There's a guy on my local Craigslist who has a Subaru WRX Turbo for sale. He's saying it got changed "for an upgrade" And is claiming that there are 60k miles on it.

I went over the guy's house to have a look at it. When I went and checked it out there were a couple things that caught my eye. The tips of the turbine wheel look as if they have been contacting the inside of the housing, if you look at the tips very closely you can see that there is some burring that is hanging off of the tips of all of the blades.

The compressor housing has ghost mark all around the compressor wheel inside the housing like it has just ever so slightly been touching the housing. Also, if you look closely at the picture you can see that on the top there is a bigger gap between the compressor blade and housing than there is on the bottom.

I could wiggle the wheels side to side like the bearings are loose on the shaft.

Does anyone think that this would be worth picking up? The guy is asking $150 for it. However, he said that was negotiable so I have a feeling that I could beat him down to $75 or maybe even $50 for it. I showed the guy what my concerns were and he acknowledged that he saw them although he hadn't noticed anything before I pointed it out.

Is it worth a rebuild? I do like the fact that it is an oem Turbo. I need it for a motorcycle project so it is the perfect size for what I need. Do you think that the damage on the end of the turbine blades would hurt the performance? I'm only wanting to get 10 or 12 lb of boost out of it, if I could get greater than 200 horsepower at the wheel I would be very happy.

 

Anyone?

 

I'd pass - you can get junkyard turbos in good working order for what it would cost to rebuild that.