Ok I see alot of people running ebay turbos my reasoning for this thread is to hopefully gather a few of you to share; I hoping someone's lasted a year or 12,000 miles, and who was your source? Feel free to share your builds along with turbo type and best source for tubing. Im hoping this thread will help myself along with other noobs in the future pick the right snail to do the job and not fly apart destroying engine internals . I understand alot of you have track only info and not daily drivers but feel free to add your input as well. Much appreciated.

 

You're going to get mixed reviews. I personally have never used one. I wouldn't take a chance for what I feel is marginal cost of a borgwarrner unit. But that being said my definition of margin and other people may differ. A lot and I mean a whole lot of people run the E bay gt45 it's a 69mm compressor version and do so every day with very little bad to say. If you buy a 150 dollar turbo who knows what you get if you buy a 350 -400 dollar turbo (gt45) you seem to get ok stuff if you look at 600 dollars for a s366 it's smaller than the gt45 but it is made in USA . A s471 can be had for around 700 bux and will be a good option for the gt45 but it will move a good bit more air .if you want bigger s475 can be found at 600 ish bux and can easily get a small block in the 700 wheel hp range. But it's a game of how fast can you go on complete scab bottom of the bucket parts for some people. So you just have to decide if you have the budget for a couple thousand dollars build or if you want to be a 3-5 k kinda guy.

 

I've never used a bigger one, but I had a china GT15 clone on my turbo bike, and it did pretty good, I had a needle and seat problem in Alabama that thinned out my oil enough to kill the turbo, but I had to rebuild the engine when I got home too, so I don't blame the turbo for that. I'd get another cheap GT15 in a heartbeat, and fully intend on putting a GT45 china unit on my truck and seeing how that shakes out. That said, I have had two S475's and words won't describe how much I like them, I did kill one, but in all fairness, I killed three motors with it before it let go. I probably should've taken in apart and cleaned it after a blow up in retrospect, but the one I have now was new in 2009 and still going strong.

 

ive run those chines to4e turbos. two of them max out at 650rwhp on the turbine side. compressor still had life in it though. ran those for years without issue. ive also ran a 70mm on3 turbo for a few years and probably 15k miles with no issues.