Turbo Care/ 2.2 Driving Tips

[philp]

Hi,

After a week of owning my rav4, I've been out and about covering a few miles. what a machine! its taking some getting used to after driving petrol's for years.

From memory when I had a rover 220 td many moons ago, we are meant to idle to let the turbo spool down for a min or so???

I don`t know if I m doing an damage changing gear at 2k rev`s to the turbo, should it get a blast once and a while?

Any advice would be gratefully taken.

Thanks in advance

[gjnorthall]

80% + of premature turbo failures are due to lubrication issues. It's vital to use a quality engine oil of the correct grade and to adhere to recommended intervals for oil + filter changes. Allowing a turbo to spool down by letting the car idle before switching off serves two purposes. Firstly it minimises oil starvation to the bearings whilst the rotor is spinning at high speed. Secondly it allows some cooling in order to reduce degradation of oil. Some owners always allow around 30 seconds idle before switch-off. This can obviously only do good but the really important times to allow some idling time before switch-off is after a fast run or after a long uphill climb. Turbos are finely balanced machines and lively driving or hitting rev limits will do no harm.

[Mistermena]

You have to let the turbo cool down. 30 secs is the min. Make sure the oil is the correct spec snd changed every 6k with full synthetic oil with the highest tbn...

[danwel]

You have to let the turbo cool down. 30 secs is the min. Make sure the oil is the correct spec snd changed every 6k with full synthetic oil with the highest tbn...

6k is a bit excessive!! Its not a high perfomance car running silly BHP its a 2.2 Diesel Rav4. i will be following normal service intervals and letting engine warm up and cool down

[Uncle Buck]

Yes, a bit of common sense goes a long way here. Normal (standard spec) cars should follow the recommended service intervals - unless they are those ridiculously long schedules suggested by VAG. The same oil for 19k mls is not good for ANY engine, never mind a powerful or expensive one. Lower intervals for high-performance machines make a lot of sense because of the higher demands (heat, stress, revs, etc).

[philp]

thanks for your input guys.

I ve always believed that the long service intervals seem a excessive in modern cars. year on year my previous cars get serviced therefore have been well maintained and lasted.

[Mistermena]

You have to let the turbo cool down. 30 secs is the min. Make sure the oil is the correct spec snd changed every 6k with full synthetic oil with the highest tbn...

6k is a bit excessive!! Its not a high perfomance car running silly BHP its a 2.2 Diesel Rav4. i will be following normal service intervals and letting engine warm up and cool down

It may well be! But better safe than sorry, especially if you buy oil and fiters cheap. Cost be less than £20 to do a sevice on my car!

[danwel]

You have to let the turbo cool down. 30 secs is the min. Make sure the oil is the correct spec snd changed every 6k with full synthetic oil with the highest tbn...

6k is a bit excessive!! Its not a high perfomance car running silly BHP its a 2.2 Diesel Rav4. i will be following normal service intervals and letting engine warm up and cool down

It may well be! But better safe than sorry, especially if you buy oil and fiters cheap. Cost be less than £20 to do a sevice on my car!

If you have the option to do it yourself then i guess you can go for whatever service interval you want. Reminds me actually i must really change the oil on my Almera to

[Cyker]

There's no harm in shorter service intervals, and esp. with a diesel I'd not leave it longer than a year/10k as the oil has to deal with a LOT more crap than a petrol engine does.

(One thing that always freaks petrol drivers out is how quickly the oil in a diesel engine goes black )

Regular oil changes with good quality oil is especially important on D4Ds as a lot of the D4D engines have chain driven cams, and regular oil changes are ESSENTIAL for keeping the chain in good condition!

Low RPM isn't too much of a problem for the turbo, but it's still a good idea to give it some long/hard journeys regularly to burn off soot building up in the DPF and EGR, and also to burn off any crud building up on the injectors.

Using better quality fuels will help there too (We find V-Power diesel tends to do a fairly good job of cleaning the injectors and reducing soot output as it burns more cleanly).

The turbo is pretty hard wearing and, unlike petrol engines, diesel exhaust doesn't get hot enough to cause it damage through overheating - Even after a hard motorway burn, the slow speed drive after coming off the motorway and into town/residential areas is enough time for the turbo to cool down.

The bit to be careful of are things like e.g. coming off the motorway into a services - In that situation the turbo won't have as much time to cool down so leaving the engine to idle for a bit longer is recommended to let the oil circulate and cool.

I had a mate who was always frying his turbo because he lived off an A-road and would just pull into his driveway and switch the engine off. The oil would stop flowing and would just cook off under the heat, crudding up the oilways in the turbo until they blocked up!

[Mistermena]

http://www.carlube.co.uk/triple-r/carlube-triple-r-5w40-fully-synthetic-diesel

Just changed the oil and filter on the Mrs Grand Voyager 2.8L diesel XS (VM Motori marine diesel) and used Mobil 1 0w-40 (Very high TBN & Viscosity Index, Flash point) and a quality mann filter. She purrrrrssss with this oil on a 6-8k service intervals. I'm gonna do the GT4 (3k service intervals) tomorrow! Used 5-40 Triple QX(£11.55 delivered) full synth with a Hengst filter last time. This time I've bought some Asda 5w-40 (5Ltr) full synth for £14 with a mann filter. Very high spec which is Triple R in a Asda can.

[danwel]

i have always been a big fan of the Shell Helix Oil and never had an issue

[Madasafish]

My recommendation: regular servicing using maker's filters and high quality synthetic oils.. to the maker's service schedules and specifications..

Really simple. False economy to use inferior filters as they can invalidate warranties.. and frankly cheap ones are proven (from tests) to be inferior.. When modern engines work to high tolerances and use sensors in the airflow (for example) then poor filters save a few pounds - and then may require new sensors costing £100s - it's muppetry not to use OEM quality.

But there are lots of muppets around who know better than car makers who test for millions of miles.

[Mistermena]

Use a Genuine Toyota filter is the way to go. I agree that using cheap Chinese crap will cause you more problems than they are worth. If you can't get hold of Toyota ones! then use Hengst,MANN or Mahle who make the genuine ones for most of the car manufacturers anyway. Take a Google search to see how these compare to the likes (Of the onces good Welsh) Fram filters! :(