght as low as possible to retain a quick spool, but the larger wheel will allow for a longer pull and more top end HP. hope that makes sense?

images below show stock 11 blade L wheel vs 9 blade HL wheel, and their weight difference. The 9 blade HL weighs slight more due to its bigger size, but would weight less than an 11 blade HL wheel.

Finally getting back to this project, I sent the compressor wheel new turbine shaft out 3 months ago to be high speed balanced and finally just got it back today. Now I can get back to the machining of the compressor housing and put it all back together.

Subscribed. Very interesting stuff!

Looking forward to see how this 'shifts' the power band.... Would you expect to see a slight loss of power in the low rpm band with this upgrade, or would it simply expand the turbo's breathing up top?

Well, I'm hoping that with the porting I did on the compressor housing that it will maintain, or even improve the low-mid range power, while the turbine wheel will take care of the on top performance where the stock turbo falls off.