My Greddy Turbo Internal Wastegate is Broken, After just a few weeks too

Since my cracked manifold was taken care of by Greddy, I finally drove my car all the way from Philly to Manassas Virginia to get it re-tuned at Ptuning. After an hour their lead tuner came out and told me my car was boosting out of control at over 10.5 psi and he could not even begin to tune. They started diagnosing my problem and after playing around with my BOV and with my manual boost controller they finally ran an air hose directly to the turbo and ran it at over 30psi to try and get the flapper valve to work. It didn't. At some point in the 6 weeks I have had the turbo installed the internal wastegate flapper valve stopped functioning so I have been getting full boost at all times which has lead to my car acting all kinds of crazy lately. I actually was driving around with a cracked manifold and a malfunctioning wastegate at the same time. Luckily I noticed my awful vtec driveability weeks ago and stopped using VTEC even before I noticed the cracked manifold. I thought my tune was bad which is why I was eager to get it re-tuned as soon as the manifold was replaced. The tuner told me that it was overboosting even below vtec as well. He took off the boost controller which lowered boost on my car a bit and makes it slightly safer to drive to work.

Anyway, Ptuning has contacted Greddy for me and they believe Greddy is going to send me either a new actuator valve or a brand new turbo since its an integral part of the housing. I imagine they will cover the labor again just like they did for the manifold. Ptuning seemed shocked by the valve failure, since they say its incredibly rare to have that happen on greddy turbos.

My car still isn't tuned, but Ptuning only charged me $150 for a "partial" tune. They actually worked on my car for almost 5 hours, so it wasn't so bad but I will need to drive all the way back down there again after they get the new turbo/valve for the install and the actual tuning session.

I'm getting a little depressed and I'm starting to wonder why the heck I ever wanted a turbo in the first place. This doesn't seem fair and its costing me thousands of dollars and I never get to really drive my car anymore.

I have included a pic I got from wikipedia of an internally gated turbo below. This is NOT my turbo since you need to take the turbo off and pull it apart to actually see why MY valve is not working. They just isolated it as the problem.

The only good news is my car made 241hp at 5500 rpm before he shut it down due to the boost creep, so he thinks after I get my problems fixed the power should still be there. I just hope no real damage has been done.

Although its still early in its release

to greddy

Internal wastegates in general just suck. I've had issues with the actuators to the arm itself not working with all my old MHI turbos and even some Garret turbos as well. Internal Wastegates FTL and greddy for being greddy.

Your tuner didn't previously find the source of overboosting before because it IS very rare for a WG flapper to be defective, Mitusbishi turbo or any other brand. Evo, STi, Audi/VW 1.8T is just a small fraction of the list. Consider all the turbo diesel apps also and zillions of miles logged each year, and internal WG reliability is HIGH.

w/e. I've had 4 MHI turbos and the actuators in all 4 failed. You gain opinions largly from experiences, those are my experiences, that is my outlook.

Do you break stuff in general?

Now watch, I'm saying how great they are and then mine will break....

Is the greddy kit CARB legal? Or is it still pending?

Still pending, last time I heard.

don't you think your manifold failure has anything to do with the internal waste gate failure? did your mechanic inspect the turbo before putting it back on to the new manifold?

From what I understand there was no reason to suspect a wastegate problem as the cracked tubular manifold problem is common and Greddy recognized it as such and has been replacing them with cast already. On my car, my original tuner never saw any boost spikes on my original tuning day and when he did 3 dyno pulls after I got the larger exhaust installed. Some time before or after the crack developed, the valve also went bad. It appears to be coincidental. I'm just not sure when exactly it happened.

To answer your other question, my tuner did not check the turbo when he put in the new manifold.

The manifold cracked because of metal fatigue. I am pretty sure that there would have been a shower of metal debris through the turbo and down the exhaust when this happened. It might have scar the waste gate valve.

Other possible causes are problems in the waste gate actuator or the waste gate actuator arm.

Thanks. I had not thought about the possibility of metal debris causing further damage to the turbo after the manifold crack formed. I will be sure to bring this up when I call Greddy today to light a fire under their a$$es to get things moving on fixing my turbo. They tend to delay things a bit since the east coast and west coast branches of Greddy need to coordinate all the time.

I appreciate the insight. That's why I enjoy coming back to this forum.

Just got off the phone with Greddy. They plan on taking an actuator off of one of their turbos in the Jersey office and will be sending it to Ptuning in Va for installation. It should be in Va. by tomorrow, so I'm going to schedule a day to come in and make another attempt at getting my car right.

Glad to hear they're working to solve your issues.

I have an update on my wastegate issue. Greddy sent a new actuator valve to PTuning and they took the turbo off to take a look at it. It turns out it wasn't the actuator but the flapper itself that was stuck. They told me I needed a whole new turbo after playing with it, but they decided to give me the turbo from the only greddy s2k kit they had in stock and get greddy to ship them a new one. I want to thank PTuning for carefully reinstalling my turbo to their exacting standards, and for staying late to take care of me and my car. They didn't need to do what they did, but they really came thru for me. I can't speak highly enough of them to be honest. I would highly recommend them to anybody within reasonable driving distance.

The flapper was the culprit but I can't say for sure what happened to it. I have my suspicions, but I am fairly certain that this is an isolated incident. Greddy has been GREAT about handling my problems swiftly and I am very happy with their responsiveness. Just like with the manifold, they are covering the labor costs for the turbo re-install. I finally feel like I'm on the right path now. I'm staying overnight in Manassas, VA because it took all day to do the turbo re-install and they ran out of time for the dyno tuning session. Tomorrow it goes on the dyno in perfect condition for the first time. I'll update this thread tomorrow night with the results.

Those of you considering this turbo, other than the cracking tubular manifold issue and some map issues some people have had, its a great kit.

^^good to hear things are coming together. And for those considering the kit, they don't have to worry about the cracking manifold since all the kits are now equipped with the cast manifold (tubular is obsolete).

About your stuck flapper, in my experience, the most common reason for a flapper to get stuck is if someone dropped the turbo or banged the turbo against something, specifically hitting the flapper arm. That is, the part of the arm that is on the outside of the turbo (connects directly to the end of the actuator rod). Usually when ppl damage the arm, it is bent and rubs against the housing so it cannot move smoothly or it doesn't move at all. Interested to see what your particular issue w/ the flapper was....be sure to find out and get pics from Ptuning!