How To Tell If Turbocharger Is Working OK?

[SteveT]

I recently broke a vacuum hose on my '98 S70 GLT (84k miles). I was told that the hose regulates the turbo wastegate and that if it was broken then I would get no turbo boost. Seeing as how the turbo on my car only adds about 10% to performance (168 HP - 190 HP) and since I really couldn't tell a difference from when the hose was on and when it was broken I was thinking that it might have been out of commission all the time (I've only had the car about a month). Does anyone know an easy way to tell whether or not I'm getting turbo boost?

[matthew1]

The whine of my turbo tells me it's on. It takes a foot on the pedal to get spinning, or uphill travel.

I don't know of anyway to inherently determine if it's functional.

[Tsquared]

You can tell the bearings are going if you have a big puff of smoke when the transmission shifts under hard acceleration - you need to be outside of the car watching.

Another way to tell is after you know you have bearing problems and you keep driving the coked up turbo then you hear the metal-to-metal grinding and sudden lack of power and the engine refuses to go over 2k RPM and runs like crap. Then your mechanic tells you need a new turbo, new intake, new head, and new pistons because the turbo disintegrated throwing metal into the inside of the engine wiping everything out on the way. Then is when you take the Porsche keys away from your wife and tell her that the 6 week European vacation will need to wait till another year.

[potroast]

the easy way is to use a boost guage. The volvo-supplied guage is uncalibrated, and is mostly useless. I suggest a good calibrated boost/vacumm guage (such as the Autometer Cobalt, which matches our interiors fairly well).