Ever wash your turbo?

I've been studying up on the workings of an old D9 CAT, made somewhere between 1956 and 1959, tonight before going back out to work on it tomorrow. In the owners/operators/maintenance manual, there was a section on cleaning the turbo on your machine. The procedure was to take a flexible pipe and hook it to the intake(cold side) of the turbo. Then fill the pipe with a gallon of water and a non-foaming detergent. From there hook the pipe back to the outlet (cold side) of the turbo and start the engine. It said to run the engine at wide open throttle for awhile and then check to see how the turbo looked. If still dirty do it some more, if clean then disconnect the line off the inlet side and let the turbo blow the water out through the tube, in a safe direction.

I've heard and seen a lot of old tips, tricks, or other maintenance/repair related things over the years, but this was a first for me. So, how many of you have ever washed a turbo this way, or have even heard of doing such?

Nope, never heard of or tried that. I guess that if start from a cold turbo and impeller, sounds like a good deal. I used to have a couple of early '70's International 2070 Transtars and will always remember the factory stickers on the glove box that said after using, to idle the engine for 5 minutes before shutting down to allow the turbo to cool down to prevent damage, so I made it a practice. On my tractors I don't go 5 minutes, but go a few.

As far as washing the turbo, the closest that I ever came was when was stationed at Ft. Hood, TX, poured a couple or few gallons down the exhaust stack of one of my buddy's 5 tons as a joke while everyone was inside the shop and no one saw me do it. We used to have to park them lined up in the motor pool, and his was the closest to the side of our painted white shop with the exhaust pointed at the painted white shop. I knew the water would come out, but honestly didn't figure that it would blow out with the force that it did. The shop sargeant gave the order, "Everyone outside and PM the vehicles", and followed us outside. Ron fired up his 5 ton and there was an awful lot of built up black soot in there that covered the side wall of our shop. "Shut it off, shut it off, shut it off" our not very cool sargeant was screaming. He was about the most uncool, by the book sargeant there ever was, and if I told him the truth, he would have written me up or busted me, so I just let him think that something major happened, that it was oil spewed out because he was always right about everything as the book called for, and we followed his orders and pulled it over to the shop and let the mechanics replace it with a crate engine a few days later. One night while out having a few beers, after my buddy got a brand spankin new engine in his 5 ton that it didn't really need, I told my him all about it. He was happy. His 1970's M81x had a new engine and was one of the stoutest around thanks to my practical joke.

Mark

early 70's ? M813 with the Cummins NHC250? 855 cubic inches 240 horse beast. Only complaint is 3rd gear to 4th is too far apart, could use another gear in between. Got a 1971 Jeep Kaiser with 17,000 miles on it. Bill

I never owned a vehicle with a turbo but I washed many jet engine compressors.The reason for washing turbos or compressors is to remove the buildup of dirt to get the efficency back to atleast close to new condition.

How can that possibly work?

If you fill the turbo with water won't the engine suck it in?

If you connect the inlet to the outlet on the turbo and fill it with water, how will the engine get air to run?

Sounds like an old April Fool's joke to me.

He's connecting the inlet and outlet on the compressor side, so the engine's intake will be open.

It seems to me that if a turbo is needing much cleaning that maybe it needs a little better filter system.

Bill, its been about 30 years, but now that you mentioned it, I remember 250 Cummins. And you are correct, our 5 tons were beasts. I have a neighbor who's big farmer I just passed yesterday, and he has a 5 ton military tractor out there now that just showed up within the past week, but not one of the old Kaisers. Its the most recent boxy looking ones that began going into service in the mid-'80's that replaced the Kaisers. Good deal. He's going to use it out in the fields obviously because he has several KWs and Petes for the road to the grain elevator that work the fields too, but this is a 6x6 military tractor and there is no other place to need or use one. This guy's a big operator that leases all over around me and is one of two guys that mostly floats my local Deere dealer.

Mark