need ebay gt45 journal bearings

[eligould]

Anybody anwhere within a few hours of tulsa/joplin have one or parts for one. Drug the local turbo shop owner out today and none of his parts would interchange with this chinese pos. Or if you know someone who can make them. I'm on the hunt. My oil feed restrictor restricts a little too well. My number is 918-964-9001.

[eligould]

well I just got home. found a guy that a friend of a friend said he could make these. knocked on this guys door, pulling him away from ball games and his steak dinner he whipped out 2 of these for me and I just got it all back together. enlarged the oil feed, tested with the motor running, still have not test driven it. packed up everything we can fit in the car and planning on leaving at about 530 in the morning for Tulsa. this is getting ridiculous. I better not change the oil.....

[BlueCuda340]

Wow, awesome, glad you got it figured out.

[Russell]

I know you are in a rush but did you take any pictures? Are the bushings or ball bearings? I have never heard of any one making bearings.

[Orange65]

well I just got home. found a guy that a friend of a friend said he could make these. knocked on this guys door, pulling him away from ball games and his steak dinner he whipped out 2 of these for me and I just got it all back together. enlarged the oil feed, tested with the motor running, still have not test driven it. packed up everything we can fit in the car and planning on leaving at about 530 in the morning for Tulsa. this is getting ridiculous. I better not change the oil.....

DON'T CHANGE THE OIL!

[eligould]

sorry for the late replies, i'm past the recovery stage and have moved into the withdrawls stage of DW.

so for those who don't already know, we made it 10 miles sunday morning before i checked the impeller endplay and it was sloppy. we trailered it to tulsa for registration hoping we'd get it figured out or get somebody smarter than me to give me an idea what we did wrong. only thing anybody could see wrong was the oil return had a spot that was pretty much level and not downhill. made an announcement that i needed a turbo or parts but didn't get any responses.


sunday night i left the car in tulsa and dropped the turbo off with the owner of a shop in baxter springs, ks. he took it with him monday morning and my dad snagged it and brought it to us in tulsa monday in time for us to make a pass. the shop true'd the shaft, rebalanced, and made bearings. that time i changed the oil and filter before priming the turbo again. cranked it with the ignition off and it pours oil from the feed line. tested return cranking, looked good.

made 1 pass, came back with .022 endplay. hmmm... leaned the tune out a bit since it was so fat it was losing boost on the shifts and barely making 10.9:1 A/F at 5800rpm. did a 3rd gear burnout on the drag radials. checked the impeller again, it was then crashing into the housing. it was F'ed.

we then clamped vice grips on the impeller, plugged the oil lines, took the wastegate spring out, and drove the bastard to my brother's house and pulled all the turbo parts off. put the headers and duals back on, threw the nitrous kit in, drove back to the route where we left off at vinita, ok. made it to topeka in time to watch all the racers heading to the track, 730am ish... so, we just took a shower at the hotel and went straight to heartland park.

so for the rest of the story shortened up, we ran a stumbling rich12.84@112 in tulsa turbo'ed, 13.48@100 n/a at topeka still rich as crap, 11.97@111 in noble after we hooked up the spray, [email protected] in great bend once we figured out we leaned it out too far in noble, and finished with an [email protected] in tulsa. all on drag radials with high 1.7x 60 foots.

i haven't figured out what happened to the turbo yet. i modified the return line AFTER we screwed it up again on monday. it was smoking terribly, i rerouted the return for a better angle and it quit burning oil but the bearings were already jacked up. i saw about 30 turbo setups last week that didn't have any better oil return than mine that seemed to work fine. my return is above the oil level, and is -10 braided.

i can see the return line pushing oil past the seals and making it smoke, but trashing the bearings in 10 minutes?

the bearings are journal bearings. brass bushings with oil feed holes all around them. i'm thinking for the cost of the impellers, i may just buy another new turbo for 230 bucks and start over. i'm also going to put a pressure sensor in the filter housing where my feed is and watch it to make sure it's not dropping oil pressure there before it trash another one

i'm going to try to hit an 11.4x on slicks with the spray this weekend or next, then it's turbo time again.

[bluewagon1]

still cant believe you ran those old drag radials

[eligould]

hell I've run on far worse! those babies are cherry! they actually wore really good on the trip too, had 32psi in them the whole time tracks and all. maybe i'll stash them and run em again next year thanks again!

[BlueCuda340]

Awesome Thrash, not many people change power adders mid drag week LOL.

[89JYturbo]

I had a similar problem with the knock-off turbochargers. In my case the oil feed hole to the bearings was missing a wedge shaped recess which is designed to force oil through the holes in the bearing. Without this wedge, the bearing is effectively a centrifugal pump (at higher shaft and bearing speeds) which will prevent oil from getting between the bearing and turbine shaft. Once the bearing and shaft make contact its enter whirl mode and destroy itself in short order.

[eligould]

i've still been looking into this. the wedge shaped recess, was it all the way around the bearing or just cover about a third of it? mine have 6 oil feed holes around the bearing and the oil feed recess only covers 2 of them at a time. also, should the bearing be able to turn in the housing as well? is that how it becomes a "centrifugal pump"? the first 2 pairs of bearings fell right into place without pressing them at all. i haven't gotten it back apart since the turbo shop put it together last time.