Mikey, I also want to thank you for coming in here and clearing up any misinformation. It's always nice to hear products are made here at home.

 

+1

 

OP - I encourage you to edit any posts of yours that could possibly mislead someone about the origin of their parts.

 

so it looks like they are using the Melett thrust washer? they look identical. also can you explain how the shaft is damaged? is the scuffing on it enough to need to replace the entire shaft or what? id like detailed information so i know whats bad and whats good.. id like to rebuild my turbo one of these days for educational purposes aside from balancing it of course.

so the bearings themselves can never touch the shaft? it must be seperated with oil similar to how a bearing is on an engine also?
so due to lack of oil they hit and scuffed the shaft so the shaft is not reusable due to the turbine side of the shaft with scuffing??

 

Hey Tom,

The journal bearings and shaft were most likely damaged from oil contamination.
Journal bearings go in the bin, the shaft should be salvageable. It can be cleaned up.
The thrust bearing has been contacting the collar (steel on steel). This is not from oil contamination, but from thrust loading. This was probably from when i was running the turbo without the FP high pressure oil line, and i had compressor surge (without the anti surge cover).
When you run your fingernail across the shaft, you can feel the scoring on it. It should be perfectly smooth, just like a cam and/or crank journal.

They will most likely use 5thou oversize journal bearings, they have all the machinery here to do that.

After all of this, it will be spun up and tested on 2 rigs. One where they spin up the shaft assembly (turbine wheel, shaft and comp wheel), then another assembly where they actually spin up the whole turbo. It is fed oil, and checked for vibration. Balancing can be as little as GRAMS. I will hopefully get more info and video's of this happening.

I'm just passing on what i was told, I am no turbo expert.
The Journal and thrust bearing damage could have been caused from when i had my crash too. I went full noise into a ditch, and then low oil pressure straight away from smashing my oil cooler. This wouldn't of done it any favours.

When they get the new Melett thrust bearing in stock, i will take a picture of it with no damage, fresh out of the box.

Cheers, Mike

 

Thanks for that info Mike. and yes, dipping oil pressure can kill it in 1 shot. I killed mine from going WOT up a slight incline and the oil pickup sucked in air and the turbo froze.. made a loud high pitched squeal for a few seconds and i was non turbo lol. was running 42psi

now i have a buschur baffled oil pan + tomei windage tray + crank scraper. should be all good now. its usually never the turbos fault when failures occur though.. its always something triggering it.

 

i would seriously doubt if that your oiling system is good enough.
I am getting oil pressures drop from 80psi to 40psi on drag launch, with street tyres and 1.6 60ft). Extra capacity and trap doors with Accusump should fix that.

With my Link ECU, i can log oil pressures accurately. Can you log with the Stock ecu? use a Zeitronix 0-5v 0-150psi pressure sender. 0psi is 0.5v, 150psi is 4.5v.

Np about the info!

Cheers, Mike

 

So explain why last november FP Black orders and conversions were on hold for over 3 months...? FP themselves said they were waiting on a distributor to supply them with the necessary parts to complete the builds. Obviously if they did ALL the machine and CNC work they would not wait months for raw materials they could source elsewhere..seems to me its possible they were waiting for parts that they themselves do not produce

 

when it failed it was making about 560-570wtq, thats with conservative timing at pk tq.. when i raise it where it makes max power it is around 590-600wtq at that boost.

I dont have anything to log oil pressure except for my AEM gauge which from my understanding cant be logged externally easy.

i dont really do any launches.. i try to avoid launching the car, because it breaks stuff.

how low is to much of an oil pressure dip to damage the turbo? 40psi still seems good enough pressure no?

i really dont plan on spinning the turbo that fast ever again, i suspect thats part of the reason it did what it did also.

a lot of high hp cars that are drag cars will just fill the oil up an additional half quart more to help with the oiling.

if we keep the turbos under 35psi i think a lot of this stuff will not occur.. mine was fine until i started to get nutty with the boost controller.

you dont think the baffle around the pickup is going to be enough? its the same thing jun did with their pan.

where are you getting your reading from? the oil filter housing? thats where mines tapped.. i never paid attention to the AEM gauge WOT before. i could video it maybe to get a idea whats going on.

the only other thing we can do is a dry sump.

 

so many questions Tom! answers in Red

 

the wheels aren't made in house to my knowledge but its def not from China. most likely a huge delay because they didnt have enough wheels made and had to make more. plus fp ran into issues before they started making their own turbine housings also. they couldnt get enough oem to cover orders so they had to go a different route by making their own.

fp stuff is the same quality as MHI.. which is extremely high quality. the problem is people who buy FP stuff push the **** to the limit.

 

This ^^^^^

 

JUN did testing on it.. and if the Buschur ones just like the JUN, then its gotta work. maybe it wont be the final solution like you said, but it will help.

so you're making a custom oil pan then? id be interested in knowing more about this if you want to pm me info.

 

Thought I would clear things up.

Its true that the billet wheels have been around for quite some time. They arent advanced as the newest designs, but the basic concept has been utilized by BW and Garrett for years.

The billet compressors Tial uses in their Alpha turbochargers come from FP. Because FP buys Garrett products Tial, it only makes sense they would work together on the Alpha upgrades.

Not entirely correct. FP is a distributor for Mitsubishi Turbo and primarily all of their products are made overseas. Garrett also has many products made outside the states. They do however have a machine shop for making compressor wheels, but the speculation was that Robert uses turbine wheels made in China. Inconel turbine wheels are cast and not machined, therefore not something FP could handle in-house.

A professional can be wrong from time to time (going back to your statement correcting the Chinese made turbine wheels). If you were saying Robert machines his own turbine wheels, and saying he sells no products not made in the US... well that does in fact make you incorrect. Everyone makes mistakes, it happens.


The second is VSR balancing, its pretty interesting to watch.

Many turbo reman companies simply copy OEM parts from Garrett, Mitsu, BW, Holset, etc... And so the Melett part could just be simply a copy from the MHI part.

True, FP does not make everything in house. Nobody in the turbo industry does, just a simple fact. All the turbo giants outsource things like turbine housing and wheel casting.

FP doesnt make the housings, they have a third party casting facility do the work. They also use quite a few MHI parts, hence the same quality.

 

so MHI has a steel bearing also and melett just cloned it pretty much?