I'm just in the process of designing the plumbing for the car. On the donor, there was a seperate connector on the top of the radiator for the Turbo:


Rover Donor Turbo Plumbing

The bottom pipe to the turbo fed into (or is that out of?) a tee piece in the lower radiator pipe.

First question is, as this circuit is outside of the water pump's influence, does the turbo pump it's own water, or does it just work on convection?

Second, related question. As I'm using a different radiator on the build, I've not got this extra connector on it. Now I supposed I could simply run a pipe to a tee piece as near as possible to the radiator end on the top radiator hose? However, the original outlet pipe for the heater (below) is going to be redundant:


Possible re-use of heater connector?

Do you think I could use this for the turbo? Note that there will be no thermostat as I'm using an electric water pump.

Cheers,
Bill

[Edited on 7/9/08 by bilbo]

[Edited on 7/9/08 by bilbo]

You're using the same turbo as me and I had a smiar issue with my install.

You probably know this aready but the water connection isnt to cool the turbo as such its to ensure that the oil in the turbo cools slowly after the engine is turned off so it doesnt coke the bearings.

So really you dont need much flow through it at all, just a connection above and below the turbo to allow a bit of convection driven circulation after the engine is switched off.

I tee-d into the top hose just before the rad for the narrow connection on the turbo and tee-d into the bottom hose for the larger one.

Had no problems although it would show up as a turbo reliabiity issue rather than anything more acute.

Geoff

quote:

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Originally posted by jambojeef
You probably know this aready but the water connection isnt to cool the turbo as such its to ensure that the oil in the turbo cools slowly after the engine is turned off so it doesnt coke the bearings.
Geoff

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i think you might find that it is to cool the turbo as the oil and water ways are usually quite a way appart
oil also cools slower than water and although the water does help with the anti coaking it also cools the main shaft bearings which is essential hence world rally teams use seperate radiators and header tanks for their turbo s which you can now get for some homolagation specals eg cosworths imprezza s and evo s if i were you either get a t piece turned up on a friends lathe (5 min job) or get a hose from sfs or samco they do reducing t s for that job

Jambobeef is correct, the water in plain bearing turbos is primarily to counter the effects of heatsoak when the engine is stopped )(i.e. prevent cooking the oil). These can be run without water cooling plumbed in at the expense of turbo life.

Ball bearing turbos have a fairly limited oil supply which is insufficient to cool the turbo without water assistance.