So I was out for an evening blast with an old friend, we were in the boost when all of the sudden I hear a screach and lose power. I find an extremely fine red dust under my hood and upon furthor investigation I find that my turbo pulled a loose rubber diameter reducer that was on my K&N filter into its blades. It ate about 1/8 of the grommet and sprayed a fine red rubber dust through my intake piping and innercooler...what a freakin' mess! Anyway, I don't believe that there will be any internal engine damage, the car ran for a couple of minutes afterward while getting to the nearest parking lot and the dust is so fine and soft that you can't feel its texture between your fingers. The turbo on the other hand has me more than worried, I really don't know how durable it is. I have a hard time believing that it would survive such a shock. I can feel with my finger and see the blades and they look and feel normal, they also spin freely. Could it have survived?

Man this sucks. I finally found a good place to install a filter and something stupid like this happens.

Any input on survivability and maybe cost of getting the turbo rebuilt would be appreciated.

 

I would clean out all the piping and IC. Check that the turbine fins are in tack and that there is no contact w/ the housing.

 

That's pretty strange. I'm still trying to picture what part it ate. My K&N goes on the outside of intake piping and is hoseclamped.

 

So the coupler holding the filter to the pipe got sucked in and shredded? hmm, I would check to see how far into the motor that shredded silicone got. If it's in your plenum I'd check the motor before worrying about the turbo.

 

that really sucks...

 

^ literally

 

I agree I would be more worried about my motor right now. The blades may feel fine and spin freely but it would be hard to tell if any were bent which would change the effect they have on boosting.

 

Alright, here's the deal.

Took apart the entire system from the turbo to the intake, found a couple of big chuncks in the intercooler and everything down stream of that was a fine red dust. Also disassembled the intake, sucked and blew it out. After I was sure the system was clean I put it all back together and started the car. Because of the location of the turbo (bad clearance problems) it is very difficult to see the inlet blades so I chanced a trip around the block. The motor runs fine the turbo sounds like a wounded dianosaur.

So now I have removed the turbo and sent it back to turbonetics for a rebuild. **** happens

All of this was no ones fault but my own but I can't help but think that if the install shop would have just finished the job in the first place, none of this would be an issue.

 

yes that really sucks

 

I had this happen to my GT35R on my civic (filter failed on the turbo inlet), motor was fine but the turbo need a rebuild. sucked but I was just happy that a 10k motor was okay.