My car has been leaking oil from the rocker
cover. So when I got home tonight I smelled oil burning. It was dark so when I opened the
hood I could see the turbo housing glowing red.

Now I was running for 20 min on the Hwy set to low boost at 10 psi. I think I only hit boost twice the hole way home, so I wasn't running hard. There doesn't seem to be any leak cause it will hold 17psi.

My question is, is this normal, if not what could be wrong. And has it happened to anyone else?

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92 Talon TSi AWD
"why run when you can fly"

Heheh yeah its normal dude. Turbos get very very hot. I have seen my turbo and friends turbos glowing red like crazy. I just hope u didnt sh!t the engine off while u were seeing the red glow. That cause ur oil too cook inside the turbo and cut turbo life big time. So after u have runned the car hard always let it idle for 2-3 min before shutting down.

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92 Turbocharged Hyundai Sonata
[b] 92 Turbo Sonata

Thanks Thomas.

I have never seen it glow before. I thought it was only if you were running hard that it would do that.

I got a turbo timer so no worries.

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92 Talon TSi AWD
"why run when you can fly"

Highway running can be running hard, if it's mostly high speeds on slightly uphill grades.

I've never seen my turbo turn red before, even after some hard runs. The manifold turns red but the turbo doesnt, wierd.
I've seen Solomon's turbo glow red, boy was it ever a light show

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1993 Talon TSi AWD
Hooked on boost

Mine's the same. My turbo doesn't glow, just my exh. manifold. Even after *REALLY* hard runs down the country back roads....

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my lame-o website!

I'm going to disagree with this being "normal". I'm new to dsm's (about a year now) but I've driven turbo cars for about 10 years. Generally speaking, that is a symptom of a plugged up catalytic converter. The turbo can't get rid of the exhaust as quickly as it normally would and it leads to overheating the turbo. Eventually it will lead to premature turbo failure.

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91 Talon TSI FWD

Gary, shouldn't there be some more symptoms with the drivabiltiy of the car if the cat was plugged? I also have a full 3in exhaust including a high flow cat.

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92 Talon TSi AWD
"why run when you can fly"

Well if you have a 3" exhaust with a relatively new cat then I'd say the cat probably isn't your problem. Drivability wise, it's not something that happens over night. Basically, the same symtoms as a restrictive exhaust (slow spoolup etc). It's usually caused from cars that have a tendency to burn oil which causes the cat to fail. An easy way to check is just to run a test pipe to see if it fixes it.



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91 Talon TSI FWD