Saab Forums - Saab Enthusiast Forum - Turbo rebuild pictures

Well, I've been meaning to take care of the smoking problem for a while now, I was pretty dead set on the turbo's rear seal leaking which is pretty common on older Garrett T25 units. With that intention in mind I went ahead and ordered a T25 rebuild kit and since my engine is out of the car for major service anyway I decided to try and do the rebuild yesterday. Unfortunately I misdiagnosed the problem as the oil that was being burnt up came from the PCV system and not the turbo's seal, but since I already had the kit on hand and the car had over 100K miles on it I decided to say "what the heck" and proceed with the rebuild. So far I only got the darn thing apart, it only took 3 hours, 1 hour was just running around looking for the correct size snapring pliers...

Turbo rebuild kit and the OBX LSD
https://saabforums.com/upfiles/673/a...k249568396.jpg

Turbo in a vice, starting to undo bolts (don't even think about a box end in there :D
https://saabforums.com/upfiles/673/a...j114983624.jpg

Using the bolts to push the exhaust housing off (sorry for a crappy picture)
https://saabforums.com/upfiles/673/a...c243595814.jpg

Exhaust housing off. See that giant snap ring? That took 30 minutes to get off, it's extremely hard to get it out of there...it holds the cold side of the turbo in place.

https://saabforums.com/upfiles/673/a...h760551584.jpg

Here's the pic of the cold side after the housing was knocked off....using a low tech method of tapping it with a hammer...
https://saabforums.com/upfiles/673/a...c349551439.jpg

At this point it's important to marke the relationship of the extruder and the impeller wheels if you don't plan on sending this off to get rebalanced. I just used a marker (not shown) After that you undo the nut (easier said than done, be as creative as you want, but the threadsare REVERSE, so you will need to turn clockwise to undo it, if you forger about this you will twist the shaft and it will become useless. Next picture shows the center section with the wheels and shaft removed. You will need a gear puller to push the shaft through the wheel... and this snap ring wasn't hard at all to remove...
https://saabforums.com/upfiles/673/a...y724466163.jpg

This is it for now, I did get further in disassembly like taking the seal plate off (that's what the snapring was holding). You'll need something that can grab it, it wasn't planning on falling out. After that you'll need to remove three torx t15 screws that hold the thrust collar in place (MAKE DAMN SURE NOT TO STRIP THEM) and there are a couple small snap rings that hold the brass inserts in palce, which aren't a problem. Once you're at this point it's a breeze to continue. I'll post more once I get more progress on this.