i have now blown 4 60 trim turbos from PTE. i love their turbos but i keep getting it back and keep blowing it up! 20 psi and a fully built 6 bolt is what i am running. any suggestions or comments or just some help. they said that they were going to put a new heavy duty thrust bearing in it this time, but i was under the assumption that, that thrust bearing was standard on all of their turbos. anyone else with bad luck with PTE??

I heard they have oil pressure problems. But I may have blown mine because I spun a rod bearing and drove a mile or two on it, I'm waiting to find out.

Did you take your balance shafts out? Because if you did you will have a higher than normal oil pressure going to the turbo. I had to put a restrictor feed on my oil line to the turbo because i kept getting smoke at idle coming from the exhaust. This fixed it and i haven't had any problems so far.

PTEs are the new Mutts. Get something different.

PTE had problems a while back when they were using the 270* thrust bearing. They have since realized that it doesnt hold up to 16+ psi so the have since(about 1.5-2 yrs ago) started using the 360* bearing. For those who think they are the "new" mutts, think again. Nothing new about them.

Anyway, where are you running your feed from? If you are running from the head, you will blow just about any standard bearing garret turbo. You should be running the oil feed from the oil filter housing. If you still have balance shafts, you need to restrict the feed line to about .100-.110" and if the bs has been removed, the feed should be restricted to .078-.085". Without the feed restricted, you wont blow the turbo, you will just blow oil past the shaft seals and end up with a smoking issue. The excess pressure will also cause a slower spool but in no way really damages the turbo.

thanks for the info i will reroute my oil feed and restrict it. all i want to do is make 1 clean pass at the track. with my setup i should see low 12's all day and some high 11 sec passes.

92awddsm said:

PTE had problems a while back when they were using the 270* thrust bearing. They have since realized that it doesnt hold up to 16+ psi so the have since(about 1.5-2 yrs ago) started using the 360* bearing. For those who think they are the "new" mutts, think again. Nothing new about them.

Anyway, where are you running your feed from? If you are running from the head, you will blow just about any standard bearing garret turbo. You should be running the oil feed from the oil filter housing. If you still have balance shafts, you need to restrict the feed line to about .100-.110" and if the bs has been removed, the feed should be restricted to .078-.085". Without the feed restricted, you wont blow the turbo, you will just blow oil past the shaft seals and end up with a smoking issue. The excess pressure will also cause a slower spool but in no way really damages the turbo.

Click to expand...

I thought oil pressure from the filter housing was higher than from the head?

flinguist said:

I thought oil pressure from the filter housing was higher than from the head?

Click to expand...

It is, thats why it needs to be restricted. The typical garret center section should see no more than 55psi of oil pressure. From the head, you usually see 25psi max and from the filter housing, 100+ unrestricted. The restrictor helps find the happy medium.

92awddsm said:

PTE had problems a while back when they were using the 270* thrust bearing. They have since realized that it doesnt hold up to 16+ psi so the have since(about 1.5-2 yrs ago) started using the 360* bearing. For those who think they are the "new" mutts, think again. Nothing new about them.

Anyway, where are you running your feed from? If you are running from the head, you will blow just about any standard bearing garret turbo. You should be running the oil feed from the oil filter housing. If you still have balance shafts, you need to restrict the feed line to about .100-.110" and if the bs has been removed, the feed should be restricted to .078-.085". Without the feed restricted, you wont blow the turbo, you will just blow oil past the shaft seals and end up with a smoking issue. The excess pressure will also cause a slower spool but in no way really damages the turbo.

Click to expand...

Excess pressure will cause premature oil seal failure.

make sure that you hook it up to the correct oil port (filterd) i had a friend who hooked it up to the wrong port and blew his turbo in a few weeks.

I have gone through 3 pte 60 trims in the last 6000 miles. I have used the same 16g in between the 60 trims and the 16g is still going fine so I dont think it's an issue with my engine or oil pressure. I have about 13000 miles on the 16g, and somebody else put 76000 miles on it before I used it and it still works perfectly. I still have balance shafts and I feed it from the filter housing. I'm done with pte and hybrids, I'm going GT35R.

So what the heck is going on then. Are PTE Turbos just junk now or what? I'm weary of just putting the 60 trim back on. if i reroute the oil feed and restrict it and it still blows the turbo up im going to be really mad. should i just go and get a different turbo???

I blew out the seal and bearings on my PTE.... took it to TEC and they said it was a oiling issue. Thrust bearing was worn badly.

Showed them my return line that ExtremePSI sold to me in my kit and they pretty much laughed at me.

Put on -10an return and rebuilt it my self.
1000 miles and so far so good, no oil residue anywhere around the turbo, shaft play is very minimal.

I run a -4an feed line from the oil filter housing with no restrictor. Engine has BS removed.

suicidal2af said:

Excess pressure will cause premature oil seal failure.

Click to expand...

Wrong. There are no oil seals per say in a turbo that will fail due to oil pressure. The seals are simple spring steel rings that work in the same manner as piston rings. Oil pressure does not affect them but excess oil pressure can be blown by them. 90% of the time, seals fail due to excess clearence in the bearings, 5% of the time it is due to carbon build up around them, and the other 5% is defective parts, unfiltered oil feed, etc.

so i should run a -4 from the oil filter with no restrictor. i used to feel confident in my judgement with what was wrong and right for my dsm but 4 turbos later i am very unconfident.

I was told the 360 thrust bearing needs as much oil as it can get.

-4an is what it needs, no restricter. If you oil return is sufficient (-10an which is the stock return size) you should be fine.

pimpinboudy said:

thanks for the info i will reroute my oil feed and restrict it..

Click to expand...

Does that mean you were running the oil-feed from the head? If so, hard to believe PTE didn't ask you that during the first rebuild.

its weird b/c they did ask and i told them that it was from the head and they said it should be fine.

This thread is a bit old but for the record you must remember that PTE turbos are just garrett turbos with a custom turbine housing and of course the turbine housing can't have anything to do with a failure. If you say a PTE turbo is bad your really saying that a garrett turbo is bad. Most people agree garrett turbos are top of the line.

Only thing PTE may have to do on some of the turbos is upgrade the thrust bearing from 270 to 360 degree, assemble, balance and machine the housings which I'm confident they do correctly as they have been selling huge numbers of garretts to both domestic and imports for years.

Any failures are probably due to having a 270 thrust bearing instead of 360 (270 no longer sold on dsm turbos), oil pressure incorrect, or oil contaminants or over-reving the turbo (boost leaks).

I've had my garrett 50 trim fed from the head for 2 years at 20psi street, 27psi track, no problems. I've heard of people running it from the filter with no restrictor.

Without calling anyone out I feel that most of the time its a user install error or abuse which causes these turbos to die. I have had my pte 50 on for 15,000 miles now (22-24 psi daily) and no problems. Gotta think that you are doing something wrong when only a handful of the people are having the majority of the problems.

I went through my 1st PTE 50 trim in about 1700 miles, my second one is ready to be replaced after another 1500. Seems to be the thing to do....

droptopgst said:

Without calling anyone out I feel that most of the time its a user install error or abuse which causes these turbos to die. I have had my pte 50 on for 15,000 miles now (22-24 psi daily) and no problems. Gotta think that you are doing something wrong when only a handful of the people are having the majority of the problems.

Click to expand...

I know what you are saying and I thought the same thing, when my first one fell apart. I thought I did something wrong. So I put my 16g back on and I ran it for about 6000 miles and nothing happened, Then I got the PTE back and put it on with a turbo oil filter from forced performance (i drilled out the oil restrictor). It went for about 1500 miles or so and the turbo was dead again. The turbo oil filter was clean and the return line wasn't clogged. So the 16g went back on for another 4000 miles and still no problems. Then I put the pte back on and drove for a few thousand milles and it's dead again. Put the 16g back on and it's still fine to this day. I got the 16g from a JDM front clip that had 76000 miles on it and i put about 15000 on it now and it still works. I use the same oil feed and same oil return with the 16g and pte turbo, except with the pte I have to use a different oil return flange of course. They both feed from the oil filter housing with a stainless braided line. I have built and owned dozens of dsm's with many different turbo's and I've never had this kind of problem.