I was having some intermittent smoking issues at idle. After checking and cleaning the entire pcv system as well as replacing the valve seals, still some
Smoking. So I decided to find a junkyard turbo and rebuild it and replace my current turbo. The one I'm putting in is a stock t3 .42ar compressor and .48ar turbine out of an 87 760. After ripping my current turbo out I see no signs of oil leaking but quite a lot of shaft play. More than the one I've rebuilt. I also noticed the the one that came out is a .60ar comp and .63ar turbine which from what I've read is a pretty desirable set up. I'm just curious will this be a downgrade? And is it worth rebuilding the larger turbo and reinstalling later? There's also some decent cracks around the wastegate hole and I don't know enough to know if it's too far
Gone

First, please host your photos on photobucket, or resize them in another way. This is not an "official" request, just a personal one. Who's car did this used to be, Dale's? If so, that's my old turbo.

Second, ALL GARRET TURBINE HOUSINGS CRACK. Fact of life. If you manage to find one that's not cracked, you may have gotten lucky but it'll crack eventually. Yours isn't bad at all: you can see the flapper is still contacting all the way round.

Third, yes. You will notice the difference between a 60/63 and what came out of the '87, which will be a 50 trim compressor. The smaller turbo will boost a lot sooner but will run out of breath A LOT sooner and will neuter your top end. It depends on what you want: the smaller turbo will be fine up to about 5000 RPM, the bigger turbo will take over after that but won't make full boost at 2000 RPM like the small one will. You know what the bigger turbo is like to live with

I would rebuild the 60/63 and be done with it. As long as the turbine housing hasn't cracked to the point where the snail is deformed, it will be fine in my opinion. Check the compressor wheel and housing for scrapes, make sure the fins aren't bent or worn, and run it. When you pull the nut off the turbine shaft use a T-handle if possible, and build yourself something proper to hold the turbine end (not a vice). I used a piece of angle iron and drilled & ground out a triangle shaped hole to do mine. Make sure the shaft & housing are clean and not scored, polish them up a little but be careful. Garrett T3s aren't too sensitive to how or what parts you use to assemble them, so don't worry too much about the orientation of the compressor wheel to turbine shaft or even swapping parts from one to the other. If you find your cartridge or turbine shaft are destroyed, use the ones from that small turbo - they're the same. You're using a new rebuild kit, right? Alamo Turbochargers can get you parts locally.

That's how it looked when I assembled it ... 12 or 13 years ago? Doesn't seem to have gotten any worse.

And sorry, I didn't see where you said you'd already rebuilt one. If you have, spin this compressor wheel off and put it on your CHRA, and use these compressor & turbine housings. Bob's your uncle, this is a no-brainer.

Yeah I didn't realize the photo was gonna be so massive. I think for
Now I'm gonna bolt on the factory turbo and run that for a couple months see what I prefer. I rarely ever go to 5000rpm and would prefer the power to come on a little sooner. And it will also give me time to rebuild the other one properly. Always nice to have a back up. And yes I went to Alamo and got the proper garret kit for the rebuild I didn't want to take the risk. The cracks look almost identacle so I'm not worried about it being toast

The .63 A/R turbine housings crack, but they crack far less than the .48 A/R housings and they don't usually get much worse. The smaller ones crack really badly, and I've had them where the snail actually cracks through and chunks of it move around or even get lost. The bigger housings seem to crack pretty early to relieve stress around the wastegate hole and then are usually pretty good.

Something I just remembered is that your .63 housing is one of the early ones that uses a steel gasket between it and the manifold. From about '83 on, Volvo has used that stepped circular flange arrangement that you'll find inside the turbo you pulled from the 740. I had that '90+ manifold planed flat to use this turbine housing, so you can't use the 740 turbo on it, not even with a gasket. If you don't have another manifold for your smaller turbo, you'll need to find one.



You can still see the radius they machined into the base of the step to relieve stress risers, but the manifold is flat.

I was wondering about that stepped flange. There's no way at all it will seal? It seems like it should work to my relatively untrained mind. And if it's not going
To work I just have to swap the compressor wheel and both housings to the other chra?

Correct on all counts. Ford compressor wheel and housing into the 740 CHRA, then into the 240 turbine housing on the 90+ manifold. There's no way the 740 turbine housing will seal on the manifold you have. I have another stepped 90+ kicking around, I think, but yours been ported and had larger studs installed... Porting them is essential, not only for performance but for keeping the manifold from cracking too badly (yours has cracks, all the 90+ have cracks, I hope they haven't gotten any worse)

I haven't noticed any massive exhaust leak or anything so I'm hoping they havnt gotten worse. Will I have to swap the backing plate on the compressor side as well?

I don't believe so. From what I remember, I only got the wheel and compressor housing, no backing plate, so I would have used a backing plate from a 45 or 50 trim (240 or 740, respectively). I could be wrong though. I guess, have a good look at them both before proceeding. I am pretty sure the major diameters of both compressor wheels are the same, it's just the minor diameter that sets the trim, and I'll bet the other dimensions of the backing plate are the same as each other.

Ok cool. Well I'm just gonna swap everything over and bolt it in because I don't want to mess around. Thanks for all the info and help. Now hopefuly it doesn't blow up hahaha

Well everything is back together car is running fine. No leaks or anything. But I took the car for a test drive after warmed up and it doesn't seem to
Be boosting properly. I don't have a calibrated boost gauge yet but the needle used to travel much further into the orange than it does now. Also seems to take longer to get into boost. When I put the wastegate on I wasn't 100% sure how to set it so I just had it fully closed on the bench if that makes sense. Any suggestions on what to check?

"UPDATE"
I just looked up the wastegate adjusting procedure on alldata and I definitely did this wrong I'll adjust properly and report back