Where is it and how difficult installing a new one? I know of an 83 with damaged blades and Ive never done this . Any help / pics appreciated> Thanks in advance

Not too hard. Best bet is to pull the old one and send it off to a shop to have it rebuilt. They will probably put in a new cartridge (center part). Look up Majestic turbo or Dallas turbo (sorta the same company) on the net. They have done work for me in the past and I was happy with them. They have a lot of good info on their site. Be sure to get new gaskets including oil supply and replace to oil drain line o-rings and grommets.
Remove the battery tray, the air cleaner and anything else in your way. Use socket on universal joint with extension to get some of the turbo to exhaust manifold bolts off. Take the oil supply line off completely and run a bunch of the strongest cleaner you can find thru it. Don't want anything bad getting into your new bearings. (You can buy a new line for about $100 if you prefer). Put the exhaust parts back together with anti-seize paste. Some poor devil will have to take it apart again someday..might even be you.

I just did mine (300SD), and boy, it was a lot harder than BobK makes it sound. Maybe I had the wrong wrenches but I had to disassemble everything in sight because I couldn't get to all the turbo mounting bolts, I could get to three of them, but could hve just saved myself the time and commited to pulling the manifolds. It's like on of those puzzles where you have to dis- and re-assemble everything in a mysterious sequence...

Best to pull the intake/exhaust manifold and then remove/replace the turbo.

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Jim

Couple of the bolts were tough, but using different tools for different bolts did the trick for me. Heck, my biggest pain was the bolt holding the aircleaner bracket to the manifold. Same deal though, just used a couple of extensions with a universal joint adapter somewhere in the mix. Then again, I have a lot of different wrenches. Can't be shy about removing stuff that's in the way