COMP Turbo Oil-Less Weird Noise
 

Quick background. I bought this kit around Jan '18, installed it late July '18. It's done about 6000Km now. Last service was at 5000Km when I changed the engine oil as well. 5 pumps of turbo grease went into it as instructed.

Over the weekend went on a club run through some twisties. Didn't really push it all that hard ( cause of all them normie NA 370s up in front :p ). Got to the meeting spot and noticed a very loud audible high pitched almost bearing like noise coming from the Turbo.

What's super weird is after shutting the car off, and immediately turning it back on 10 seconds later and about 95% of the sound was completely gone. I couldn't see any leaking from the zerk fitting, but I'll get a chance to properly go under later this week.

Any other COMP guys here ever experienced this? :ugh::confused:

Before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXmkeFm_IrM

After: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EsnEj2tu8I

After it breaks in it does get louder ..a lot louder ..you can hear the ball bearings more when spinning down ...I freaked out when mine did it ...I was told it’s normal and haven’t had any issues

...I did remove the turbo and inspected everything ..everything looked good nothing rubbing inside and still spins freely.

Nothing to worry about. The grease liquefies with spirited driving, and becomes less of a resistance...so everything spins faster.

How come the sound disappears just by shutting it off and turning it back on? That doesn't seem right at all to me. I get the feeling I may have under greased it. The only remote idea that makes some sense when I think about it, is the grease while liquefied is spun outwards and not lubing properly while the turbo is spinning, and shutting it off allows that liquefied grease to pool a bit enough for it to lube the shaft (or get to somewhere it's needed) so that when starting back up again the sound is significantly mitigated.

And yes, I can hear it spin down when shutting the car off when hot (takes about 40 seconds last time I counted), and I don't really know how to describe it and the phone mic may not be picking it up but it sounds different to the noise it makes spinning down.

Also in that clip you can hear another odd noise between 0:10-0:13 & 0:17-0:23, like this odd whining down that repeats every half second or so.

The sound in the first clip is the “jet” sound of a turbo mine does it as well ....Hotter the air the faster it moves and louder the whine ....maybe turning it off and restarting it temp drops low enough to quiet the whine down ......from what I hear in the video clips...it sounds great lol

So after putting this on hold for months as lot of other personal things were going on at the time (focus dominated by work, and what was left over on becoming a dad) finally had a chance to take it out a few nights ago and reassess. Swear it's getting worse and I'm reaching out to COMP. Horrible grinding noises in the few seconds before it stops spinning when engine is shut off. At about 6000Km / 3900 miles since install now.

I'll be going under on the weekend and seeing if I still have a zerk fitting... maybe I'm another victim of the dreaded loose zerk fittings, who knows. I sure don't. :confused:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gMXGTV96SY

That is the same sound mine makes. Did you pull yours out to see if the blades are making contact with the housing? I pulled mine and zero contact and makes the same sound. Sounds normal to me.

Sounds like normal spool down to me ... my first comp turbo had a very distinct sound and I thought something was wrong but it was just breaking in at around 10k miles ... I did have a issue with the zerk fitting O-ring leaking coolant ... so I sent it in and got the updated version that eliminates that issue .. second turbo is following same sounds as the first and is almost fully broke in .. but to be sure I would remove the turbo and verify the blades are not damaged or and binding and see how it spins by hand .. if there isn’t any signs out the ordinary ... put it back and keep boosting

Last 10 seconds of the clip sound bloody horrible. How the heck is that normal? Never once made that sound for thousands of kilometers and never heard another turbo sound like that spinning down.

Yeah I'm going to pull it out soon and see if there's any contact with the blades and if there's any play in the center shaft.

Got your email as well, I forwarded it to COMP.

To me, this is a normal sound. If you give it a few shots of grease it will go away. This is what ceramic ball bearings sounds like when dry. I had a Precision turbo that sounded very similar after the car shuts down, and it would spin for 20-30 seconds after shutdown.

If there was issues with the rotation assembly contacting any surface of the compressor or turbine, you would not hear it spinning like this.

It is the ball bearings that are making the sound.

Thanks.

COMP got back to me. Told me to give it 8 shots of grease...

So if I got this right; When servicing the unit normally every 3000 miles you give it 5 shots. But now not 1000 miles later they're telling me to give it 8 shots of grease.

That doesn't seem right. :confused:

It won’t hurt it to go a few more .. just waste out the exhaust ... but telling you to do 8 would make sure there was plenty in there

Should of went with the traditional oil feed. This sounds like a lot of trouble

If given the option ..I wouldn’t go back to traditional oil feed ..less heat to the engine oil ..no oil lines or secondary oil pumps ..but that’s just my opinion