Turbo failure!!

[trbotaln]

A good friend of mine has a GST and recently when he was boosting really hard through a canyon for a while, the car blew out a puff of smoke, and now it is undriveable. We are 99.9% sure that the turbo is blown. The weird thing is that the turbo doesn't smoke or anything but the compressor is locked up. Is this a result of the turbo getting to hot or loosing oil pressure?
We just changed his oil a little bit ago and the car only has 28,000 original miles on it. We did a compression and leak down test and it was fine. Has anyone ever heard of a turbo just seizing up like this? His turbo always made a weird fluttering noise from day 1 so I was thinking that maybe something got sucked into the intake and ruined it.

(by the way it was only about 14psi on a stock T25.)

 

[DSM4me44]

Depends, check the shaft play in your turbo. Also try moving the blades with your fingers and see if it is smooth. This may or may not help you decide if it is a turbo issue.

How many miles does the turbo itself have on it?

 

[95GrandPrixGTP]

Mine did the same damn thing. 70k original miles. I was out following a few friends that were racing and a big screen of smoke came out of the exhaust. The compressor is locked up...but it will still turn about 1/2 inch going either which way. I can still drive my car, its just balls slow.

 

[trbotaln]

The turbo only has 28k miles on it. Thats why I thought it was kind of strange that it is already blown. He did boost it very hard when he was driving though. I guess it lost oil pressure or something like that.