Sourcing Turbos

[mettersl]

Hi Everyone (but especially those with Turbo experience),
My Sons VW T4 Van blew out its oil filter O ring last week and emptied the sump onto the road.
The van has been refilled with oil and is running, no undue noises from the engine, but its now smoking and the smoke is getting worse quite quickly....and I suspect the "I turned it off quickly" might not be too accurate.

Having looked around at other forums I suspect the Turbo has suffered bearing damage as he was pulling away from a roundabout when the oil light came on and would have been under boost. The general advice is that the Turbo is the first thing to suffer in oil starvation. So we probably need a replacement.

There seem to be £200 pound ebay turbos, then 400 pound rebuild services and 600 new turbo or cartridges about.
Has anyone got any experience of the bottom end of the market?
Being tight (and its only a diesel) I'm tempted to try the cheap stuff, but I don't know if I'd be ripping up 200 pounds and then suffering from a destroyed engine from debris being ingested.
Thoughts and advice?
Thanks Lee (the lurker)

anyone that gives advice on this subject would be foolish

General rule on cheap Chinese turbos is to rebulid them with decent quality bearings etc and then they are pretty good as far as it goes .Very unlikely to destroy the engine with a failure ...
I'd personally send it off for a rebuild then at least you get some comeback ....probably ....if installed correctly ...by an appproved dealer .yadahyadahyadah

[mettersl]

Well, as I coulnt source anything but a Chinese turbo in less than two weeks, held back by the fact that I didn't have the original off the vehicle (its in france) I took the small plunge and bought one of these things.
It looked well made when it arrived and has been installed. We have discovered the old turbo had clearly been going downhill for a while...more boost lower down than before and no smoke so far.
Time will tell if this was a good idea, but at least I now have the original available for a rebuild, which seems a sensible thing to get done..."just in case,the Chinese one fails....
Have to say the supplier was much more responsive and helpful than any of the UK based organisations I talked to about this too.
So in short, seems ok for a low boost diesel van, but I wouldn't use one on an alp...

I don't think it's that they're inherently bad, just that they're so variable.

You can get a good one or a bad one. Spec can be what it claims to be or something completely different so nothing is uniform or can be taken at face value.

Sounds like you've got one of the good ones Lee so I think you've done well there. Like you say, keep the original in case you need it.