EBAY TURBOS

Yes. We will look at anything. We have seen everything. We tear it down, document what we find, and tell you honestly whether a rebuild makes economic sense or whether the money is better spent on a quality unit. Sometimes the housing is fine and we can rebuild the CHRA properly. Sometimes we open it and have a moment of silence. Either way we will give you a straight answer before charging you anything.

Statistically speaking, no. Six months is the upper range of what we call the "optimism window": the period between installation and what the community has lovingly termed the "Compressor Liberation Event." We would like to personally congratulate you on your six months. Now please send it to us before something interesting happens on the highway. A proactive rebuild with quality internals and VSR balancing will outlast the car.

No. Garrett does not sell turbos on eBay for $89. Garrett has a website, a sales team, authorized distributors, and a legal department that would like a word with whoever is using their name. What you have is a turbo that is "Garrett style," which is the mechanical equivalent of a "Rolex style" watch from a gas station. The housing may share general proportions with a Garrett product in the same way that a child's drawing of a car shares general proportions with a Ferrari. Ship it. We'll sort it out.

Your friend is either extremely lucky, running extremely low boost, or has a better unit than he thinks. Occasionally an eBay turbo ships with internals that are merely mediocre rather than catastrophic. It happens. It is not a guarantee, it is a lottery. The difference between a properly rebuilt quality turbo and an eBay lottery ticket is the difference between a known outcome and a game of turbo roulette played on an onramp at 70 miles an hour. We are not against gambling on principle. We are against gambling with your engine.

This has happened. More than once. The answer is yes, absolutely. We will give it the same teardown treatment and we will try very hard not to have opinions about the decision that led to this situation. Everyone makes choices. You made a choice. The choice made another choice. Now there are two turbos and you have found us. This is fine. We will fix the one that can be fixed. Ship them both.

Yes. That is correct and we understand how that feels. A proper rebuild, meaning teardown, quality bearings, new seals, and VSR balancing on calibrated equipment with an actual result, costs real money regardless of what the original turbo cost. We are not going to cut corners on the rebuild to match the price of the thing that just failed. The math is what it is: a quality rebuild on a marginal housing sometimes costs more than another eBay turbo. You already know how the next eBay turbo ends. You have data on this. We are not going to tell you what to do, but when you are ready to stop the cycle, we are here.

We have received the same VSR balance report, identical values, identical machine ID, identical date, with turbos from at least eleven different sellers. It is one document that has been photocopied and included with turbos that were never near a balancing machine. A genuine VSR balance report has the serial number of the specific unit, the measured residual imbalance before and after correction at operating speed, and the target tolerance. It is specific to that shaft assembly. A generic certificate with no unit reference is a piece of paper. We have one framed in the shop.

Something with a name. Something where the company exists and has a phone number. Garrett, Holset, BorgWarner, IHI, MHI, GReddy, HKS: these are all brands that have engineering departments and quality control processes that do not involve a person eyeballing a compressor wheel and saying "close enough." We rebuild all of them. If you tell us your application and your power target we can point you at the right unit and have you set up properly. The cost difference between a quality rebuild and replacing an eBay unit every eighteen months is significant.