Did I blow my turbo? or worse...

[dyetrying91]

Was driving today, normal driving, dropped from 4th to 3rd at about 50mph to pass a truck, as I was going past it at about 14psi, felt a weird shudder through the car, let off the throttle, car ran fine until I came to idle. At idle, it will almost die, I can't rev up at all, during normal driving, as long as I am in vacuum and not boosting it runs fine, as soon as it gets to about -5 on my boost gauge, it starts missing really bad and the stock boost gauge is about 3/4 of the way up.

With the gas pedal all the way to the floor, the car barely made it up my driveway, I visually checked to see if I blew off an IC pipe, but can't see anything, all I hear is a whistle coming from the turbo area at idle. There is no smoke coming from exhaust at all, no weird smells in exhaust either, unfortunately it's dark out and I don't have access to a jack at the apartment so I can't really get under the car.

If anyone has any suggestions besides shaft play, (the turbo is still really hot, only got home a few minutes ago) or intercooler piping. The help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[92AWDHX40]

Wait until it cools off and check for shaft play, i would do that and let us know what you find out.

 

[Wild93GS]

Check your vacuum lines.

 

[evil tsi]

boost leak

 

[lauj2gdsm]

Seems like you blew off an intercooler piping. check all your piping's and make sure every thing is on tight and then do a boost leak test.

 

[CanadianTalonTC]

Do a boost leak test, I blew my IC piping up at only 14PSI at an elbow. Could hear the turbo spool, idles like crap and has ZERO power. Might as well do that before you pull the turbo anyway. Mine was also bad enough that I build zero PSI during the test while using a compressor for framing haha.

So if that's the case for you, pull it off before the IC plug that and do a test. If it passes, do the next section etc to narrow it down. Mine was under the fuse box.

Joel

 

[dyetrying91]

Wait until it cools off and check for shaft play, i would do that and let us know what you find out.

No shaft play at all, turbine spins freely by hand. Small amount of oil sitting in bottom of turbo, but it has had a small leak for the past 45k miles, no smoking at all.

 

[brian102]

I forgot to hook up a lower intetcooler pipe one time and it would barely idle. Like people said boost leak test

 

[mitsukid124]

most likely a boost leak

 

[eclipse gsx]

maybe a hole on a coupler check every single one.

 

[constant_proj21]

Possibly got a hole in a coupler. I blew one out once, and couldn't figure out wtf happened.

 

[dyetrying91]

Pretty much shredded the coupler on the intercooler side of my uicp. A good 3 inches of it had blown off completely. Fixed that with a 4.77 silicone coupler from home depot, and good to go. Think my plugs are fouled from running so rich for the 12 miles I had to drive it. Thanks everyone for the input.