I've had this turbo since spring '02 and MABYE put 2,000 miles on it. I'm always doing something to my LS1 .. or working on someone else's car... I never drive this thing, just up to get the mail every now and then or up the local spot to instigate races. But for the most part it's a garage ornament.

The turbo started smoking up the exhaust, that was when I was told to put an oil restrictor in the feed line. I did so, but it was evidently too late, as the smoke continued. So I finally got around to sending the turbo back to Turbonetics for a freshening. They quote me $650 to put oil seals in it... then after they take it apart tell me it needs a new center section and other BS and they want $1400 to rebuild it, or $1850 to make it into a T76 (what I wanted).

I liked the ball bearing center-The turbo spooled like nothing... it had 15lbs at 2K RPM with a light load but I can deal with a little lag if that's going to be the difference in me replacing it with a non-BB unit. I can get a T70 non BB resealed for less than $100.

-rant off-

 

A new Precision PT76 is $1795, not ball bearing though. http://www.precisionte.com/ford/turbos.htm

 

Precision charged me $75 for new seals and bearings. Looks like I will stay away from Turbonetics. Might wanna call Precision and ask if they can rebuild it, but maybe since it's BB they can't.

 

Nah... A friend of mine is a distributor for Precision and they couldnt do it. He called around and it's got to go back to Turbonetics. So they've got you by the ***** (no pun intended)

 

If your not going to go back to ball bering, then you could send it to someone else and have them replace the parts to make it non-ball bearing. Did you try Innovative Turbo? 805.526.5400 If anyone could help you out, they could. They know more about the T-netics ball bearing turbo than most people at T-netics.

 

I am new to turbo. But I always thought that ball bearing turbo is better than non ball bearing. Can you guy explain why? advantage/disadvantage



Bruce

 

BB turbo spools up faster than non BB, so they are usually better for racing applications. The ball bearing is supposed to last up to 50 times longer than the standard bearing also. The cost of the BB turbo is quite a bit more than a nonBB turbo.

 

Thanks for explained. Now I understand the diff.

Bruce

 

one word, holset