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In June of 2002, I began to notice oil leaking from the factory ct26 turbo. After further inspection, I learned that after 200,000 km's the turbo finally needed to be rebuilt. Luckily I was expecting something like this to happen soon, because the mechanic who built my engine had warned me that the turbo had suffered a "minor melt down" when it was run with no oil for a short period of time. I got in touch with a friend in California, who was able to get me a great deal for a rebuild and upgrade at Performance Techniques. The cost would be $400 (US) plus shipping.
The turbo was returned to me quickly, and I was advised that there was a crack at the wastegate port, which was not repairable. This is an extremely common problem with the single entry ct26 turbo, because heat is not absorbed by as much metal, and cracks result. That said, this problem didn't affect performance. I had the compressor wheel upgraded to a t04e 50 trim wheel, which is quite a bit larger than stock. Although this would increase lag slightly, it would allow the turbo to hold power at higher rpm's than the stock turbo.
The performance of the turbo felt fairly similar to the factory turbo at stock boost levels, however at 14psi there was a great improvement. If you do not wish to change from the factory turbo and plan to run fairly low boost levels, this is a good mod. However, it is quite expensive compared to the cost of a ct20b or other bigger turbos. Also, the single entry turbo design is not prone to cracking, which is one of the main reasons I upgraded to the ct20b turbo and swapped in my 2nd generation 3S-GTE, which uses a twin entry design.
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