Bottom Line Up Front: water cooling is important because it helps remove heat from the center section AFTER shutdown of the motor.

If you have a turbo with the water cooling option, bb or journal, it is highly recommended you utilize it.

Details here: http://www.turbobygarrett.com/turbob...er_Cooling.pdf

Discuss.

 

I didn't know so much was going on with water cooled turbos, good to know thanks for the link.

 

Nice, I was planning on running water with my Garrett GT35 - this now gives me even more reasons to make sure its done!

 

Great link. I'm relieved to see that what I inferred from reading Garrett's turbo tech articles was correct.

 

Sounds like all turbos should be cooled by water, regardless if they were designed with ceramic bearings or not.

 

Every gasoline turbo car that is sold has a water cooled turbo. It's required for OEM reliability. Even the majority of diesel turbos that operate at lower temps are water cooled nowadays.

 

So how reliable are the new Precision BB turbos with ceramic bearings and no water cooling? I guess time will tell. Glad I went with a garrett turbo on the new setup.

 

The Garrett paper didn't really seem to discuss whether water cooling is still needed if you have a turbo timer or let the turbo stabilize at idle temps after a run. I'm sure it still helps, but is 90% of the benefit derived from protecting against the effects of shutting down immediately after a high rpm run when everything is still really hot?

Conversely, is water cooling even capable of making a difference in that situation? Perhaps the cooling effect is inadequate to protect the turbo once the hotside gets above a certain temp threshold?

My point is that it would sure be nice if they discussed this. Did I miss it?

 

Dam now I guess I should go rotate my turbo 20 degrees, and I wasnt even planning or working on the car this weekend, lol.

 

check out how the new borg warner efr turbos utilize water cooling, they have it setup with 4 water ports rather than 2, that way u can always have water flowing down and it will never be stagnent, u only use 2 but u have the option to route it anyway u want, pretty cool stuff