Quality

So what’s needed to needed to produce a ball bearing turbocharger capable of beating the competition? Let’s break it down…

Chinese?

It’s asked that often, we may as well put it out there from the start. Yes, we do indeed use Chinese components in our units, mainly in casting of housings. We also use components produced in the UK and also from various regions of Europe. Our strict quality control, attention to detail in build and our strict balancing controls allow us to ensure quality standard always meet our requirements.

Using China and other Far Eastern manufacturing plants helps keep our costs affordable. Take a look where your mobile phone and in fact most technologically advanced products and their components are manufactured...

Compressor Housing

Our compressor housings are made from lightweight aluminium and machined via computer controlled CNC machine. This ensures tight tolerances which are critical for high efficiency and reliability. In larger frame units, we machine in a anti-surge capability to ensure compressor surge is reduced as much as possible, with removed air being directed back to the intake ready to be consumed when the engine can digest it. For those pushing performance to the limit, larger frame units also include a speed sensor port, including a blanking plug, for shaft speed monitoring.

Bearing Housing

Cast in grey iron, our bearing housings have strong structural rigidity and good thermal capabilities with ultimate reliability. All of our bearing housings contain built-in water jackets which reduce the chances of coking of the oil supply / oil carbonisation within the bearing systems. This is critical in performance ball bearing turbocharger, especially in motorsport.

Turbine Housing

With Dual V band, T25 and T4 flanges (inc. divided option) we have options to suit most applications. Cast in SiMo ductile iron, silicone and Molybdenum are added to the iron to ensure superior quality and extreme performance levels are achieved, with reliability and corrosion resistance under the highest of temperatures 

Compressor Wheel

All of our compressor wheels are machined from aircraft grade forged 2618 billet alloy via a computer controlled CNC machine. This allows unrivalled performance and efficiency as well as maximum reliability. Following machining, each wheel is component balanced ready for assembly.

Turbine Shaft and Wheel

The turbine shafts are produced in hardened material before being mated to the turbine wheel by electronic beam welding. With the extreme turbine temperatures found in performance turbo applications, our turbine wheel are produced with inconel 713c super alloy. This has a temperature rating of 850c, supporting all applications with super reliability.

Bearing Systems

Our ball bearing systems consist of 2 rows of dense ceramic balls inside a steel casing. Ceramic balls are typically Abec rated to grade 9 ensuring long term reliability, whilst offering great performance, low noise and vibration, and superb heat resistance even in the harshest of environments. All of our ball bearing turbos use minimum oil flow, and coupled with the correct sized restrictive union we supply, it ensures the engine oil pump is not stressed with high flow requirements, leaving the pump to concentrate on keeping the engine supplied with plenty of oil at a good pressure.

Balancing

The single most important thing with regards Turbochargers is balancing, this is especially important in high performance turbocharger and ball bearing Turbocharger.

Where we differ from nearly all of the manufacturers is not only do we not have a production quota (meaning we have to rush through building and balancing Turbochargers) but we also send you a copy of the final high-speed balancing run in the form of official certification, including your unique serial number which is also engraved on the seal plate of your Turbocharger.

What' more, your Turbocharger is not balanced once, our units are balanced in 3 separate stages as follows.

Stage 1 – In production of the component parts (Compressor Wheel & Turbine Wheel). Each part, following completion, is component balanced to OE specifications. This is before we even build the Turbo!

Stage 2 – At this point, the “pre-balanced” components are assembled as a rotational assembly and 2 plane dynamically balanced at 4000rpm. This allows us to adjust wheel orientation via clocking of the wheels and machining both the compressor and turbine wheel as required to balance any remaining stackable imbalance between the compressor and turbine wheels. 

Stage 3 – Once the CHRA is assembled and dynamically balanced, it is time for a high speed run on our state of the art Turbocharger vibration sorting rig (VSR). At this stage we can run the Turbocharger up to operational speeds (in some instances over 200,000rpm) with full oil supply to check for any further imbalance correction required. Having no production targets, this is where we can spend that little bit extra time reducing the imbalance levels to a far lower level that the OE standard. At this point, we can also check for any excessive noise, oil leaks or vibration. Only once we are happy that the unit is perfect will we sign off the CHRA and print the certification, adding your unique serial number for your reference (and also save a hard copy on our server which we keep for the whole warranty period.)

At the time of print, we are not aware of ANY other manufacturer of Ball Bearing Turbocharger who offer hard copy certification of each products balancing information. Be Turbo Smart with your Ball Bearing Turbocharger and make sure it's an Enhanced Ball Bearing Turbo.