So you're at the junkyard, and you score the perfect turbo that will be just the thing for your new Frankenstein creation. How do you know if it's any good? Just for you, we put together a short guide to some of the more common parts of a forced induction system, as well as how to test them in the …
This article is fairly accurate. Good Job. One note is is that I have in my experience never seen an compressor end dynamic seal, that has started to leak oil, seal back up. So it must be noted that any amount of oil in the comp outlet will generally grow to a larger amount of oil.
Good point - A good coating of oil is a pretty good sign of bad compressor seals. I've also seen turbos (and I'm sure you have too) with a light coating of oil that comes from the PCV valve or engine breather. That's nothing to get excited about, but it's hard to tell the difference if there's just a little oil coating.
This article had a lot of good points. We ran a junkyard turbo on our '09 Challenge car with no issues. I recommend that path to future competitors. It can be a crapshoot with quality sometimes, but a good junkyard turbo can outlive and outperform the cheapest of eBay snails.
What kind of prices can you score these "junkyard" turbos for?
I love saab turbos, they are usually well maintained and have higher nickel content in the exhaust housings. Plus, pick n pulls have gillions of them for around fifty bucks.
As a 5x bad turbo buyer, have a backup plan for if the 'used' turbo requires a rebuild... some DO NOT have rebuildable center sections AND aren't available.
Junkyard turbos are a good source of pseudo-free power, $50-$125 ea.
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