Thank goodness, I was thinking I was going to be stuck in this tuning business forever Let me know how it turns out!

Justin

 

I usually don't get involved in these kind of things. But every once in awhile, for some reason, I feel I got to say something.

I worked for Garret for 5 years after I got out of school. I did not work in the turbocharger division. I did, for a time, work with small diameter radial machinery. Every single shaft assembly included oil seals. The only exception was gas bearing machinery where there was no oil.

Usually the gas seals, carbon face seals acted as oil seals. But I don't see how an oil lubricated bearing turbo charger would work without an oil seal.

The slinger helps throw oil away from the seal but there always was a seal.

Note that at turbine discharge and compressor inlet the ambient pressure is low. It is certain that at compressor inlet, air pressure is below ambient. Yea the back side of the compressor is likely greater than ambient pressure but oil could still leak into this area and cause problems.

If you look at these cartridge assembly dwgs,

http://www.turbointernational.com/im...og-Garrett.pdf

http://www.turbointernational.com/im...g-Complete.pdf

you can see that there are piston rings and some seal faces( not face seals as I did not see any here). I didn't bother to look for the entire assembly drawing from Garret

What you might have mistaken as a gas seal might also be funtioning as an oil seal.

Look again, at a dissasembled unit and think about it. There has to be an oil seal.