Just 5minutes after I departed to work, I got a yellow check engine light. It seemed to cut the turbo off, leaving me with zero boost.

The car lost power and the the engine started making weird whining noises.

What can this be? Can anybody help? Oh I have the N18 turbo charged engine, 56,000miles on the clock, premium fuel all the time.

Check out the whining noise in the video below.

 

I only heard a motorcycle driving by, but that first noise sounds like your turbo. Then again it could be anything.

 

Carbon build up wouldn't make that much noise, sounds like the compressor turbine is touching the compressor housing. It is all to common on these cars and 50k miles is about average life of a Mini Cooper turbo.

 

Thank you for the reply. The noise also seem to increase with the revs. (Louder at 2000-3000rpm) I think its the turbo too.

I'm out of warranty how much would the fix be? Or is a new turbo needed? In this case can I plug a JCW turbo in? Can you recommend other aftermarket turbos that will fit similar to the JCW turbo? I'm planning to increase some power to at least JCW levels.

 

You either need to get the same turbo that came with your car or get an upgraded one from JM Turbo Coopers. If you upgrade you'll probably need to get a tune to take advantage of the larger turbo, you can't just go buy an aftermarket turbo and go from there. It's been difficult to get larger turbo working properly with the ECU, the ECU fights for control of the turbo and when you stick a larger turbo on your ECU will have trouble with the larger compressor without a tune!

 

where exactly are you getting that info regarding 50k?

 

Well usually I don't talk business on the NAM I just try to help out with my knowledge and experience. But to answer your question Yes you can bolt a JCW right in, however as Systemlord said you do get the best results if you tune at the same time. you can contact us any time and we will be glad to help. www.jmturbocoopers.com


Also if you want to know how your turbo failed so quickly it is part two at the link below. It might not be real clear since we don't have pictures yet but if you call we can explain it in detail. Although sometimes before the you notice damage to the turbo you get large quantity's of oil into your intake system which can cause the valves to burn and hydro lock in the combustion chamber which will cause pistons and the head gasket to fail.




http://www.jmturbocoopers.com/Cooper...ton-Issue.html

 

We get this information from our customers. We try to find out as much information about what caused the problems before we recommend a solution. The majority of turbocharger failures on these cars happened between 40 and 50k miles. The problem is that most people don’t realize it because the emissions system works so well. Gone are the days of the tell tell sign of smoke from the exhaust letting you know that the rear pressure seal has failed. Instead we are left with almost no clues that the turbocharger rear pressure seal has failed.


Now a days unfortunately the only way we know that there is an issue is when you start loosing a quart of oil every 1000 miles or when the engine or turbocharger fail. If you do a lot of in town short trips turbochargers usually dies at about 30 to 40k miles, mixed free way 50 to 80k miles and mostly free way 80 to 130k miles.


We have done several upgrades on cars from about 2000 miles to 5000 miles and the rear pressure seals have already failed (see turbine with pressure seal below). A bad pressure seal will allow exhaust into the engine under boost and oil out when you let off the throttle. Over time pressure builds in the exhaust as the particulates in the oil build up on the catalytic converter. This pressure pushes the turbine assembly into the thrust bearing damaging it (see thrust bearing with back pressure wear). Hopefully the turbocharger is the only thing that failed, however you don't know until after you install a new turbocharger and catalytic converter.