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Gang,
This meant as information for future reference incase anyone has a turbo go sick.
A couple months ago my college student son's '94 940 turbo sedan began to experience a severe lack of power. We checked the dumb stuff first; like the fuel filter, air filter, etc. No joy. We then moved up the expense chain and quickly discovered his turbo had siezed after about 180,000 miles.
We removed the turbo and started looking at our options. The various parts places here in Rochester, NY that I work with did not get into turbo and were not aware of anyone in the area that still worked on them. We did not give going to the Volvo dealer a thought knowing it would be way too expensive. The online turbo places I looked at and talked with wanted generally about $900 for a rebuilt turbo. I found a place (Cheetah Turbo in Port Chester, NY) that specializes in rebuilding turbo and custom turbos. We shipped him the turbo, and we got it back all cleaned and rebuilt for less than $300.00!
Cheetah Turbo told me that very often with the Mitsu. turbos, the tight clearances get coked up and bind the shaft. Unless the wheels have crashed into the housing or there is damage to the shaft, he can generally rebuild the turbo. The standard rebuild includes a sonic and bead blast cleaning, and inspection. He then puts in new bearings, seals, rings, followed by testing. Since my son's turbo was so badly coked up, he strongly advised that we drop the engine oil pan to verify there was not a coke buildup in the pan, and that the oil pump screen was totally clear. This was not a trivial project, but we got it done. There was a little coke in the pan, but the oil pump screen was clear. We also installed a new turbo oil supply pipe (required by Cheetah Turbo for their 6 month warrente).
Son has been driving the car for the last few weeks, and is much happier now. Car has its old pep back. Normally, a repair like this on a 16 year old car would likely send to the scrap yard. Since we were able to do the work and Cheetah Turbo did a rebuild for under $300, we were able to get the car back on the road for under $500.
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Gary D
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