How hard is it to take apart a turbo? This is somewhat based off of a previous thread about cleaning my turbo up, but it's a different topic, so I started a new one. I got my turbo today, and I want to take it apart to get the rust off of the exhaust housing, and clean up the compressor housing. How hard is it? How do I do it? TIA!

The link below is Corbin's work. I take no credit for it but I have it bookmarked in case I need to service my turbo someday. It seems fairly straightforward.

http://www.2gnt.com/www/corbin/rebuild16g.html

Hope this helps,
Kurt

I was talking to a local turbo tweeker (ford turbocoupe guy) and he said that a turbo generally won't live long if it's not balanced when rebuilt. Thoughts?

What if I'm just cleaning it up, and not really rebuilding it? Wouldn't think that I would have to worry about it then. But on Corbin's page, it didn't say anything about that anyways. ??

To clean your turbo like that you'll need to completely disassemble the turbo and submerge only the bare turbine housing. You'd have to do that when rebuilding a turbo too.

If your turbo has undergone some sort of trauma, then get it rebuilt and balanced. If you just want to freshen things up or clean it, then you can do this yourself. I burned mine up bad and evidently damaged something. I rebuilt it and it failed sometime later. I'll add a warning on the rebuild page this afternoon.

Corbin

'95 ESI-T
HRC+FMIC+ETC...



Gimme fuel...Gimme fire...Gimme that which I desire

Yeah, I had always heard to have a turbo balanced if new seals/ect. had been put into it. Anybody know a cheap place to get a t3 rebuilt?

alright, so heres my question. if i just take it apart to clean it, but don't replace anything, i wouldn't need to rebalance it would I? And to get the exhaust housing off of a T3, dont i just have to take out the 6 bolts?

You can do that. Just make sure you use a marker to mark the position of everything so it goes back together the same way and is still balanced.

ok so what if your rotating the exhaust housing and compressor housing so the holes for the water and oil lines will match up, do I need to have it balanced. Because other posts said just make sure that the housing match up to where they were?

Thanks,
Chris:thumbsup

Rotating housings will not change balancing of the rotating assembly (shaft and compressor/turbine wheels). Putting the housings back in the same place just ensures that all of your connections will still mate up to the turbo.


Corbin

'95 ESI-T
HRC+FMIC+ETC...



Gimme fuel...Gimme fire...Gimme that which I desire

You only need to balance it if you take off one of the wheels - either compressor or turbine. If you don't unbolt one of the wheels, you don't need to balance it.