Turbo timers

[macca86]

I've got mine on 2 mins

[june]

same here. 1 minute is standard setting on mine.

[Sir Roofy]

If you where running 400 -500 horsepower and running longdistance
you most likely would need a timer,you dont need one in a patrol just to run up the road to work
or the shops ,as td stated its a wank job,you know where your work is ,you know where the shops are and you know when looking for a camp spot you just back off before you get there,these modern diesels dont need much of a warm up
and dont need to idle down to much other wise you do more damage by letting them sit to long

[Sir Roofy]

mazda fitted factory turbo timers to the series 8 rx7 and nissan fitted them to the 180sx, they are good if you wire them correctly! The earth wire needs to be connected to the handbrake wire so when its down the timer won't work (no earth/ground)

if you have ever seen how a turbo and exhaust glow it takes longer then 30 seconds to cool it down, even if your engine combustion temps reduce doesn't mean that the turbo has cooled. No turbo timer can size bearings and make seals hard and also potentially crack housing, i cracked 2 turbos on one my first cars (1984 nissan exa coupe) even tho i left it count down from a minute. On my toy i have an auto counting timer that starts off from 1 min but increases the longer i drive over 3,000rpm.

mate its all good and well what your saying,but were not talking performance street cars that leave rubber on the road

[Cuppa]

Thanks all, I won't be fitting a turbo timer. And as long as the motor remains factory standard I don't see a lot of need to fit a pyrometer either. It's rare for the truck to get used 'hard' so I reckon just leave it as is.

Cuppa

[Alitis007]

mate its all good and well what your saying,but were not talking performance street cars that leave rubber on the road

I get what your saying mate but know differently from experience, even standard turbo motors not driven hard will start to glow the back of the turbo soon as you creat boost so its your choice as the operator how you choose to maintain and operate your vehicle!

[Squalo]

I wrote this elsewhere on the same topic:


IIRC, at idle a turbo is still doing 15,000rpm on a diesel (ballpark figure), so even if you let your EGTs drop to the lowest they can get to before shutting off, your turbo shaft will then need to shed the heat generated by spinning at 15k, and that heat will be dissipated into the turbo housing... where the oil lines are...

The theory behind the timer is to run the engine at idle for long enough that the exhaust temp comes down, which in turn allows the impeller housing to cool down before oil flow through it is shut off. If it's left hot the oil can burn inside the galleries (known as 'coking'), and over time this will impede oil flow to the impeller shaft bearings, with predictable results.

I can't see how EGT can be used as a threshold for safe turbo shut-down; gas cools far more quickly than metal or water. So 200 on your EGT gauge at shut-down is not reflective of the heat retained in the turbo housing, not even close. The probe in the manifold housing doesn't read temp from the coupling; it reads temp from the tip of the probe.

It's probable that modern materials, engineering tolerances and oil compositions make idling down the temp largely unnecessary, but I am certainly not taking chances... I run my timer at 30 seconds and almost always let it run out (unless I've just arrived home as the last minute or so of the drive is very low rpm and mostly downhill). When I go wheeling or up the beach I bump it to 3 or 5 minutes.

[Dominator]

I have my 'turbo timer' running off my EGT gauge. It is set to shut down at 140deg pre-turbo. While I know what your saying Squalo I still think EGT has to be a more accurate way of allowing the turbo to cool down. I have found that if I go to the shops and take it easy while looking for a car park, it does not need to idle. But I live 100m from a 100kph road so I can't just take it easy for the last couple if mins and I mostly have exhaust temps of over 200 deg when i turn my car off so the car will run down for up to 5 mins.

And Cuppa, you might be quite unpleasantly surprised with how high EGTs can get on a factory tune, especially on a DI ZD30 . A pyro is pretty cheap insurance if you ask me.