Brand New Car, Turbo Pipe Not Attached For 275K's. Any Damage?

[Daytona_Kid]

Hey People,

My first post here. have been lurking and soaking up the information. Hopefully someone can help me here.

Got a brand new XR6 turbo ute. The car felt like a slug, but thought it might be due to break in. I have been driving it around and decided to do an oil change at 250k's. While I was under the car I noticed an oil leak down onto the front bar coming from up near the right side of the radiator. On checking it out, oil had blown over the right side of the radiator, back of the headlight etc etc. Called up the dealership and booked it in.

After they fixed the leak I talked to the mechanic about it. He told me the oil leak was coming from the pipe with the red arrow next to it. He told me the clamp was not even tight and someone at the factory had not checked it and forgotten about it. Needless to say after realising that this pipe was not connected properly the engine was not receiving any boost. The car felt like a different animal with the pipe clamped up. I drove out of the dealership and the pipe blew again. They rescued me and took a fitting from another car to fix it. They told me that they had cut the pipe too short at the factory and it was not able to clamp fully.

When talking to the mechanic after the first time they fixed it, I stopped for a second and asked him why oil would be running in that pipe and isnt that the compression side of the turbo that runs to the intercooler and then to the throttle body? He said, yes the turbo requires oil to maintain lubrication and to cool the intake. Now correct me if I am wrong, but unless I am completely incorrect about how turbo's work, isnt the intake side of a turbocharged engine meant to be oil free and just clean air being compressed? The oil is meant to circulate around the bearings which are sealed and not through the compressor wheel via the intercooler etc?

Apart from asking the above question in regards to the oil being in the compression side of the turbo, I also want to know if there has been any potential damage to the turbo or engine from driving without that pipe clamped up properly, in other words, driving around with all the boost being blasted to atmosphere for 275k's?

I am typing this a bit tired, so if I have left anything out or it doesnt make sense, please ask away.

[discostig]

I'm not one of the skilled mechanics of the forum so take with a grain of salt...but off the top of my head...losing pressurised air will make it run crappy as you noticed, but at least it's not sucking in unfiltered air on a pipe between the intake and turbo compressor. The car would only be down on power I think and not running overly rich as the air volume (pressure) is measured in the manifold itself. Blokes blow pipes all the time on here and still drive fine after fixing the leak.

Oil does not flow around the intake in large amounts no. It is supposed to only be inside the mechanicals of the turbo as you mentioned. You dooooo get some oil in the intake thanks to the PCV valve from memory? The one that leads oily crankcase gases back to the intake. You will find a little oil at the bottom of the turbo intake on healthy cars. From the sounds of it you had a lot of oil though...long shot but had the level dropped much (you didn't know the before/after dipstick levels I'm guessing)?

Maybe brand new tight engines do throw lots of oil into the intake but I don't recall reading that here, and I've been reading a fair while. Edit - just reading oil use threads and brand new engines do go through a bit so could be normal, assuming it doesn't get burnt up in the chamber. Never owned a new engine myself.

Anyway hopefully someone more full bottle can chip in. Being brand new you have a nice warranty to fall back on though should anything go wrong. I wouldn't go modding the car for a year or two at least!

Edited 05/08/13 02:50 PM by -SteveR-

[SecaBoy]

I had a significant amount of oil seeping out of my intake pipes and ford's answer was "it says in the service manual that this is normal". the solution they came up was to tighten all the clamps so it doesnt leak out of the pipe joins. lol

I put up with it until my 5000km (I think) service and then they changed the oil weight and the problem went away.

related or not, I dont know, but my turbo bearings dried up and I had to replace my turbo at ~30,000kms. excuse to put an F6 turbo in and tune it.

[Z2TT]

I took my factory intercooler off and there was no Oil in there at all and put a FPV one in from a Low KM FPV and that one had not a single drop of oil in it too or any sign at all.

[discostig]

I have read of very thin run in oil that gets changed out and oil use problems disappear yeah.

Interesting what Boris says though that his two new/near new coolers had zero oil in them! I guess that means the oil use is just it getting by the pistons into the chamber and being burnt then spat out the exhaust. Anyway I'll sit back and watch the thread to see where it goes.

[SuckSqueezeBangBlow]

You would have been sucking in unfiltered air. Oil is from crankcase breather not pcv, which goes to intake manifold, at least on ba/bf, someone correct me if fg goes elsewhere. But since there has not been any boost, should there really be that much blowby oil?

[sixman]

Geez, how could this car leave the factory like this.

And what happened to the predelivery inspection they charged you for???

[discostig]

I thought the split was in the hot side pipes after the turbo or maybe I have the pipes wrong in the pic. I guess if off boost you are in vac after all... dirt wouldn't go into the turbo at least, just the intercooler and engine, they don't matter right? lol.

Get it replaced under lemon laws maybe...just gotta have them fail to fix 3 things is it?