Ball Bearing Turbos Vs Journal Bearing.

[MadBaz]

I'm in the market for a re-manufactured turbo, I've been in contact with a local company that say they can replace the journal bearing with a ball bearing cartridge, some machining is required, I just wondered if anyone has any experience good or bad or just opinions with such a conversion. I'm slightly suspect as I would've thought early turbos would've gone down the bb route before someone came up with the idea of using jb's.

[seatkid]

I didnt think you could get a ball bearing that worked at up to 250,000 rpm!

 

I would say this is BS and such a turbo wont last long.

[chrispb123456]

Agree with Seatkid the turbine shaft floats on a film of oil with minimal metal to metal contact, roller bearings cannot achieve this.

[f0ster]

turbos have a floating bush that is rotating independently of the shaft which spins at up to 120,000 rpm, this way the bush can turn at half the shaft speed and so reduce the surface speed, and also being fully bathed in oil eliminates metal to metal contact, ball bearings would struggle to cope with such high speeds, turbo technology is well tried and tested, I have seen turbos on trucks with 1000000 km on the clock,

[MadBaz]

Thanks for the input fellas, I understand how a conventional turbo works, my truck has just passed 600k kms with the original, the car however has just clocked 120k miles, I think I'll be giving the bb version a miss, although I was almost sold by the sales patter.