Well. I was driving home the other day and suddenly began trailing a huge plume of white smoke out of my left exhaust. It stopped after about 2 or 3 minutes, but when I took it into the shop, he confirmed that my right turbo was leaking oil.

These new turbos only had about 5k miles on them. An suggestions on where to get the turbo rebuilt? I am loathed to fork out the $3500 to replace it right now, and am hoping for a less expensive solution. Any ideas?

 

I am a big fan of Kevin at UMW. He is a turbo guru.

He has done work for factory Porsche racing teams I think.....if I had to get the best work on one of my turbochargers, he would be it. I might send both to be honest....if one went up that fast.....

JB

 

Can you take the turbo back to the seller?

 

i have a set with 300 miles on them. pm me if u want them.

 

I don't know yet - but it seems unlikely. They were purchased from sportec in Germany last year some time.

 

yllwturbo: you have a set of K24/26 genuine tubs ? how much you want for them pls ?

 

Why don't you Try Scott at Turbo Direct, I think he may be out your way, he just did a set of GT28's for me.

K24/K26 's are what my original stage 4 kit came with good turbos, let me guess FVD?

 

Blouch does rebuilds and hybrids. They do great work.
http://www.blouchturbo.com/

 

No - they are sportec. Apparently Kevin at UMW does a lot of work with them, so there's a good chance some of the components in my turbos are made by Kevin. Had a good talk with him and I think I am convinced that I want to send both turbos out to him so that I can make sure that they are both perfect before they go back in the car. I am also convinced that I may as well upgrade to his hyflow turbine wheels to reduce spool time. Kevin's argument was that if one Turbo failed, chances are there is a problem with the other as well. I just don't want to have to go through this again - so would rather just do it once and do it right.

Kevin is probably going to convince me to upgrade the wastegates as well, but I'm going to try my best to resist!

-A

 

The "both need to be looked at" was what I was saying up top. Glad you agreed...he is super and is one of the best turbocharger wizards in the world. Best of luck.

BTW, if I was bothering to open mine up, his hyflow wheel is a no brainer..... Let us know how they go!

Jeff

 

Brut: Why fight upgrading your wastegates? Kevin has a special going on the wastegates for the K24...and they're really not that much more...and they do make a difference. I was vacillating on whether or not to go with the wastegate upgrade, and Adam talked me into it....really glad I took his advice.

 

Add the wastegates for SURE!!! You will LOVE the end result from UMW. He may also talk yo into his specific tune for them. I know you are trying to save cash but in the end you will be done upgrading sooner and enjoying you car sooner. Good luck and tell Kevin I said hello!

 

Argh. I knew you guys would do this to me! What started as a $500 repair job on one turbo is going to turn into a $3k upgrade job.

 

So I am now learning the dangers and uncertainties of the aftermarket world. The last week was a bit of a crazy one. I sent the turbos up to Kevin based on the recommendations of everyone here. He is clearly very knowledgeable, and he instills confidence with his completely ubiquitous knowledge of every aspect of these turbo chargers. He called me as soon as he received them and had bad news and worse news.

The bad news was that my turbos got further damaged in transit. Shame on me for trusting my mechanic's packing job. Apparently one of the housings got cracked on the way up there. The worse news was that my turbos weren't what they were supposed to be. Rather than k24/26 turbos from Sportec as I had been led to believe by the person that I bought the car from and the mechanic who installed them, they were very shoddily build k16/k26 turbos with mostly 993 parts.

I was absolutely shocked. I have been running k24/k26 software in my car for the past 8 months, and had no idea. So I started my detective work. It turns out that these turbos were purchased by my mechanic from Heinz at Gemballa NA. I called up Heinz and he confirmed that the turbos were supposed to be k24/k26. I explained to him what Kevin had found and asked what he could do for me, he said he would get back to me. When he finally did, he basically said that I was on my own on this becuase they had been purchased over a year ago. This is unbelievable to me, since this is not a warranty issue, but basically a fraud issue. Gemballa represented that they were selling European k24/k26 turbos and instead sold some shoddy assemblage of parts that did not even equate to what they represented. I was entirely calm and reasonable with them on the phone, and he did not even offer me a discount on a proper replacement part - nothing. Incredibly disappointing given that I know that the previous owner paid about $7k for the pair. The moral of this part of the story - DO NOT WORK WITH GEMBALLA NORTH AMERICA!

Onto the hopefully happier part of tale. I managed to procure a used set of k24/k26 turbos from YllwTurbo on 6speed. They are low mileage, and Richard gave me a good deal on them. My mechanic is rightfully skeptical, but we're going to install them and try them out. Updates to follow. If this doesn't work, then I am going to have to take a hard look at my entire setup and decide what I want to do.

 

That's a bummer, man. This, all in the wake of their rediculous looking GTStreet in Excellence magazine this month. Too bad Kevin and you couldn't work something out. UMW products are nothing short of KICK ***.