Life of a Turbo

Do turbochargers wear out? I am looking at buying a supra or RX-7 and was wondering if turbos start to lose power after a certain amount of mileage or use. Or do they just go tits-up all of a sudden?

Of course they wear out.

When they have two impeller blades that spin at 100,000+ RPMs they are going to wear out eventually. However, if you take care of them they can last quite a long time. I know people running turbos with over 200,000 miles on them. Two of the main things about keeping a turbo healthy are changing your oil and filter every 3,000 miles, no exceptions. Also, using a fully synthetic oil like Royal Purple or Mobile 1 helps. The other thing is letting the turbo cool and the oil drain from the turbo before shutting the car off.

You can usually tell when a turbo is going when it isn't boosting anymore. The bearing could be shot and the impellers won't spin fast enough or not at all. The car will drive extremely sluggish. A dying turbo also likes to spit out a lot of smoke as well. These are simply different signs of a shot turbo, there are many, and a turbo can go out very suddenly or very gradually. It just depends on the conditions of the failure.

Suppose I want to buy a Mitsubishi Eclipse with a turbo. Is it better to get one with the factory turbo (mileage i'm looking at is 75k-100k with me putting another 25k on it) or should I get a basic model, and for like $700 buy an aftermarket turbo? Which is going to be better?

Suppose I want to buy a Mitsubishi Eclipse with a turbo. Is it better to get one with the factory turbo (mileage i'm looking at is 75k-100k with me putting another 25k on it) or should I get a basic model, and for like $700 buy an aftermarket turbo? Which is going to be better?

It is always better to buy a car turbo-charged from the factory then it is to do it after the fact. The N/A car will not have the forged internals that the turbo model does. The turbo model will just have a stronger engine and in some cases a stronger transmission and axles.

I would buy the one with a turbo and drive it until the turbo fails then simply rebuild the turbo or replace it with a bigger unit.

Saab have oilchange intervals of 20000 km on their turbocharged models (which means almost all), wonder if they aren't going for 30000 km now but you don't need to replace the oil more often with a turbocharged engine. And Saab are typically known for stress the turbochargers quite hard.

Turbochargers usually give up quite fast when they are giving up, typical problems are the bearings and sealings. If the turbine or impeller is damaged it's usually FOD or some engine problem resulting in for example too high exhaust temperatures.