Less spectacular than I imagined. (Blew my turbo seals)

So title says it all. Driving home from work last night I decided to wring out the MS3 in second and third gear in the middle of nowhere desert.

At about 5.5k in 3rd there's a loud pop and the car lost power. Figured I blew off a boost hose and, not wanting to stop 15 miles from anything, limped it to the first stop sign just that far away. Huge white cloud of smoke overtook me at that point. Then I waited around for a tow for two hours to get the other 20 miles home.

So now I need to assess the damage but I'm pretty sure the K04 is toast. Doesn't look like I vented the block, at least upon cursory inspection.

Guess Corksport is about to sell another turbo though. As if I didn't have enough going on with this move and job change.

Not even mad about it just something else I need to do.

Edit: Oh yea the question.

So there was a ton of oil. Is there something I need to do to the cat to clean it out? Or will it just burn off?

Definitely take it down and inspect it with a flashlight as well as the intake tract (intercooler especially or catch can if equipped) but so long as it's just oil seals yeah it should be alright.

Giant immediate cloud doesn't sound like blown seals as much as blown bearing.

Did another EJ25 turbo last week. They drove it around a bit while failed before they could bring it in to us. Intercooler was full of debris so that needed to be replaced as well. The fun part was the impeller nut was missing! It was halfway up the intake duct under the manifold. A less-cautious person might not have looked for it and destroyed the replacement turbo in short order.

Thanks guys have to do some trim work and some work on my capstone project for school but I should be able to look tonight and continue tomorrow.

Knurled: I was afraid that might be the case, and thanks for the info I'll make sure to FOD check the intake tract. Most of the turbos I deal with on the Rotax 914 usually sieze rather than come apart. So I haven't seen a spectacular failure like this one first hand.

Unfortunately it was 10:30 PM, I was in the middle of nowhere, and there were no stop signs for miles so I didn't see the smoke until I stopped. After shutdown it was still smoking pretty badly, so much so that I thought the rear end had caught fire.

The top mount I intercooler needs to come off anyway to get to the turbo so I'll go through it and the intake system while I'm there. I'm sure the catch can is full so I'll look for crap in it as well.

It also gives me an excuse to pull the intake manifold to look at the valves for crap, and install the injector seals and the 3.5 bar sensor that have been languishing on my work bench for months while I'm in there.

Yay upgrades! I guess.

You can wiggle the turbos shaft and check for excess play. Never heard of a turbo going bad like that in my personal experiences.

I would be looking for headgasket failure, or some other system leaking fluid into the intake.

Also what kind of mileage fun/abuse has the turbo seen up to this point?

When the 14B went on my Galant VR4, it was pretty sudden. Like - fine going to work, bad coming home. It only started blowing smoke bad when on boost though.

The pop would lead me to believe something else may have let go. If it was the turbo, look for the telltale signs - exhaust side clean before the turbo and oily/wet after the turbo is a dead giveaway or intake side dry before the compressor and wet after the compressor is also indicative but a little tougher to nail down depending on your PCV routing.

It's a speed3, so I'd definitely do a thorough check of the block while you're inspecting things. Rod failures are certainly not unheard of on those.

In reply to jere:

25k miles. The car has a 3 inch intake, upgraded CDFP internals, a larger top mount, a 3 inch downpipe with a catalytic converter, and was setup to run 21 psi of boost from Stratified who is a Cobb certified tuner.

My entire garage reeks of burnt oil, I was just out there painting trim, I'll check the coolant too but from the fact that the system wouldn't produce boost at all the turbo system seems like the likely culprit. I'll check the color of the coolant too while I'm in there. I suspect I didn't see it smoking badly for a little bit because it took some time to fill the catch can. Once it filled though things got exciting. Engine didn't throw a code either which is why I thought a hose had just blown off.

In reply to rslifkin:

I'll look because I know that they have an issue with that just as a precaution but generally that's from the engine going lean at full boost then detonating or the stress on the motor in a high gear, under boost, at low rpm. I have the internals upgraded, I try not to go into boost under 3k rpm and the Accessport was reading 2000 psi at the CDFP when it happened. There wasn't oil all over the engine, on the under tray or, really anywhere except coming through the exhaust so I'm not terribly concerned about there being a viewing window involuntarily installed in the block, but since I'm disassembling pretty much everything it won't hurt to look a little harder.

Plus, if you lost a rod, you wouldn't have been able to limp it along.

Regarding codes it is the other way around - a blown off boost hose should set a fault code for airflow/pressure correlation, and the engine would likely barely run at idle if it didn't set a code and was still trusting the MAF to give correct readings.

As far as the cat goes... well, it's going to smoke for a while. And its life is now shortened for sure. So are the O2 sensors, if they aren't dead already. (My RX-7 sometimes goes into oil ingestion mode and this reliabily kills my wideband, along with the mosquitoes in a three block radius) You could try hosing it out with carb cleaner, I guess.

Keep in mind Mazda has had issues with the PCV systems in the MZR engines and the K04s are spun a bit high from factory so it might be time for a 3076 upgrade? Lol

Guessing on the mileage there is a good chance its the oil from the pvc system. (Maybe just a bad $5 pvc check valve.) A lot of guys guess its the turbo first but an overflowing pvc system (or one with messed up routing) will do all the same symptoms. The pop i would venture is a backfire... maybe from the intake if all that oil made things go lean, or maybe a cylinder missing from being oiled up.

You might just drain your catch can, spray out the intake system that got oiled, plugs IC and o2s, air metering sensors... with crc maf cleaner spray. And put it all back together, that is if there isnt play in the compressor shaft.

Might save you some money, or might just make a mess again.

When seals fail there is usually not a loss of power and a audible noise.

The0retical wrote: So title says it all. Driving home from work last night I decided to wring out the MS3 in second and third gear in the middle of nowhere desert. At about 5.5k in 3rd there's a loud pop and the car lost power. Figured I blew off a boost hose and, not wanting to stop 15 miles from anything, limped it to the first stop sign just that far away. Huge white cloud of smoke overtook me at that point. Then I waited around for a tow for two hours to get the other 20 miles home. So now I need to assess the damage but I'm pretty sure the K04 is toast. Doesn't look like I vented the block, at least upon cursory inspection. Guess Corksport is about to sell another turbo though. As if I didn't have enough going on with this move and job change. Not even mad about it just something else I need to do. Edit: Oh yea the question. So there was a ton of oil. Is there something I need to do to the cat to clean it out? Or will it just burn off?

I did the same thing last fall. For now...she slumbers.

Okie dokie I'm back from vacation and Corksport has a bunch of my money.

Pulled the intake tract out.

There's evidence of oil on the intercooler inlet side

Nothing in the TIP or the intake however

The compressor side of the turbo shows some oil

But it's all there which kinda made my day.

There's close to an eigth of an inch of radial end play however so I'm still running with the theory that the turbo is shot.

Mail came earlier today:

New EBCS, turbo, bypass valve, and a sway bar.

They can join their friends the year old uninstalled Koni Yellow and Eibach kit sitting there with the Corksport camber plates, rear camber arms, battery box, injector seals and PnP 3.5 bar map sensor.

I apparently need more hours in a day or less graduate work (come on May 22nd!)

And a picture of the new turbo by its self since you all want to see it.

First things first: the tow truck was awesome enough to put the car in my garage but its facing backwards from my work bench and where I installed the light over the hood.

A drill and a piece of 2X4 with some eyelets too care of that relocating one of my other shop lights over the door opener temporarily.

What my shop looks like at 2:30 AM. I really love these Utilitech LED lights that I cleared Lowes out of when they went on clearance for like 29 bucks a piece.

Drained the catch can.... yep its full.

Pulled the wideband 02 sensor and it's sooty with obvious oil.

Pulled the downpipe after some struggle. I thought I antisiezed the hell out of these stupid things a few months ago. No obvious holes in the matrix which is a promising sign but damn does it smell like burned oil.

Well my initial posting guess in the title was wrong but....well E36 M3 the shaft broke and it failed pretty spectacularly.

He's dead Jim.

Working on getting the turbo out now and trying to locate the FOD from the turbine side since not enough fell out of the downpipe to add up to the rest of the wheel. More to come, probably going to work until I pass out.

A little off topic, but can a wideband O2 like that be cleaned? Any special procedures or products to use? Or should the sensor just be replaced?

I put a torch to them. Literally.

Axial end lay on a turbo without oil in it should be about 0.01" with radial about .003-.005". Sans oil

Turbo is out and the damage is severe but the FOD situation seems like it's not as bad as I thought. Closer inspection of the turbine side of the turbo shows it was just the tips that broke off as it spun down and clipped the housings. The the main shaft is definitely broken, in case you couldn't tell before. The turbine moves freely around the housing both radially and axially and the compressor doesn't spin when you rotate it.

As I said all the FOD appears to be accounted for, I beat it out of the down pipe as it appears to have been laying on the matrix in the cat. I can start putting it back together tomorrow after I finish the crown molding and catch a bit of sleep. Needs to be done by 4 am Wednesday when I get picked up to leave for my 5 month deployment. I might make it.... or something will go wrong and I won't.

In reply to STM317:

I have some MAF cleaner laying around here I'm going to use on it. The ECU didn't throw a code after the car started smoking pretty badly so I'm assuming it was working (or workingish) when I turned the car off. Hopefully it still works because they're pretty pricey as its the wideband one.

Wow, in a way you are fortunate because the impeller would have stopped very quickly after the shaft broke, therefore no Murphy's Machine Shop filling your intercooler with finely ground aluminum.

Now you have a really cool picture. "See that turbo chunk in the downpipe? Yeah, that was mine!" There is/was a website for people to rate other peoples' toilet uploads (similar to hotornot), I wonder if there is a "ratemywreckage.com". And if not, I think I should get on that.

I do gotta ask, though. Your turbo failed about as spectacularly as is possible before a wheel explosion. Just how spectacular did you think a seal failure would have been?

In reply to Knurled:

I was actually pretty worried about what I'd find in the intake when I took it apart. I was a bit confused why there was some play in the compressor but not really any damage. It must have failed just right to not eat the compressor housing and not trash the intercooler or the rest of the motor like said. Half of me was expecting to find an involuntarily installed window in the block, since all the hoses were on, and the other half was praying that all the crap went out the downpipe and I'd only be out the cost of the turbo and cat.

If the seals had failed like a hopped up diesel engine (like I thought initially) it probably would have spit molten aluminum into everything destroying the motor. All things considered I'm really really lucky the shaft failed how it did. But yea if it had blown up the wheel it would have been quite the story.

I don't even have 30k miles on the car after 5 years so if have been a little unhappy at having to replace the motor.

Also after 10 years of working over my head on aircraft and 15 pretending to know what I'm looking at on cars.... I finally dropped a tool on my face. Luckily it was only a 14mm wrench so it only drew a little blood.