stripping the garrett Volvo turbo! what fun

[Guest]

Well after the summer of discontent we finally got back down to Norfolk last weekend and re-fixed the blown off canopy and decided to take the poorly turbo off and bring it home to mend / replace.

Those that will have seen the thread last year may well remember the screaming alarm and flashing dash lights we would get when we opened the throttle and all the guesses and ideas suggested that eventually led to the culprit being identified as a sticking wastegate, it was sort of freed off and as long as we opened the throttle gently and kept it under 2500 revs we were ok but it was always a tempory fix to get us through the season.

but this year WE WILL GO TO SEA!!!

so Saturday the turbo was stripped off the boat and taken home the wastegate had approx 1 eights of an inch of movement before it would stick open and beyond that was notchy and dificult to move, today we have stripped the turbo and the variable vein wastegate down, identified the problem and resolved the issue and rebuilt it, we now have a silky smooth fully operating wastegate that looked like it was brand new before we put it back together and is ready to back down to be re-installed, the estimate for this work was around a £1000 so I feel pretty chuffed with what we managed to sort it out and I know he wont be reading this but I could not have done it without the help of my mate Dicko, so Dicko shame you will not know how much I apreciate your help mate.

Plan is to refit in a couple of weeks time and hopefully, it will be cured and we will be able to get full power and speed, where it is approriate to do so of course!

[mbird]

but this year WE WILL GO TO SEA!!!

Come along with us Dave, and we can terrify ourselves together

I'm so please to hear you are persevering mate, and getting back into the boat.

[Brian]

Good to hear, its now repaird Dave, you certainly saved yourself a small fortune. Ive never taken a turbo apart, but a Variable Vane one does sound complicated and rather swish

Will be good to see your boat on the plane at Breydon for sea/speed trials (when the weather gets warmer)

[Antares_9]

Well done Dave (and Dicko) let’s hope it cures the issues you’ve been having.

[Guest]

Did you take the wheels off the shaft? or just overhaul the moving parts of the housings leaving the core alone?

The normal problem with DIY turbo rebuilds is getting them dynamicly balanced afterwards.

[Guest]

We (thats a royal we really as I just helped out) Dicko stripped off the Vacuum actuator and the waste gate was almost siezed solid, only about an eithgh of an inch of free travel then became very notchy, hence it sticking open, shut whichever it decided would annoy me most, clearly their was something wrong and we hoped it was carbon / rust on the actuating shaft with it not having had any welly in the 6 years its been fitted.

Any one who gets bored at the nuts and bolts bit may find the rest tedious, but if you A MAN its Boys Toys Stuff, dirty finger nails and all that stuff.

The Turbo is a garret - Volvo variable vein job, its Volvo Green and splits into 2 main parts, part 1. contains the turbine complete with all the seals bearings and the whizzy bits that mere mortals can only dream about and only the gifted few (with lots of product liability insurance) should deem to venture into,

a failure in the oil seal / bearing seals due to incorrect assembly can lead to a catastrophic result, as the oil from the engine burns like a diesel at full throttle till the oil in the sump runs out and the engine destroys itself and at £15k a pop we agreed any venturing into that half we would leave to a specialist.

as we loosened of the retaining bolts and seperated the turbine the first thing we checked was the actuating arm, surprisingly this was free and smooth to operate, which meant the problem lies deeper.

We set aside the turbine and wrapped it in bubble wrap to prevent any accidental ingress and turned our attention to the remaining half, the first thing we saw was a round ring with about 20 cams going into it running on 3 internal rollers, the cams shafted through a fixed plate to 20 veins of the circular waste gate, the cam from the waste gate actuating arm rotates the circular ring which in turn opens and shuts the 20 or so veins that form the circular waste gate, on trying to operate this the same identical notchiness was experienced again so now we had to dig deeper.

We (royal) removed the rollers and the ring marking where they went for re-assembly, as it happens there was a locating pin that was not visible at this stage of the deconstruction, then in turn loosened the torx bolts that held the mechanism to the turbo body, we then carefully tried each vein in turn and managed to identify that three were virtually seized and we now had identified the exact problem but not the cause.

We removed the assembly and collected the three collets that space the mechanism from the waste itself. both the waste gate assembly and the housing showed signs of heat Rust and carbon and it was this build up that was preventing the gate from operating

I, yes just me, bronze brushed every speck of carbon off the entire waste gate assembly and freed the three sticky veins and then assisted the Dicko to polish the housing so it was "as new" and without any lubrication at all it was re-assembled carefully and low and behold the waste gate is now fully functioning as it was when new, we then re-joined the 2 halves of the Turbo and re-cling filmed it for it journey back to Norfolk in 10 days time.

230 hours of river use over 6 years has not been kind to it and we ran it for 125 hours last season with a hardly / non functioning turbo so I am looking forward to getting it back together and discovering the difference in performance I am expecting and having boys toys dreams about!

Now, who knows any thing about power commander chips!

[Happy Jax 3]

Great to hear your getting it sorted Dave.

Sound like a thorough clean up to me. I am sure it will be ok.

Hope to see you out on the waves later in the year.

[Antares_9]

Now, who knows any thing about power commander chips!

I know this much Dave, you've had enough issues without going looking for them, VP have coaxed enough from that lump already without stressing it any more. I'm sure Volvo Neil will have an opinion on this.

[Guest]

Excellent - I was concerned you might have had the oily bits apart - which al lot of people try doing with cars.

I've never been convinced about turbos on slow running river cruisers - having seens seized wastegates all too often on slowly drive petrol cars - I dread to think how much soot gets on diesel engines pottering along at tickover for hours on end.

power commander chips - can you not get modern diesel marine engines properly remapped? I'm sure any good diesel tuner with a basic understanding of how you would use a boat would be able to tweak some more out the map - Do boats use the same ECUs as cas/vans etc?

There's always more to be had - but then, stress vs reliability is a bit more critical out at sea than on the sorts of things I normally deal with.

[Guest]

Golly guys!

I wouldnt dare touch the complicated parts of the boat but I do have a question.I quite agree that turbos on slow running river cruiser surely are not going to do them any good.

But with my Kad 32's (I am told) turbos dont kick in until about 2300 rpm (off the top of my head) following a supercharging burst which kicks in at about 1200 rpm then stops just before the turbo kicks in.

On the broads at the maximum permitted speed, neither supercharger nor turbo will kick in...do I glean from the post that this could cause them to deteriorate quicker than,say, once a month a good blast up breydon to keep the parts moving.

(please excuse my lack of technical knowledge...but I would like to ensure I am not causing myself problems later down the line)

adam...

[jimbo]

Your right about the Turbo not boosting at river speeds Adam, but a Supercharger runs all the time.

[Antares_9]

BP, the difference in torque curves in marine motors is quite different from a car or van, also at sea the motor is generally using about 75% of it's power all the time, a bit like driving uphill in a fairly high gear all the time. I could chip my D4 225 up to 275 with an easy plug in but the D4 rated at 260hp has quite a few beefed up components and different cams. i feel it's simply not worth the risk, in any case most of the time you can't use it anyway as the sea state not available power is the limiting factor.

[Guest chriscraft]

hi ,just read this,i would make sure that engine is good and warm before you open it up ,or rev it ,....helps with the soot clearance,i think there will be some!lol

[Guest chriscraft]

Hi,Adam, the main concern about running turbo,s on tickover for long periods is the buil up of soot deposits in the turbo,which can .as in this thread cause components to sieze up,your better off giving the boat a fastish long run, on a regular bases than a flat out ten minutes, imho,from 10per cent power to 100per cent don,t do much good ,you have to get the clearances right befor 100per cent,ie get it up to working temps before you blast!!

[Guest]

David, that makes sense - I've de-tuned highly stressed road cars that are going to spend a few hours testing V-max on the autobahns. The few minutes it takes to reach critical egts in an everyday driver isn't a problem, but when you crank up full load for an hour or so, you need the margin of safety that the manufactures put in.

I'll stick with the old 4D in the boat - I can't plug my PC into that!

[Antares_9]

David, that makes sense - I've de-tuned highly stressed road cars that are going to spend a few hours testing V-max on the autobahns. The few minutes it takes to reach critical egts in an everyday driver isn't a problem, but when you crank up full load for an hour or so, you need the margin of safety that the manufactures put in.

I'll stick with the old 4D in the boat - I can't plug my PC into that!

Indeed, a con rod through the sump dancing around on the road is one thing, a con rod through the sump and hull would be an entirely different matter, unlikely though it would be.

[senator]

Golly guys!

I wouldnt dare touch the complicated parts of the boat but I do have a question.I quite agree that turbos on slow running river cruiser surely are not going to do them any good.

But with my Kad 32's (I am told) turbos dont kick in until about 2300 rpm (off the top of my head) following a supercharging burst which kicks in at about 1200 rpm then stops just before the turbo kicks in.

On the broads at the maximum permitted speed, neither supercharger nor turbo will kick in...do I glean from the post that this could cause them to deteriorate quicker than,say, once a month a good blast up breydon to keep the parts moving.

(please excuse my lack of technical knowledge...but I would like to ensure I am not causing myself problems later down the line)

adam...

Big Diesels don't like being run at tickover full stop Adam, apart from the turbo problems you also run the gauntlet of Bore Glazing. Why this is a problem I don't know, to my mind anything that cleans and shines itself should be a good thing but apparently it is not so good inside an engine and results in the usual very big bill if not run up fairly regularly.

Ian

[jimbo]

The idea of honing a bore is to create little valleys for engine oil to hide in and lubricate the piston rings as the shoot up and down. Once glazed there is nowhere for the oil to sit and lubricate and so wear begins

[NeilB]

The superchargers on KAD32's and the 40 range are not actually on all the time as they have a electro magnetic clutch with cuts in when required.

I forget the actual range as it's been a few years since I sold any but 1200 rpm sounds about right for the cut in and I think either 2500 or 2800 when they cut off and the turbo took over. In smaller boats like ribs they used to take off like a scalded cat !!

The old D3 had 2 major problems, one was the air filter which should have been replaced on all engines years ago under a campaign. The second was the variable turbo which works fine on a car but when the variable linkage was exposed to a damp salt laden atmosphere it tended to stop working, as Aquaholic has discovered!!

The simple solution to this is to make sure the linkages are checked and lubricated at every service.

We had 190hp out of the old D3 and once the inital problems were fixed it has been an OK engine, time will tell when they start getting a little older.

Volvo Penta only switched over to the new D3 as we have to follow whatever Volvo Cars/Ford produce, the only similarity between the old and new is the name and the fact it has 5 cylinders.

I've no idea what will happen if the sale to Geely goes ahead, I suspect they will continue as normal for a while at least.

[Guest]

final update on the turbo saga! I can say this because it has been re-fitted last Saturday and we went for a test run to try it out,

it works fine, no sticking, no alarms, smooth, progressive power, still not enough to plane but it is a heavy old tub and and a 160hp is about 50% of what its original petrol engine had that said, 12 mph is twice as much speed as I will ever need on the river and is fine for estury and coastal waters and punching a tide through breydon.

The hardest bit was figuring out how to re affix the heat shield blanket, got there in the end and re stitched it with wire and it looks good as new.

It would seem its a common problem with Volvo Penta D3s used on slow rivers but regular beastings will prevent it happening again or at least thats what I am telling Christine lol, and at least now we know its a nothing job if it needs doing again in a year or two

(thats if we have her that long, got the salty sea taste)

[Boaters]

Good to hear you are getting there Dave .

[senator]

Glad to hear you have it spinning again Dave, If you are really after a taste of the salty stuff why not pop along to the Salty Bottoms meet up at Easter, you never know, the extra buoyancy of real salt and a bit of wave assist may even be enough to push her up onto the plane for a spot of 20 knot fun.

Ian

[Antares_9]

I would have thought the torque from even a 160 diesel would get her on the plane dave, given enough "tuck in" of the drive and a bit of down tab.