Am I in trouble?

[VIN18M]

So as most of you are aware I've just got the Satria back on the road and it's making 210kw at the front wheels which is awesome news.

Buuuut...when fitting the new fan switch last week and draining the water from the radiator we noticed the water was looking a bit milky - oil in the water. The water originally had a bit of a rusty look to it when we drained it after the dyno tune but thought that was just due to it flushing out all of the surface rust on the inside of the water galleries in the block. Now that we've replaced it with coolant there are definitely signs of a bit of oil in the cooling system, not much but a bit.

Now the car has only been driven on the dyno and two quick 5 minute squirts to see how she runs. Due to not having the fans running correctly and having a small water leak we haven't driven the car much at all since I got it back...maybe 20-30klms at most.

The one thing I was thinking is that we haven't re tensioned the head studs (ARP) since the tune. I can't remember the exact specs we torqued them to but they were the 3SGTE studs and we followed the ARP torque specs in the box and the torque sequence as per the service manual.

She doesn't get hot, oil is completely clear of water - no milkyness at all, no water coming out the exhaust, performance has not reduced at all...surely the head gasket hasn't blown already?

I'm running a 1.5mm metal head gasket and sprayed it with hylomar spray before assembly.

Ideas? thoughts?

 

[86psi]

What turbo you running? I once had the same symptoms on another car pulled the head off even replaced it. What it turned out to be doing was leaking oil into the coolant gallery on the turbo. It cost so much time and money for such a simple fix.

This might not be your problem but its another avenue that you can suss out

 

[VIN18M]

Running a brand new Kinugawa 20g, I was thinking there may be a seal issue in the turbo and I'd be getting "cross contamination" but surely a brand new turbo with minimal km on it wouldn't have this problem?

Worth looking into i guess, thanks.

 

[86psi]

The turbo I had was brand new too

 

[VIN18M]

Shit.

How did you work out it was the turbo? Or was it a case of trial and error?

 

[86psi]

Once the engine got put back together again with another big dollar head and did the same thing we decided to look at the turbo all we did was block off the coolant ports and run the feed line straight to the outlet line. Dump the oil and drove around without boosting it and kept checking the oil. That isolated the problem so the turbo got sent away for repairs

 

[khubner1]

I'd check you oil and see if there is signs of contamination. If not do a pressure test on the cooling system.

 

[4piknup]

Retention head bolts too.
Pressure test cooling system.

 

[VIN18M]

So we retentioned the head bolts yesterday, all were still smack on 60ftlbs, except for two or three. We ended up tightening them all up to 65ftlbs to be safe - following the tightening sequence again obviously.
Decided to disconnect the water lines to/from the turbo as we had to replace a leaky welch plug so had to pull the manifold off to access it anyway.
We then flushed the radiator with radiator flush and continued to flush the radiator with fresh water, taking it for a 5-10minute spin in between flushes to ensure we cleared the entire system.
The milkyness improved with every flush and didn't get any worse after driving the car.
Borrowed a pressure tester this morning and the cooling system held 12psi without any drop (radiator cap says 9psi) so I'm assuming this means head gasket should be fine?
We also flushed the system another couple of times and the water is now consistently clear of oil.
So I guess I'll need to get the seals done on my brand new turbo that is just out of warranty due to sitting around for a year before getting fitted!!
Any recommendations in or around Sydney? Garrett rebuilt my td04 for me in the past but apparently they no longer do this? My other option was to go to Turbologic at Port Kembla, apparently they are excellent?

 

[4piknup]

Should pressure test when warm as well (or run engine with pressure tester on it) I chased my tail for ages on a hemi that had a crack in the head that only leaked when warm.

So your turbo is off? You could test for leaks by filling the oil section of the turbo with kero. Maybe even the water section separately. I use kero to test for leaky valves and checking for porous welds. It is very thin and will leak profusely from a hole that water will never leak from.

You can reseal turbo yourself (its not a roller bearing is it) there it only a couple of bolts and a nut to undo. Nothing to them. It wont need balancing as you arent replacing anything.

I cant really remember, but im not even sure the oil and water can mix. I think the water just circulates inside the bearing housing casting. (Unless the casting is cracked)
There is no water seals on the shaft, just the labrinth oil seals.
Pretty sure there is no water seals.

Ive been wrong before tho

 

[VIN18M]

Yeah we definitely tested it warm, drove the car to a mates workshop and tested it as soon as we got there, was well and truly at running temp.
If it's not mixing in the turbo I have no idea what else to look for. It's not overheating and the oil is completely clear of water, very strange situation. To be honest, if we didn't drain the radiator to fit the fan switch to the top radiator hose then we never would have noticed the oil in the water and would still be happily driving the car.
Suppose I could give the rebuild a go myself, I think I'd be doing the heavy duty seal upgrade everyone suggests when running 20+ psi through these kingugawa turbos.

 

[ULS33-RVR-GO]

I just installed a Kinugawa TD06SL2 20g & billet comp wheel @29psi and have noticed a small amount of white smoke in my rearview mirror when i'm giving it some. Hmmm...

 

[VIN18M]

I'm not 100% sure it's to turbo at this stage. The oil in the water seems to have cleared up and I'm currently not running any water through the turbo as a test. I've had a look at some diagrams of the inside workings of a turbocharger and from what I can see Jack of all is right, there seems to be separate water/oil galleries cast into the centre cartridge of the turbo. So no real way of water/oil to mix unless there is a significant crack through the casting.
I'm hoping it was a case of some oil seeping through past the hg when we were trying to crank the motor as we never got the engine up to temperature to get everything to seal until we got it on the dyno later on.