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Worthless out of balance Holset turbos

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Aaron91RS

15+ Year Contributor
148
0
Nov 10, 2003
St. Louis, Missouri
When my first hx40 went I was told it was out of balance.
I got it from a previous owner so not knowing the history I couldn't really say whose fault that might have been.
Bought a brand new one straight from holset and put it on.
POS is out of balance too and fragged.
I will never recommend these POS turbo's again.
At least this time when the 3rd one comes it I will have it taken apart and tested for balance before ever installing it.
Might as well just buy a $300 chinabay one next time. The balancing will be about the same.
They make good power when they work but if their quality control is this bad it's not worth it.
Never had a problem with any of my other turbos. Should have stayed with my FP turbo.
 
From where you buy the turbo and the turbo itself has nothing to do with each other. If it ain't balanced from the begin then the turbo will fail even the FP ones' too! :aha:
 
Who is confirming your turbos to be out of balance?

Holsets are the factory turbos on many, many applications. I find it hard to believe that you're on the third one that would've been "unbalanced" from the factory.

Any aftermarket turbo is fragile to oiling, are you sure you're not screwing up the oiling and blaming the balance of the turbo?
 
Why do I have a sneaky suspicion that this is just an excuse? With all the trucks and industrial equipment that run these turbos, I think there would have been a big problem if they had quality control issues.

I'd put premature bearing wear from improper oiling higher on the list of probable causes.

EDIT: Justin beat me to it. I knew he'd have something to say along those lines.
 
With all the trucks and industrial equipment that run these turbos, I think there would have been a big problem if they had quality control issues.

Well put! Plus Cummins Holset have been creating turbos for 60+ yrs. Turbo diesel trucks even run these turbos down in and down out with high boost and I'd think people would have noticed if there were problems.
 
From where you buy the turbo and the turbo itself has nothing to do with each other. If it ain't balanced from the begin then the turbo will fail even the FP ones' too! :aha:
WTF are you even rambling on about. It came brand new from holset. If they aren't balancing it where do you think it will get balanced? The post office?

Who is confirming your turbos to be out of balance?


Holsets are the factory turbos on many, many applications. I find it hard to believe that you're on the third one that would've been "unbalanced" from the factory.

Any aftermarket turbo is fragile to oiling, are you sure you're not screwing up the oiling and blaming the balance of the turbo?


He's been doing this longer then you've been alive. I'd be happy if you two could come up with another explination.

I'd love for it to be me. In fact that's the first thing I said when I went in there again is what am I doing wrong, because I can't keep replacing these.

Believe me I wanted it to be an oiling problem at least that has a cure.
 
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LOL I'd take the entire diesel world's voice on durability over a dsmer whose platform has been known to kill PTE turbos left and right any day :). You pulled your dyno results from the holset results thread too a while back over being asked to stick to the topic when calling out dynojets as an ego-trip dyno dispite their consistancy across different locations around the US. I smell a grudge.

What is your oil pressure at the turbo oil feed inlet? What is your drain line size?

As far as I know HX Holset turbos are component balanced. IF your shop is saying they arn't balanced, then they are mis-informed. I wonder how they could confirm that it wasn't balanced after it got "fragged". . .
 
Yea man honestly unless your getting a new Ebay holset knock off, they look identical. I have a HX40, never been rebuilt bought it used and it has over 10k on it no problems, has absolutely no shaft play I'm pretty sure if Holset was selling unbalanced turbos that they would be out of business a long long time ago. They have millions of turbos, I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing. You should do a little more research. Unless you got a knock off holset, it is extremely unlikely its out of balance. I'm not saying its your fault, but usually things like this are user error and not from factory. If you seriously think its a bad holset turbo, I would contact them and let them know not us. No one hear can do a thing for ya man. Hit up holset tell them your turbo re-builder told you your turbo was out of balance, and you got it new. Its a multi million dollar company. If you really think its a faulty turbo I'm positive they would want to know about it.

~Andy
 
My friends car went threw a few turbo, ebay 16g, then t25, then i gave him my rebuilt 14b. and it was blowing oil after 5 minutes. all turbos worked before. I think its an oil pressure problem with his car. Im afraid that he didnt do the balance shaft delete properly.
 
Andy has a point. "It came brand new from holset" from who???? Holset doesn't sell to the small tuner market, much less to an individual. I guess you could be the exception to that rule.

Check your oil pressure at the inlet and measure your drain line inside diameter. IF you didn't modify your srock oil pan, then your oil drain minimum diameter is automatically about 20% too small.

BOTH my holsets have been running great for 7-8K miles each after being pulled from motors with +200K on them. . .
 
Feel free to call john at turbo center in St. Louis and ask him. He's been doing this longer then you've been alive. I'd be happy if you two could come up with another explination.
Been successfully in the Turbo repair business over 30 years and doesn't have a Website? There's nothing him and I can really discuss over the phone, regardless- I'd need to see your turbo with my own eyes to diagnose the cause of the failure.

Something to keep in mind is that an out-of-balance turbo doesn't normally fail immediately unless the unbalance is so severe that it causes the shaft to bend. This is NOT the case on a new, out-of-the-box Holset.

An unbalanced engine will run for a long time, it just won't perform as well as a balanced engine; however an engine with too much or too little oil will fail in a very short period of time. I'd go all-in on some type of oil-related failure if I were guessing a diagnosis.


As far as I know HX Holset turbos are component balanced.
As far as I know, older HX's with the 6-point compressor locknut are balanced as a rotating assembly. Newer HX's with the 12-point compressor locknut are component-balanced.

In either case, the rotating assembly on any HX turbo is much larger than a T25 or 14B, and achieves a much lower peak RPM than a smaller turbo would....so balance is far less crucial on any of the HX turbos than it would be on, say, a 14B or Small 16G.
 
I've actually built diesel turbo's for a while. I can tell you that even big brand names that are supposed to be reliable from the United States sometimes don't have a single person who cares across the entire line if it worked.

I watched turbos be assembled wrong, said something nothing happened, inspected and cleared, said something nothing happened, kitted for assembly on whatever they were going to, said something to a higher manager nothing happened, finally it was fully assembled on a vehicle headed out the door to be sold to some unlucky buyer.

No one cares about quality control if they didn't see it, it didn't happen and trying to get them to look it over if you saw it... good luck with that!
 
^^^^For whom did you work?



Justin, I didn't think an unbalance failed immediately either. . . How do you determine whether or not the compressor wheel is balanced to the turbine wheel if the shaft is bent or blades contact the housings or blades are broken :idontknow: ????
 
How do you determine whether or not the compressor wheel is balanced to the turbine wheel if the shaft is bent or blades contact the housings or blades are broken :idontknow: ????
Any turbo that is balanced on a VSR as a rotating assembly will have balance grinds on the locknut. This is because the turbo is balanced when fully assembled at the peak speed at which it operates, and you can't exactly get to the backside of the compressor wheel to make balance corrections when the turbo is fully assembled....so the balancer makes balance corrections using the locknut. This type of balancing is found on ALL ball-bearing turbos, many of the smaller MHI turbos, and many of the smaller T3 turbos as well.

I don't honestly know how "out-of-balance" a turbo can be before it can cause a fatality. The Frank 5 we used on my buddy's 2G for about 10k had decent-sized chips out of random compressor fins and it boosted hard, made tons of power, ran no less than 20psi the entire time it was on the car, and had no shaft play when it was removed. The HX40 would operate at an even lower peak RPM than the Frank 5 due to the larger wheel size, so how much unbalance is considered too much?
 
So if these " came brand new from holset", then they are component balanced and there would be no grind marks at a location on the hubs where a VSR would have been employed to find, right? That's why I'm asking how they would be capable of determining that it was balanced improperly or that it was never balanced. . . Unless this is their diagnosis they give if they have no other explination.

I vote shipping the turbo to you too. Give more than one shop a look.
 
Anytime you buy a new wheel, either a compressor or turbine wheel, it is balanced when you get it. Holset is taking two of these already-balanced wheels, and assembling them, making a rotating assembly that is balanced within spec for the peak RPM of which that specific turbo is designed to operate.

Unless the shaft was bent from the factory, there's literally no way a new Holset turbo would be out-of-balance unless their balance guy went home early that day.
 
I don't claim to be an expert.
I gave everyone a name an a number.
At this point you can
A)talk out your ass because no part ever fails and you obviously know the whole story based on your speculation
B)pick up the phone and speak to someone who knows more about them then me.

I believe he said this time it even broke the thrust bearing, the first one did not.
At this point I don't care. I never had these problems with other turbos so I am sorry I ran this temperamental thing.


The turbo is going back to holset so maybe they will warrenty the thing.
I'm sorry I started this thread because the groupthink is too strong on this board.
 
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A)talk out your ass because no part ever fails and you obviously know the whole story based on your speculation
Right, because turbo failures are based solely upon PART failure, and have nothing to do with USER ERROR.
B)pick up the phone and speak to someone who knows more about them then me.
Again, there's nothing that can be said over the phone that will make me believe this turbo failed due to a balance issue. Pictures would help, but I can't see those over the phone.
I believe he said this time it even broke the thrust bearing, the first one did not.
The thrust plate has nothing to do with an unbalance failure and everything to do with lack of lubrication. You're talking about two unrelated parts of the turbo here. If you spin a rod bearing in your engine, it doesn't cause crankwalk.
Again I am not surprised at this boards typical response to jump on the bandwagon that because their turbo didn't break 100% of other turbos by that brand never break.
Every turbo brand has suffered a failure at some point. Yes, even FP has had trouble with certain turbo lines.
Most of you would rather talk out your ass then pick up a phone and be proved wrong. (or even right)
I'll gain nothing by talking to your "experienced" turbo builder.
You all act like I gain something by posting this, when the reality is all I get is mostly a bunch of teenagers shit talking who have no real experience except what they read online.
I'm not inexperienced in the field, and it's been 10 years since I've been considered a teenager....so I'm not sure if your ignorance is directed toward me or not.
The turbo is going back to holset so maybe they will warrenty the thing.
They won't do shit because you were using the turbo to produce power gains on an application of which it was never intended to be used.
I'm sorry I started this thread because the groupthink is too strong on this board.
By far the most intelligent thing you've said thus far.
 
I think we would all like to know the oil feed psi and size of the return line. Has to be some reason that he hasnt givin even a remote answer to these questions!!! hmmm....
 
I think we would all like to know the oil feed psi and size of the return line.
That's what I'm getting at.

I don't think he understands that if you feed from the filter housing with a -4AN line you're blasting 100+psi of oil pressure into a cartridge that specifies no more than 72psi during loaded operation. Expecting such a flow of oil to drain through a -10AN drain is like expecting the Hoover Dam to form the Colorado River by bleeding through a McDonald's straw. Lake Mead would spill over the dam in no time.
 
I must ask how many miles were on each turbo when the failure occured, and seeing how the first turbo was used, how many miles did you put on it. because it is sounding like you started them up and Bam. Maybe with a little more info we can determine what caused this. you don't want to have it warrantied and have the same problem if it's not out of balanced.
 
That's what I'm getting at.

I don't think he understands that if you feed from the filter housing with a -4AN line you're blasting 100+psi of oil pressure into a cartridge that specifies no more than 72psi during loaded operation. Expecting such a flow of oil to drain through a -10AN drain is like expecting the Hoover Dam to form the Colorado River by bleeding through a McDonald's straw. Lake Mead would spill over the dam in no time.
it's not like that but no matter what it's like it's a no win. Even you have changed from the head to the housing crowd overtime.
Feed it off the filter housing someone will say you're running to high a PSI.
Feed it off the head your not running enough PSI
Remove the balance shafts and run if off the head and someone will still have a problem with it. For the longest time you and others on here where all about keeping the PSI low by using the head feed. Then you changed to the filter housing and I am doing the third, head/no BS. But of course this will be wrong too because no one on here can even make up their mind the 100% correct way to run these.


I must ask how many miles were on each turbo when the failure occured, and seeing how the first turbo was used, how many miles did you put on it. because it is sounding like you started them up and Bam. Maybe with a little more info we can determine what caused this. you don't want to have it warrantied and have the same problem if it's not out of balanced.
The first one I don't know. It was a guy that hardly posted on here.
This one had 375miles.

Turbo guy called again so I beat him up yet again on the oiling issue. He said you don't see brass transfer like this unless it's out of balance. I have no idea. I'm tempeted to send it to jusmx141 but if it turned out I was right I'd expect every person that got an attitude in this thread to apologize but that wouldn't happen.
 
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Even you have changed from the head to the housing crowd overtime.
Not by choice- once I discovered that companies who have their act together (like Holset) publish the oiling information online, I quickly found out that the head does not provide enough oil to keep some turbos on some applications from dying prematurely. Garrett wants to keep this info a secret for some reason, and they will continue to produce boat anchors until they can give us some hard facts regarding the oiling specification for their turbos.

There is still no consistency to the matter....there are guys out there feeding their Garrett from the head on a stock engine with balance shafts in place who have thousands of miles of use without any problems, and there are guys who have had their turbos die the first time they make boost when fed from the head due to lack of oil.

The head is the perfect oil source for your turbo IF the cards are in your favor (healthy engine, oil pump, and the head has never been resurfaced).

Turbo guy called again so I beat him up yet again on the oiling issue. He said you don't see brass transfer like this unless it's out of balance. I have no idea.
This is what doesn't make sense about what he's telling you.

The only way the journal bearing material can transfer to the spinning shaft is if there is no oil there to separate the two. An out-of-balance turbo will cause the shaft to vibrate and will generally wear the journal bearings but NOT show heat scoring or bearing material on the shaft itself because the turbo is still getting plenty of oil.
 
Thread cleaned up a bit.

OP, you tread thin ice when you insult this forum, but seem to ask for help. If this is just a bi***-session against Holset, then you need to take it somewhere else. If you actually want insight on your problem, then you need to re-examine how you're approaching the people you're asking for help. There's no question in your first post, so unless you want to ask one in this TECH FORUM, I'll consider this thread a waste of space and take care of it for you.
 
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