Spectre air filter destroyed my turbo.

It's a real positive thing to have these guys in your corner, you know? This whole group, including you and I, are sure fortunate to have such well knowledgeable , helpful guys like them. Makes this forum all the worth while, plus the others here that humble me on a daily basis by their expertise on these cars.

Still, that sure sucks about that damn filter..........

Bruce '87 Grand National
 
Got an email from Spectre today. They are sending me a prepaid box to send the filter back along with a check for the full price of the turbo rebuild! Bison sent the turbo and should have it back today. Im going to take the intercooler out and have a local shop spray it out with their air compressor. Plan is to vacuum out the tb and hope for the best. Should I pull the intake to check for any larger chunks?
 
air wont help , any alum will stick to the oil in the IC
wash the ic out with gasoline
pour in slosh it around and dump
 
At the very least you should thoroughly clean out the intercooler. I would take off the dog house and throttle body as a unit and have a careful look inside the manifold and the intake runners. Use a good flash light to see if anything is down there. If you find anything, pull the heads off, check them for any damage to the valves. If you see anything on the pistons or junk in the cylinders you need to clean them out very well. If you see scoring on the cylinder walls and your thumbnail is catching it, you may have to rebuild the motor. Turn the crank and inspect the cylinder wall of each cylinder with the piston at its lowest point.

You may not need to do all of this but if you see material in the manifold, it more than likely got into the cylinders. It may not require a rebuild but it is better to look and find out now rather than later and hurt even more parts.

Where are you located? I can have a look at it if that will help you out.
 
I am in Lynchburg, VA. Will pull the doghouse. Hoping the IC caught the bigger chunks.
 
m3x1c0 said:
Got an email from Spectre today. They are sending me a prepaid box to send the filter back along with a check for the full price of the turbo rebuild! Bison sent the turbo and should have it back today. Im going to take the intercooler out and have a local shop spray it out with their air compressor. Plan is to vacuum out the tb and hope for the best. Should I pull the intake to check for any larger chunks?
Click to expand...
The biggest question is ... Did they offer you a free replacement Spectre air filter ?
 
m3x1c0 said:
I am in Lynchburg, VA. Will pull the doghouse. Hoping the IC caught the bigger chunks.
Click to expand...
Yes pull intake check everything real good , nice to see they came through for ya . Let's know how you make out , when you get up n running .
 
Don't waste any time looking beyond the Intercooler. All the small pieces went right through the engine. There was splattered aluminum on the turbine blades. Rinse the Intercooler with solvent as Paul suggested.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Update: Per suggestions by Bison and SteveV I decided not to dig into the motor. Shined a light and used a mirror to look down in the intake but could not see a thing. Cleaned out the IC several times with gasoline and reinstalled. Dropped in my rebuilt turbo (thanks Bison!) and fired her up. Got a good amount of smoke on startup but smelled like gas. All that cleared in about 30 seconds and she ran like a top. Put about 100 miles on it since then and nothing eventful has happened except that it spools amazing and my radiator is struggling in this heat. Working on putting an fbody rad in for that.

As for Spectre, I got an email saying they were shipping me a box to return the air filter in and are sending me a check for the price of the turbo rebuild. Have not received them yet but we will see...

For now it just feels amazing to have my car back and cannot thank this board and all its members enough. All the information on this site is just amazing and guys like Bison, Steve, Chuck and all the rest who are willing to share so much experience make this site something truly special. I frequent 5 liter forums for my "other" car and there is not one like these guys over there. Thank you all so much!
 
i'd be highly impressed if they sent you money just because you said their filter caused your turbo to fail.

i'm not rooting against you. it just sounds way too easy.
 
stricken6 said:
i'd be highly impressed if they sent you money just because you said their filter caused your turbo to fail.

i'm not rooting against you. it just sounds way too easy.
Click to expand...
Well I had to show them receipts, photographs, send them every single detail of my car, and send out an oil sample to be lab tested. I'd say it wasnt super easy...
 
sorry, didn't read the whole thread. I assumed receipts and pictures were involved. just still seems easy even with the oil sample. maybe I just have general trust problems:) Must be a poker player thing.
 
Good deal. When a nut trashed my turbo I ended up with a flattened plug from a piece of the compressor. I pulled the heads and found nothing because it ran the pieces on out the exhaust. Splattered aluminum on the turbine same as yours. I would call it good.
 
Von said:
I'm not a GN owner but I still wanted to show my Spectre filter experience.

http://www.yellowbullet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1485346
Click to expand...

Just went through your thread. I wont comment too much but Spectre made it right for me. Because they were so cool about it I feel fine using a K&N for now. Can't warn people enough about the chrome button ones though. I go to the parts store so often here that the guys at advanced have actually been using my story to upsell people onto the K&N instead.
 
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