AET Blogs

When it comes to turbo damage, oil has a lot to answer for, with oil pressure, delay and contamination all common culprits.

Our experienced teams have been helping customers from across the UK with their turbocharger repairs since 1974. In this post, we’ll be sharing some of the knowledge about common causes of turbocharger damage, and teaching you how to tell when your turbocharger is in need of a service, repair or rebuild.

You couldn’t make this one up. One of our customers had parked their car up for winter and during this time, some mice had taken refuge in the airbox...

At AET Turbos, we’re often asked to explain the difference between turbochargers and superchargers. 
Whilst we briefly covered the topic in last month’s Turbocharger FAQ, this post aims to explain the differences in more detail, covering the mechanics, along with the major pros and cons of each technology.

If the thrust or journal bearings become excessively worn, then they can cause damage to the seal plates like in the example pictured here.

Here, the seal plate has been damaged by excessive play in the journal bearings (also known as thrust bearings).

In this image, you can see a seal plate with the tell-tale signs of corrosion damage. On a new, undamaged back plate, the surface would be smooth, but here, corrosion has caused the face of the seal to become pitted, worn and roughened.

This example illustrates the damage that can be caused by inadequate or faulty air filtration. It’s a common problem and in these examples, small pieces of dust, dirt and grit have been able to enter the turbos on the air inlet side.

This is a common problem with turbos that are attached to pieces of equipment that are stored outside, like marine turbos and those attached to outdoor generators.

Here, you can see three compressor wheels with varying degrees of damage to the blades. This kind of damage is fairly common, and caused when a foreign object (like a stone or piece of metal) enters the compressor on the air inlet side.

Over the coming months, we’re writing a series of posts in which we’ll be sharing some of the knowledge and experience we’ve built up over the past 40 years. In the first of these posts, we’ve written a short FAQ that covers some of the more basic aspects of the turbocharger. This is designed as…

In our continual quest for perfection we have invested in a fantastic piece of kit; a VNT flow rig.