Your turbo is probably fine, for now. Keep running it and it'll be carboned up.

Oil should enter through a restrictor. I run restrictors off Mazda RX-7s. Other guys shove .040" Holley jets in their lines.

There are no positive oil seals (like a wheel bearing seal) on a turbo. They spin waaaay too fast for that kind of thing. The drag from the seal would kill the response and once it did get up to speed the turbo would melt the seal. They spin more than 100,000 rpm in many installations.

Do you have any idea what happens to oil when it's sprayed on a shaft spinning 100,000 rpm? Foam happens. Think of shaving cream. How do you drain shaving cream? Quick answer: you don't.

The oil returns to the engine by the magic of gravity. Your feed line is a tiny little thing and the return is a big fat hose (1/2" minimum, 5/8" is great). For gravity to do it's job the hose has to be down hill all the way. If there's anything remotely close to a horizontal part of that line the shaving cream will sit there and not drain. it backs up the return line and makes a mess by finding leaks to escape or flooding the turbo. If it gets past those not-really-a-seal shaft seals your car will smoke like a Cheech and Chong movie.

One of my return lines got tweaked into a near horizontal position. The engine would pump out a smoke screen that would drift across an intersection until the oil was up to temperature.

Oil in is always restricted and always on top.

Oil out is always big and fat going downhill all the way.

If you can't reroute the oil line into a downhill position you have two options:
1) Put it into the oil pan ABOVE the level of the oil in the pan.
2) Install a small reservoir to catch the oil and a pump to push it out.


Live and learn. You've done pretty well so far. One little detail got past you. Fix it and move on.


We are brothers and sisters doing time on the planet for better or worse. I'll take the better, if you don't mind.
- Stu Harmon