What are the advantages and disadvantages of bearing turbos? Are they preferred over non-bearing turbos? Any maintenance issues? Thanks for the info in advance.

 

The rage of ball bearing turbos is their ability to spool up faster and stay spooled between shifts and what not. I've had both ball bearing and non ball bearing turbos. IMO and experience, it's all hype. For the additional cost and the fact that ball bearing turbos are supposedly not rebuildable...no thanks.

 

Not rebuildable? W/ Garret/Tials you get a guaranteed new cartridge for $450 for both turbos no matter the cause of failure (that includes labor, everything...send any authorized turbo builder the turbos and 450 and you get essentially new turbos).

 

You would probably need a GPS timing device to tell the difference in spool up but if you need every 1/100 for an ET...

The durability of the ball bearing turbos is also greater than non-ball bearing. If you are going to track it alot I would go with ball bearings.

 

Advantages of ball-bearing turbos is they are known to spool quicker. They are prefered over non-bb. The only draw back is they cost ~$1k more than non-bb. Also bb turbos need to be watercooled. I believe the set you were looking at was a set of hybrid non-bb.

 

less moving parts, stronger, better spool

 

so lucky u. u almost lost your $$$ if they were hybrids n non bb jk.

 

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