Subject: Autopsy on turbo
From: ACRE
Date: 4/22/2004, 8:35 PM


I just thought of another possible scenario. Somebody might have
attempted to "overhaul"
it by cutting off the the original turbine and welding on another
relatively good
used turbine.

Paul Lamar


I had a failure once where the outer oil seal leaked oil into the
exhaust stream -- crystalization accumulated in the form of a steadily
growing pyramid until finally it became high enough to interfere with
and
stop the turbine.  In the case shown here, it is conceivable that such a
buildup occurred, broke off in a large chunk with the turbine at high
rpms,
causing the failure.  Pure speculation----

Bob

ERuttan wrote:

Bob that's it.

John stated a witness saw a large plume of white smoke when he lost
power, likely the oil seal failed and dumped oil into the exhaust.

The accumulation would have caused the stress right at the seal and
snapped off the turbine right where it broke.


I wonder if we could have a couple of other used turbo shafts x-rayed or
in
some other way imaged before the turbo is returned to service. It sure
would
rule out an existing crack and might reveal some info about the
construction
techniques used.
Dean Head
BKV FL


We have our '91 T2 torn down now.  The turbo unit is sitting on a shelf
waiting it's turn in the parts washer.  If Paul dug through old emailings,
there is a high res pic of the unit, back when we were trying to confirm
whether a casting rough spot was a problem or not.

If someone is in a position to perform the analysis Dean outlines above, we
could loan ours out to be a data point...

Mark & Mark
M-II  N512MM

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