Running a water cooled turbo without the water cooled part. Bad?

So my buddy was telling me how when he ran his 14b on his Civic, he didnt plumb in coolant lines for it and it worked just fine. Is this ok?

Many people do this. It's better to have a center section that is meant to be "dry," but people have run 14bs and 16gs dry with good success. Not sure I would do it on a daily driver that sees 100 degree heat in stop and go traffic every day, but... you get the idea. Try it at your own risk.

Oh, I wasnt going to do it on mine. Just a random question I thought of. The way I see it is they put the "water cooled" part there for a reason ;).

Yeah some people do it and notice no difference, but I have seen a couple cases where they blew their turbo significantly early. I guess it's like gambling.

i ran my 14b like that after my motor rebuild and it was fine. then i switched over to a used 16g that had been run dry for awhile before and its still dry and fine on mine.