Preparing the appropriate seals and gaskets to be on hand wasn't easy on the mind because it all depended on just how much of the turbo/manifold i would be taking out and putting back in. Long story short is i decided i wasn't going to take out the manifold like most people suggest, because i could see that those five large bolts were a lot more rusted than the bolts fastening the turbo to the side of the manifold. I didn't want to take the chance of suddenly turning this into a larger project by cracking one of those bolts. But the physicality of removing the entire turbo looked like a nightmare.

And it was.

I did this in early May. It took me two full days to get it out, with some down days in between for tool ordering and receiving. And i also paid for it in neck and back awkwardness for a week. On some bolts i would be taking apart tool assemblies and mixing and matching wrenches and sockets and adapters and i'd be reaching all over the place with some dangerous leverage going on. My methods were not what you would call standard and i knew i could potentially hurt my knuckles pretty badly. But, it didn't happen. Some of the spots would occupy me for four or five hours. A single bolt being difficult AND hard to reach. I used a TiteReach for some things.

After all of the tool cleanup, here is the little **** ******* ******* ************ (expletive phrasing of choice) sitting by the car...


So at owed myself the investigation of to seeing what might be up inside, at least just a little bit. The wastegate seemed to move fine judging by the fact that i could move the spring from the external port, which was to me not a good thing since i was hoping that would be stuck open and letting out all of the turbo pressure. But i did also open the front of the wastegate, with it's spiral clip thingy, to see this...


So, i am not at all knowledgeable enough to know if this is caused by turbo issues or if it is a result of external issues (blow by oil?) but regardless it was a certainly a mess inside.

I set about installing the new turbo. That, ALSO, was a physical nightmare. However, it didn't take me two days but rather just five or six hours. Bolts were already moving, and that's be the difference.

After i put it in, and figured out from other's pics how to reinstall the stuff that had been taken out by my buddy, i was ready to fire up the car. The battery was dead of course, since it had been months. So i needed to jump start it with another car. Big fun!

And low and behold, the engine turned over perfectly and immediately. Previously, before the turbo install, getting the car to start was not a nice affair. But now it just kicked on. Maybe some of this is due to weather and glow plugs, or maybe the condition of former turbo had something to do with it, or maybe both. Either way, it was pretty exciting.

Until my friend who was with me and stood near the engine to observe noticed a TON of oil pooling up under the car.

STOP



It's tough to see in this pic, but oil was briskly pouring out of the top of the turbo. After starting a different thread here i learned this was the oil supply line for the turbo so it made sense that this was just a physical seal issue. The next day i tried a slightly differently shaped/sized seal and just like that it was not leaking. Granted i cranked especially hard on those bolts this time.

So now i was ready to pull the car out of the driveway and see if i had solved all of my power problems with this humongous labor.

This leads me to the NEXT LEVEL of emotional commitment to a giant hunk of metal that is beyond my current understanding....

The new turbo did absolutely nothing to the power of the vehicle. Well, it did some things, but i didn't discover them immediately and they applied to higher speed pickup/kick. I did do some highway testing but not for a little while. I was mostly too worried to bring it up like that. But at lower side street speeds, the car was still very sluggish and was kicking up smoke and struggled with hills big time.

In that other thread i'd started here, after some time it was suggested to me that i double check the vacuum system just to make sure things were connected properly. And after some confusion regarding vacuum layout of my year and model, i only found one discrepancy...



As many of you may know, and as i'ved learned, often owners will have bypassed the Turbo Boost Protection valve switch because they are faulty and can end up completely impeding the turbo. Well, after i mulled over my discrepancy for a while i started figuring that maybe someone had done that with this vehicle and so an unused switch valve was sitting mounted with available connections, and then also some time down the line the vent "a" had pulled loose from the cabin vent interface grommet and was dangling in the engine compartment looking to the layperson like it needed a destination, and then at some point they decided that it should be plugged into the swtich valve which just so happens to be mounted just above the grommet but is much more visible with it's available hole of the same size as the dangling tube. So they must have put it in and that's that, thinking they'd fixed something.

I can only assume that it has been since that exact moment going forward that this car has absolutely sucked to drive. Because when i finally decided this theory was pretty plausible while filling up dejectedly at a gas station and decided to pop the hood and simply yank that tube and let it at least ingest the engine air so i could have a go at driving it this way (there was at least a filter still in place here), from that moment forward this thing has had LOTS of power. Things were super sensitive on the pedal, and i eventually jumped on the highway and was passing people with complete ease in the 75/85 mph range. It was super rainy so i hadn't noticed that there was absoutely no smoke blowing out of the muffler at any time. And hills were a fun task.

On a side note... in reality some former owner had connected what was supposed to be an open air point into a switch valve that was FAULTY and so blocked air altogether. The irony is that if this switch hadn't been faulty, it wouldn't have affected things that much except for that dirty engine air would now be part of the system for a long long time because there might not be a major performance issue to warrant an investigation.


Soon after i properly installed the "a" point to the cabin grommet and even put in a new filter at that spot.

BUT, it became apparent that i had had two large problems going at once the whole time. Power was a big thing and was more or less solved, but shifting issues were/are still very much present.... ( again, much more had already evolved and this is to be continued!)