Many production turbo'd cars have watercooled turbos, but I never see anything custom or aftermarket using them? Whats the deal? Too much work for too little gain? More expensive? Not even needed?

sounds like a good idea to keep the oil cool, doubt it will do any good for intake temps.

 

i dont really know why the factorys do it, maybe to help when drivers dont let their turbo cool down before shuting the motor off or when the oil doesn't get changed very often.

with frequent oil changes and using good oil i dont think anyone is having any issues not haveing the water cooled turbos.

 

You could just have a ring fabbed up with a coolant line in/out of it to mount around the area between the turbos, but that would require splitting the two halves.
Most people don't want to mess with a turbo's guts even though they are simpiler than a supercharger.
Got any pics of the water cooled setups??

 

they dont look much diferent. just imangine an extra spot for a fitting on the sides of the center section just like the oil fittings are at the top and bottom.

 

The water helps keep the ball bearing turbo's cool. I have used them on aftermarket cars, but the BB turbo is more expensive for min gains. I have a set on my station wagon, should be running and driving the roads next year. The TT silver 69 Camaro we built called the "Mule" has water cooled BB turbo's.

Kurt

 

The stock turbos (non BB BTW) on Syclone/Typhoon trucks were water cooled from the factory. Commonly called a "wet" center section its main purpose is to help the turbo live over many thousands of miles of brain dead drivers beating the vehicle then immediately (or almost immediately) shutting it down.

The water helps pull heat out of the turbo for slightly cooler running so that when the engine is shut off after a hard run theres less chance of the now non flowing oil thats trapped in the turbo being cooked to the point of forming deposits.

A wet center section is a little more of a PIA to plumb due to the extra lines but offers a little more piece of mind to some ppl over a dry center section. As for which is better from what Ive seen its along the same lines of agrueable things as which is better ketchup or mustard....depends on who you ask.

 

Those deposits are called "coke" or deposits of carbon from cooked oil.
Just imagine little bits of diamonds sticking to the bearing surfaces. next time you start the engine and the turbo spins, marked up bearings.

Synthetic oil is supposed to coke MUCH less that dino oil.

Mobil 1 full synthetic was the OEM oil fill in the twin turbo Callaway B2K Corvettes of the mid-late 80's.

peace
Hog