Turbo Sucked In Seal And Is Noisy.....

March 20, 2015

Hey All,

I've got a 2008 Avenisis 2.0 D4D and last week I was driving, whilst accelerating to overtake I lost all power and sprayed black thick smoke all over the road - to the point I assumed I had blown the engine, so I slowed down, started to pull over and suddenly the smoke stopped and all power returned, with a whistle....

The garage have looked at it and apparently the seal between the air intake pipe and the turbo is missing - all they can assume is that the seal was sucked in to the turbo, blocking it (causing the loss of power) then it chewed it up and the turbo started working again (the smoke is from the engine not knowing what has happened to the power and chucking smoke out...) They checked the diagnostics and its all clear - no errors etc.

The only issue I have now is a whistle which changes pitch with acceleration (so much so that passengers look for emergency vehicles nearby!). The garage said not to lose sleep over it as it probably damaged a fin in the turbo which is now unbalanced and whistling... He said he had a different Avensis which had the exact fault and that was much noisier and that did 40,000 and then was auctioned off with the noisy turbo still fitted.

My concern is if the turbo shatters or blows up etc (whatever it does), will it damage my engine, so should I look at getting it refurbished or replaced?

What are your thoughts?

March 21, 2015

intercooler will (or should) catch any debris if anything metallic breaks up

check intercooler for pieces of the missing seal.

as long as it doesn't imbalance turbo too much to wear out the turbo bearing then wreck the seal to gush engine oil to run into engine - run on its own oil then do damage to engine that way.

plus cat/dpf getting ruined with burning oil fumes

I think you have a bit of time on your hands if you regularly check engine oil levels and turbo for excess play and leakage.

its really up to you if you feel confident that its not excessively noisy.

ive had subarus with hard worked turbos that develop the whistle like a siren from the fuzz in the background.

nothing major to worry about

im no turbo expert but on stripdown found the very tight tolerances between the inducer and the housing would ever so slightly rub due to a bit of endfloat of the shaft. - presumably causing this whistle