Fluid in compressor housing (TD04-HL 15G)

[Cookeh]

Hello,

Bit of a weird one, or perhaps just me being paranoid. Whilst I had the intercooler pipes off to service the throttle body and TPS, I noticed that there was some fluid in the compressor housing itself. I don't admit to knowing a whole lot about turbos, but whilst I'd expect some light oil vapours I wouldn't expect anything else but air to be in there. I drained the fluid in question and noticed nothing particular about it.

There is no taint or smell, certainly nothing sweet from our glycol based coolants. Similarly it is colourless, and has no identifiable refractive or miscibility properties. It just appears to be water. All in all I recovered about 60mL (2 fl oz - a nice easy conversion for once! ). My questions are, where on earth did this come from, what is it likely to be, and is this my car saying it doesn't want to do 30,000 mi pa.

For context, we have had a very wet few days (150 mm in 72 hours), and just prior to that we had 4 days of frost. The car hasn't moved in this time. Could this just be an extreme case of condensation build up?





Cheers!

[FlyingVolvo]

If it's not coolant, I agree with your assessment that cold and wet conditions likely just caused a good amount of condensation build up. Some harder driving at operating temp should clear that right up.

[Sveedy]

^ Agreed. I don't know what the dew point was but I would bet it was high.

[Cookeh]

Thanks, both. Excluding the coolant jacket, is there any other hypothetical that might bear a quick investigation? Cracked housing, run off from manifold through a loose bolt, anything silly like that?

[FlyingVolvo]

I mean, water is water and coolant is coolant. I don't think there's any other reasonable explanation for what you've got there. It is possible coolant could leak from the seal inside the turbo, but usually that would also lead to a fair amount of white smoke out the back of the exhaust.

If you're poking around the turbo however, the coolant lines are susceptible to swelling and disintegration after time and mileage. They're kind of a pain to get to on most models, especially AWD, but they are worth inspecting.

This is what I found on the 1997 850 I rescued. Not sure how long this had left, but I'd wager not much.

[abscate]

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