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Turbocharger, Can anyone help?

9K views 15 replies 6 participants last post by  campb292 
#1 ·
I have a 2016 1.5L with a bad turbo. I am looking to replace it myself instead of paying the thousands of dollars at the dealership. I am only stuck on one part, the Wastegate Solenoid. Can anyone tell me if I need just the Turbocharger Wastegate solenoid, or if I need the regular turbocharger waste gate with mounting bracket, or if I need both? The price difference is $40 vs $123. I am unable to find much information about which one I need while looking on the internet.
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#2 ·
I guess it depends on what the symptoms were. If the solenoid was bad, yes you have to replace it. If the turbo or wastegate was bad, that doesn't necessarily mean the wastegate regulator solenoid was bad. If you just want to replace it while doing the work you could probably just use the solenoid. The top one is nice - I match that part number and it appears to include the hoses.

I'm afraid I haven't read any reports of anyone experiencing a turbo failure on gen9 yet so there isn't a forum guide. You have purchased the service manual or a subscription to alldatadiy, Mitchell, or something else right? It's a somewhat complicated 6+ hour job since it is fed by oil and coolant. Good work taking this on. Let us know how it goes and the results. I'm also interested in what happened and/or what codes occured.

Edit: I did find a report of a dealer replacing a turbo but it ended up being a bad diagnosis of the P0299 ice issue.
 
#3 ·
I guess it depends on what the symptoms were. If the solenoid was bad, yes you have to replace it. If the turbo or wastegate was bad, that doesn't necessarily mean the wastegate regulator solenoid was bad. If you just want to replace it while doing the work you could probably just use the solenoid. The top one is nice - I match that part number and it appears to include the hoses.

I'm afraid I haven't read any reports of anyone experiencing a turbo failure on gen9 yet so there isn't a forum guide. You have purchased the service manual or a subscription to alldatadiy, Mitchell, or something else right? It's a somewhat complicated 6+ hour job since it is fed by oil and coolant. Good work taking this on. Let us know how it goes and the results. I'm also interested in what happened and/or what codes occured.

Edit: I did find a report of a dealer replacing a turbo but it ended up being a bad diagnosis of the P0299 ice issue.

Thank you! I have just started looking into doing it. My uncle has replaced the turbo on his WRX twice and is going to assist me with it. I have not bought those yet, but will look into what the best option would be. The error code I got from the diagnostic check is P0234, which is an overboot being detected. I think to be safe we might just replace both, or at least purchase both and return it if its not used.
I will update this post once we get the work done, hopefully it is a good experience!
 
#6 ·
I haven't been involved with turbos much as we haven't see them fail yet. I'm learning. Some pics of the turbocharger wastegate regulator solenoid valve below. Took me a minute to find a diagram already posted publicly.
 

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#7 ·
We might be on to something here, I’m having a very similar issue now with my 16 lt. I got a po299 code yesterday and a po234 today, the exact opposite trouble codes confused me a little, assuming the po299 was more than likely the frozen charge air cooler issue. I drove it in the bitter cold back home from Denver earlier this week, the whole drive was well below zero for ambient temps. Temps get back into the 40-50s this weekend so I’m going to use that for a possible diagnosis. I was deeming the charge air cooler as the smoking gun until the overboost showed up. Maybe ice in the solenoid can cause both codes? This is this car’s 5th winter without a garage and has never had issue until now.
 
#8 ·
I am sorry i haven’t updated this sooner.
After my dealership told me I needed a new turbo, I started looking into other options. Once Campb told me about the frozen solenoid I looked into that. Outside temperatures came up for the first time in a few days. Check engine light went away. So I had onstar run multiple diagnostic checks and I went to a few auto zones and no codes were showing. It’s driving like normal with no code. So give this idea a shot first! Luckily I didn’t want to pay $2500 at the moment my dealer told me it was the turbo. Hopefully this is the case for you too
 
#16 ·
If doing full replacement you will likely need the service manual or a short term subscription to a site like alldatadiy. Make sure you have diagnosed it properly as they rarely fail - at least under 200k. Several suspected turbo failures have been something much simpler like noted above.
 
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