Can I Eliminate Coolant Lines On Evo3

[LRS95TSI]

i don't know if this is common or not but i'm curious to know wheter you can eliminate the coolant going to my MHI evo3.
what are the advantages/disadvantages/risks involved?

 

[Staytuned]

Take great care in cool down times if you are going to rely on oil only to cool that turbo. I would never think of doing it myself but there have been people who have done it. Can't be too good on the life expectancy of the turbo.

 

[Newlogics]

That cartrige isn't designed for oil-clooing, and doesn't have adequate heat-dissipating design, so it needs to be water-cooled. Pulling water lines off will increase chances of oil coking drammatically and place more strain on bearings. I see no reason for doing that.

 

[LRS95TSI]

i figured it wouldn't be a good idea from a factory turbo standpoint. i just wanted to see if it was possible. it would be nice not to hafta disconnect 4 lines everytime i wanted to take the turbo off.

 

[WhiteCloud]

I know of several people running the evoIII without coolant lines. As long as you are religious in allowing your turbo to cool down, you'll be fine. However, there is really no reason to do this if the car is your daily driver.

 

[blcknspo0ln]

I know of several people running the evoIII without coolant lines. As long as you are religious in allowing your turbo to cool down, you'll be fine. However, there is really no reason to do this if the car is your daily driver.

Correct. MHI units are specifically design to be water/oil cooled and should be run that way. If you do decide to run oil-only, make sure you have your turbo timer set to soemthing around 2 minutes. Besides, you should stop being lazy and just drain the coolant when you need to pull the turbo (and if you think about it, you'll want to remove the radiator anyway to make more working space ).

 

[EclipseRacing99]

i have a big 16g on my car right now. when i got this one built and ported at fp they asked me if i wanted a dry or a wet bearing housing. dry being oil only and wet being oil and coolant. i picked oil only for simplicity and time on taking it in and out. 10k+ on the turbo on the dry housing and its still running strong. i time it for about min and a half to 2 min.

 

[oldman]

I strongly suggest keeping the water lines, it is impossible to fairly compare the failure rates between running with or without them because the damage is often an indirect one and a long term process. Why take a chance? The more you can do to cool the turbo, the better for both reliability and performance.

 

[LRS95TSI]

i gotcha. i will keep them. i wanted to know if it was possible, and gain a little more knowledge. thanks for the advice!