I'm so friggin pissed today. So last weekend, I went to rebuild the HX35 turbo. Cheap assed Amazon snap ring pliers are a tad too short to get the bottom snap ring for the journal bearing on the turbine side. Not terrible, I get it in, and don't mangle it. Get the cartridge together and go to put the turbine in. Oh, I notice I have 1 oil ring seal for the turbine (the new gapless fancy kind). Hmm, my turbine has 2 rings. I email dude at Turbo Lab America where I got the kit and he says, NO problem, I'll send you another one. $8. $4 for the ring, $4 for the mail. Damn, that's not bad at all. So last Monday I pay him. Wednesday I get it....all the way to Memphis, TN from VA in 2 days.
Go to put the turbo together and in a bag for safe keeping. And the turbine WILL. NOT. GO. IN. It will with the old rings....but not with the new and not with 1 new and 1 old. WTF. After an hour I give up. Send dude another email.
He replies take some measurements of the housing and the turbine. Well, Sat morning I put the new rings in the housing It won't go. They are too big. WTF. The gapless part butts up hard. So again I punt and send an email. Don't get a reply Sat or yesterday. Figure dude is ghosting me. Until I get home tonight and notice my email failed to send from my phone. So I email him again, hopefully he knows what the hell is goings on.
THEN, my 19 year old son comes over and I hit the close garage button and halfway down all hell breaks loose and the garage door goes cattywampus 45 degree sideways. We get it back up and I am thinking damn...those springs I put on last year sure sucked if they broke already. They didn't break. The cable on the right side came off, so I finally got the door down. Made sure both drums are oriented the same. Get the cable back on. Release the springs all the way and rewind them exactly even. Door goes up and down by hand. Hook it up. It goes up, it goes down. It goes up, it goes and
s itself again.
I disconnected both cables, let the spring off and went and cooked burgers. I can't believe this POS door that's only 20 years old, would
up like this. What the hell is this world coming to. So I order a new set of whizbang 5 star rated wheels that will be here Wednesday. The wheels are pretty worn out. I hope that's it.
Maybe by then I'll get an answer on the seals on the turbine. Maybe I just need to get 2 old style rings. If they are too big, I can always file the gap like a regular piston ring. Oh which reminds me, this wasn't the end of my turbo pains.
So while I am trying to read up and figure out what's up with the seals, I read that the snap rings for the journal bearings should have the beveled side towards the bearings, and the flat side away. When I put them in, I did the opposite. Dude from Turbo Lab says bad juju happens so I said ok, I'll pop them out and flip them. An hour later I am sweating and cussing and ready to pour gas on the whole thing. The compressor side took 5 minutes.
It then took 20 minutes to get bottom snap ring on the turbine side out. FIrst try to get it in, snap-bing-bang it flies across the room. I search for 20 minutes and somehow find it! Woohoo. I then get it in, but realized I have now mangled it. It almost falls out. FRICK AND FRACK. So I use the other new one and it pops right in. Put the bearing in and put one of the better looking used ones in. So the center housing is DONE. Just need turbine seals and in the bag it goes.
I was trying to make an adapter to put a regular throttle body elbow on the 2.3 lower since the plenum is almost the same as a 4150 Holley although the bolt pattern is way off. Nothing seems to be working to well, so I broke down and sent my stock Tbird upper intake out to get gutted and rotated 90 so it's front facing. Hope it's here next week.