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Globex Corp presents: 255

I'm definitely willing to test out option 1 if stepping up to 12an would be beneficial. I'm hoping to avoid pulling the engine to deal with the pan.

Thinking about increasing that internal volume... would it be helpful to take that a bit to the extreme and build a reservoir of sorts in between? Or is that just going to slow the flow of oil even more and make things worse...

Almost a glorified catch can with an10 top and bottom? Sounds intriguing.
 
Yeah, I'm picturing something similar to what I've seen for 911s before a scavenge pump:
PKG-930-107-04-PM_Oil-Drip-Collection-Container.jpg


That or basically an inline oil filter, without the filtery bits in there.
F143851357.jpg


It might be a bit tight to fit the inline filter, so it might need to be a simple can with barbs on it to conserve space. Like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/BLACK-30-M...m=282788811669&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851
 
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Anything you can do to increase the volume of the oil drain will help, be it an external sump or larger drain line. The oil coming out of a ball bearing turbo at full flow and high shaft speed is extremely frothy / foamy, so the volume is much higher than what you're putting into the turbo. Sorry I don't have quantitative values handy but my guesstimate is probably close to 2:1....so if you had 1.0L/min flow at the inlet, you'd be getting near 2.0L/min at the outlet. If you can give it a place to collect and settle down without backing up into the center housing it will help prevent leakage past the seals for sure.

On the T5 engine, is that oil pan wing completely submerged below oil level?
 
Anything you can do to increase the volume of the oil drain will help, be it an external sump or larger drain line. The oil coming out of a ball bearing turbo at full flow and high shaft speed is extremely frothy / foamy, so the volume is much higher than what you're putting into the turbo. Sorry I don't have quantitative values handy but my guesstimate is probably close to 2:1....so if you had 1.0L/min flow at the inlet, you'd be getting near 2.0L/min at the outlet. If you can give it a place to collect and settle down without backing up into the center housing it will help prevent leakage past the seals for sure.

On the T5 engine, is that oil pan wing completely submerged below oil level?

There is no such "wing" on a FWD T5 engine oil pan...
 
Yeah, I'm picturing something similar to what I've seen for 911s before a scavenge pump:

That or basically an inline oil filter, without the filtery bits in there.

It might be a bit tight to fit the inline filter, so it might need to be a simple can with barbs on it to conserve space.

Yessss. You could start selling that and marketing it as a "Whiteblock oil accumulator."
 
The 960 oil pan wing is completely submerged. Looking at the photo above of my drain, a fair amount of oil flows out of the -10an weld fitting when you remove the drain line.
 
The 960 oil pan wing is completely submerged. Looking at the photo above of my drain, a fair amount of oil flows out of the -10an weld fitting when you remove the drain line.

Yep and that's my worry. I also wonder if the oil level itself, when you fill the sump it's pushing up the return line to the same level.

I know that the OEM spot on the block and the turbo are damn near level but at this point, I wonder if you really have anything to loose by putting a 90* on right at the turbo and going to the block. You could probably rotate the center cartridge a few degrees off vertical to get some of the geometry better on the drain. I'm pretty sure the GT3071R on my T5R wasn't a 100% vertical for the same reason.
 
The 960 oil pan wing is completely submerged. Looking at the photo above of my drain, a fair amount of oil flows out of the -10an weld fitting when you remove the drain line.

Yep and that's my worry. I also wonder if the oil level itself, when you fill the sump it's pushing up the return line to the same level.

I know that the OEM spot on the block and the turbo are damn near level but at this point, I wonder if you really have anything to loose by putting a 90* on right at the turbo and going to the block. You could probably rotate the center cartridge a few degrees off vertical to get some of the geometry better on the drain. I'm pretty sure the GT3071R on my T5R wasn't a 100% vertical for the same reason.

Yeah Doug, in that case the oil return line does have liquid oil in it, up to the level of oil in the sump. My guess is the drain volume of that -10 line isn't sufficient to keep oil from backing up into the turbo center housing. You can absolutely rotate the center housing, up to 35 degrees off of horizontal actually. If that helps straighten out the drain line then it's a good option.

Tom: an accumulator sump sounds like a good thing to try if it won't cost you an arm & a leg, and if that's less involved than re-plumbing the drain into the block up higher.
 
I know that the OEM spot on the block and the turbo are damn near level but at this point, I wonder if you really have anything to loose by putting a 90* on right at the turbo and going to the block. You could probably rotate the center cartridge a few degrees off vertical to get some of the geometry better on the drain. I'm pretty sure the GT3071R on my T5R wasn't a 100% vertical for the same reason.

I tried this, and it was a pretty conclusive failure. There is little room for error to have it align with any amount of a downslope toward the block.

42132348361_4da2f19f0f_c.jpg



that resulted in this (and all of the smoke that you saw on my instagram):

42132347411_814f285010_c.jpg



and I found this after idling the car twice, for 15-20 min each time.

42132347081_84614bb3e5_c.jpg



...and all of this oil came out of the compressor when i removed the intake pipe shown above.

41412372734_40a6658bbb_c.jpg
 
Tom I wonder if you could just make this:

167489182.jpg


Basically just screws on over your existing fitting and gives airspace up above oil level in the block. Return just comes in the side (or top, tops probably easiest). Probably some 1.5-2" aluminum intercooler scraps, a couple end caps and you might be all good.

You could probably even put a baffle in the middle to help keep the oil from sloshing back up under cornering.

Fake edit: Are you sure at this point you just don't have blown seals in the chra Tom?
 
Yeah, I'm thinking I'll just make something out of scraps I have around. I think I have just about everything needed to do it.

I had the turbo rebuilt over the winter so it's definitely all good.
 
Yeah, I'm thinking I'll just make something out of scraps I have around. I think I have just about everything needed to do it.

I had the turbo rebuilt over the winter so it's definitely all good.

I'm living vicariously thru you here since I'm pretty much on the same path.

(I also didn't see your link with basically exactly what I drew lol)
 
turbo-oil-seals-jpg.85382


turbo_system-10.jpg


I should elaborate. The common "blown seal" diagnosis is mostly a myth or mistunderstanding at best. Top image above shows a GTX ball bearing cutaway; I borrowed the pic from some site but it looks like it was taken at SEMA. Bottom diagram is an old one but still mostly applicable.

The seal systems on both sides are dynamic, meaning they are not effective unless the turbo is spinning and everything is up to temp/pressure. At the core of each seal is a piston ring, but this is only designed to restrict gas flow - not oil flow - into and out of the turbo. The idea with oil is to keep it away from the piston rings. Pretty simple strategy really..."How do you avoid an oil leak? Keep oil away from the holes..."

The slinger grooves on either side act to spray oil away from the piston ring bore area and into the big annular (mmm, donut) cavity around the shaft on each side. Sometimes there are oil deflectors as well, but many turbos don't use them. On a ball bearing turbo you do get some spray out of each open end of the bearing cartridge which heads right towards the seals. This is why it's more important to restrict oil inlet flow with a BB turbo. Oil loses pressure as soon as it exits the bearing, so the drain cavity in the center housing should be mostly air ideally, with oil vapor and foam draining down the chute and into the drain hose or line.

Back to the idea of piston rings acting to seal gas pressure: if crankcase pressure is too high and the drain's connected directly to the crankcase, then you'll get essentially the same pressure in the turbo center housing cavity. It acts to force oil past the seals on both ends, depending on conditions on the other side of the seal (so leakage is worst at low boost / low backpressure conditions like idle or overrun).

In Tom's current situation I think crankcase pressure isn't the problem, because the drain goes down into liquid oil, isolating the turbo from crankcase pressure. Gotta be insufficient volume to drain the center housing. In the case of the mostly-horizontal drain line heading back into the block above oil level, it's likely still too restrictive - AND also now directly feeding crankcase pressure into the turbo, where there's too much oil hanging around waiting to get blown out past the piston rings.
 
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