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All,
Any thoughts you can provide would be tremendously appreciated. I've searched through the FAQ and done some other online searches. I now have "guesses" but would like confirmation or other thoughts before I tear apart the car.
Car is a 1994 945t with a Mitsubishi turbo. It has 209k miles. I've run synthetic since 100k when I got it. Since I can remember I've had some oil in the intercooler and related hoses.
During a 200 mile drive yesterday I lost acceleration. Basically, I just noticed that I couldn't accelerate while going 60 or 70 mph. After further investigation I noticed that I wasn't getting any boost. When I pulled over I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. When accelerating from a stop I did hear a whine/rattle sound which is atypical of this car. (I've had loud turbos before that whistled, but this noise was different and this car had never has a sound before.)
Today I did some inspection. I pulled the intake hose and checked the turbo impeller blades. There was a little oil on the intake side. It *looked* like the blades had been rubbing the housing, but after rubbing away the oil it looks like an optical illusion. There was no end to end play on the shaft but there was a noticeable clink when I applied side to side pressure. When rotating the shaft and pressing sideways, I got a squeak that made me believe the blades were actually rubbing the housing. There were no visual chunks out of the blades, but this could have certainly been the squeal I heard when accelerating from a stop.
After that I noticed I had a little bit of coolant on top of the water pump. While there looks to be a "top" weep hole I'm guessing the coolant came from the water pump to head o-ring seal. This surprised me as I had just replaced the seal about ~18 months ago... 20k miles. (I had a poor block to pump gasket that was dripping 18 months ago so I reinstalled the pump with new gaskets last time I replaced the timing belt.) The WP itself is 70k old so it could be bad. When I checked my coolant reservoir I had no coolant! This made me wonder whether my lack of boost/power could have been a head gasket issue. Perhaps driving the car with a turbo that wouldn't spool up caused some excess heat that warped my head? I don't have a cylinder pressure gauge. (OK I do, but a relative broke it and I haven't replaced it yet)
I did pull the exhaust plug just before the catalytic converter to see if I had a clogged cat. Didn't seem to make any difference.
Thoughts?
With the blades touching the housing I need to deal with that, but I'm not sure about the head gasket. If the blades have touched will I be out of luck trying to send this out for a rebuild? Do I need to buy an all new core?
Thanks for any help!
-Simon
simon dot dodd at alum dot mit dot edu
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