If I happened to be looking under my hood and hypothetically just found a vacuum leak around the intake area or the EGR valve, could that cause me to have no boost and possibly over stress my turbo to make boost and then blow the oil seals in the turbo? I mean, you know, hypothetically.
The boost gauge was hooked up right near the neck of the turbo b/c when I was just testing it, I had it there. Since I was never able to get boost, I took the gauge off and plugged the hole.
I took the blown T3 to the turbo expert buddy of mine and we took apart the WHOLE turbo, even got to the bearings and such. We found out that the used T3 had a oil supply problem b/c of crap in the turbo. When looking even closer, the T3 probably already had problems so I may have helped it along a little, but most of it was junk already. I'm gonna take the remaining parts of the hybrid to him to see what we can do. He also said since the front nut backed off then the turbo must have suddenly stopped. He was also saying that there should have been some type of internal by pass valve but I dont know of any. Maybe its like that on his Saabs and the Subarus and Volvos and other European turbos he's worked on.
If you remember the turbo elbow you got from me it had the internal wastgate that "Bypasses" exhaust around the turbo housing. Thats probably the only thing your car had at all.