Warranty on Garret Twin ball bearing turbo?

Kojack

4 months go my shop ordered GTM Stage 2 twin turbo and installed it. After the start up they noticed the oil was leaking and send the turbo back to GTM. Got the replacement and all is good.

Few days before the NIS, i had custom 3" exhausts made to replace my Stillen exhaust. Strapped on dyno to get it retune then after few mins of idling you could see white smoke coming out from one of the pipe. Now keep in mine this is only 4 months old kit with just under 2k miles on it. I just found out that my shop paid for the internal shaft for the brand new turbo that went bad 4 months ago ( they're still trying get the first turbo covered by warranty) and i had to pay for the 2nd one.

Isnt there a warranty for this? I thought it's covered by a year or few thousand mile. What can i do?

Chuck33079

I've never heard of any warranty on these. Did they prime the turbos with oil when they installed them?

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2011 MB Touring-Sport-6sp-Nav/GTM TT/FI TT TDX/JTran/Kosmic/Eibach/Hotchkis/SPC/CSF/RPS/SoThatsWhereAllMyMoneyWent

Kojack

I'm sure they did. It was installed by VTR- Vinny Ten Racing. Last year they installed gtm TT on sedan G37x and he's running good as of now.

COSMO

I was told the gtm kit had a one year warranty. Good luck man..

DIGItonium

So was it was leaking internally with no visible wetness on the outside? My passenger side turbo has been leaking on the outside for the past year. For awhile I thought it was the gasket for the oil outlet. It was replaced, but the wetness was still there on the next oil change. From above, I can see it is a bit wet on the exhaust side towards the cold side. I don't see any blue smoke, though. It doesn't leak enough to drip to the floor either.

So I wonder if it's a clogged PCV from oil blowby. I might get the PCVs changed out ($12-15 each), and get various things cleaned up since mileage is over 57k.

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Mike@GTM

Well, for starters, we have sent Vinny Ten 2 CHRA's at no charge. They called us, claimed the turbo was bad, we shipped out the CHRA and they sent us back the one that they claim is bad. It has to go through Garrett for warranty. While we have not charged them for either CHRA yet, it is ultimately going to depend on whether Garrett's testing of the turbo shows it to be bad. If the turbos are, in fact bad, then Vinny Ten will not get charged since it would be under warranty. If the turbos test good, then we will be charging Vinny Ten for the turbos. They wanted to get your car up and running as quickly as possible and waiting for Garrett's warranty process was not something they wanted you to have to endure.

That all said, in all the years that we have been using Garrett turbos, not once has a turbo actually come back as a bad unit. We have sold over 2,000 Garrett turbos with a 0% failure rate. There have been a few claims of bad turbos over the years, but every time Garrett has inspected the turbo and tested it, it was within manufacturer specification. So far, every issue that people have had with the Garrett ball bearing center section has been due to excessive oil backing up in the return line and causing oil to weep out the turbine seal into the exhaust. Unlike a journal bearing turbo that requires an oil film to support the bearing, ball bearing turbos require very little oil and are very sensitive to oil return. Things like excessive crankcase pressure or poor oil return routing can prevent the oil from leaving the center section quickly enough. Remember, the oil leaving the turbo in a ball bearing setup is highly aerated and frothy. As such, it does not flow the same as liquid oil.

We will follow up with our Garrett rep today to see where things are at with the warranty testing.

DIGItonium

Would excessive crankcase pressure build up at light loads? If it leaks into the turbo like that, is that pretty much destroyed? I'm not hard on my car as often, but so far I don't have any oil dripping on the floor. It's just a bit wet on the exhaust side looking from above. It's enough to soak the hose on the return line. I don't see any blue or black smoke either when it idles. Once in awhile I see white smoke on casual take off, but that's probably from the test pipes installed recently. At WOT, I don't see much either other than some black smoke from fuel dump.

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Kojack

I m not saying anyone at fault or anything. I m just trying to find more about it amd see if there's another alternative while vinny shop is busy with working on my car. I m kind of new into forced induction so im picking things up as we go along so i can get a better concept of how things work. Now i see why few things were paid up front due to avoiding the long downtime. I appreciate mike@Gtm for responding and explaing the light of this situation. Vinny has been nothing but extremely helpful and went above and beyond with this project of mine so i thought maybe i could do some other research on garret info to help Vinny with the process.