This video from Standard demonstrates tips and best practices for installing a turbocharger.
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Video Transcript:
Hello. We're back today talking about turbochargers. There are a couple of issues with installing turbochargers that truly need to be addressed. Firstly, any turbocharger needs to be pre-lubed before the engine is started. There's a couple of different ways of doing that. Number one, you can do it on the bench. You can add oil through the oil fill tube. Remember that the oil supply or the lubrication supply to the turbo comes from the engine crank case. Whatever shape that oil is in, that's what's going to get pumped directly into your new turbocharger. It's always a great idea to go in, drain the engine oil out, and put fresh engine oil and filter in before you start flushing that oil into the system.
Secondly, because the line can be fairly long between the crank case and the turbocharger, you should purge that line. Make sure you've got clean oil coming out of it and the dirty oil is gone. There's two ways of doing that. You can pre-lube the turbo on the bench, pour oil inside, rotate the center housing or center shaft around until you've got good lubrication on it, and install it. That's one way of doing it. The problem with doing that is once you've got oil in it, and as you're installing it, you're going to get leakage from the turbo and this can get a little extra messy.
The other way to do it would simply be to bolt the turbo in, take the pressure oil line and have a catch bottle, disable the injectors, crank the engine over, pump until you get clean oil coming from that, connect it to the turbo, crank it again for a couple of 30 second intervals, making sure you've got good oil inside. At the same time, spin that center shaft assembly on it and that will lubricate the bearings.
The bearings are a bushing style bearing on these. Once you take a turbo out of the box, and if you grab the center shaft but are able to get side to side play, that's not a defective turbo. The only way that could possibly be defective is if the fence actually hit the turbo housing assembly. As long as they do not, it's not a problem. What happens is because that bushing style bearing is in there, you're going to have a thin film of oil in there to lubricate that. Once that oil is pumped in there and pressured, now it's taking up all that gap in there and that play will no longer be there.
If that play was not there now, it would be too tight. By the time you get oil in there, it would be very difficult to lubricate it properly. The space simply wouldn't be there for adequate lubrication. Hopefully that will help you on your next turbo installation and make sure that when you do install it, that it stays on and the job is done right. Thanks for listening.