XR6 – The bad news

Author: Striker

Jun 22

Yesterday was service time at CV Performance.

The service went without a hitch, as you could imagine. When the time came for them to replace my oil feed line for the turbo, they pulled out the old filter, and unfortunately it had already clogged up, and caused oil starvation to the turbo (evident by the hugely noisy turbo bearing..)

CV’s mechanic made a point to bring my attention to this, even though I already knew about it. Good job on his part, obviously. Can’t have blame falling where it doesn’t belong.

I had hoped that there wouldn’t be much damage, but it was simply too late to work on the issue. The bearing was already noisy when I bought the car, so I’m suspicious that it was already too late back then (seeing that they generally self destruct well before the 100,000 kilometre mark).

So, where to from here?

The car is fine to drive, but the turbo is not going to get any better. Now I need to find $3000 to get the turbo replaced, including labour.

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XR6 Turbo – oil feed issues

Author: Striker

Jun 18

With the BA (and possibly BF) series of turbo XR6 Falcons, there is an issue with the standard oil feed line running too close to the turbo.

The pipe comes in over the top of the turbo, over a high-heat area.

Ford have a replacement for the pipe these days, but most of the performance shops that I have spoken to recommend an alternative fix consisting of braided line.

With the high heat, when you turn off the car right after driving (with a hot turbo), the oil in there sits stagnant, bakes, and clogs up the feed pipe.
As you can imagine, this restricts the oil frlow to the turbo bearings, and can cause the turbo to self destruct.

I’ve heard of cases where the turbo breaks down after only 60,000 kilometres.
One way of minimising this effect is to keep the car running to allow the turbo to cool down, and perform regular oil changes with good oil.
This is certainly NOT a fix to the problem, however, and I highly recommend having your oil feed line replaced.

My XR6 Turbo is booked in on Monday to have the oil feed line replaced. Hopefully the turbo bearing will not get any noisier.
Being that it’s already noisy, I’m assuming that at some point, I’m going to need to replace the turbo, or at the least, have it rebuilt.

After Monday’s appointment I’ll know a lot more about the health of the turbo, and the health of the car in general. Hopefully the news is not too bad.

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