This guide is intented to owners of a defective/worn out turbocharger looking for a REBUILD KIT on ebay.

By means of objective information, this short guide is aiming at one of the most pathetic Ebay racket, namely the "DIY TURBO REBUILD KIT " myth!

This old and still ongoing hoax consists in leading people to believe they can re-manufacture a turbocharger at home, with basic hand tools and no particular knowledge or instrumentation, by simply dropping-in a "kit".

The eBay peddlers retailing these kits are laughing at you when selling 4$ Chinese kits at 300% profit. They don't care if it works or not, what happens if it doesn't and why, because by the time the customer attempts his home made "REBUILD" and finds out the outcome, they're long gone with your money! and still out there selling more of the same thing under another eBay name!

WHY a "turbo rebuild kit" will not allow to reliably re-manufacture a turbocharger ?

1. SIZED WRONG: Turbo "rebuild kits" always include standard (OEM) sized bearings & seals. However, over/undersized internals are most of the times required to compensate for the wear from which the need for rebuild originated in the first place. Even if properly installed, these kits are likely to leave your turbo with excessive shaft play and seal gap, resulting in a leaky, poorly performing turbo that's gonna rapidly fail with even more costly damages.
2. LACK OF PROPER INSTRUMENTATION: disassembly, reassembly, shaft straightening, polishing, balancing, the fitment of over/undersized internals and testing are as many critical steps to properly remanufacture a turbocharger that are absolutely requiring highly specialized tooling and workmanship.
3. BALANCING: The common belief is that you can mark the compressor wheel and index it at the same angle to maintain the balancing...sure thing.... But if the turbo failed and needs a rebuild, it's because of unbalance!!! re-assembling it without prior rebalancing is a WARRANTY for failure!! Would you change a car tire on a rim without rebalancing? Certainly not, because it will vibrate for sure at highway speeds! right? Then what about a turbocharger spinning over 100 000 rpm? sounds like something you want to wild guess at ?
4. QUALITY: 99% of ebay's cheap "REBUILD KITS" are not genuine components but low quality replicas. it's no problem at all for chinese manufactures to produce copies of the real thing for a few ¢ each but that's without any respect to the stringent OEM specifications in terms of alloying elements, heat treatments, surface finish, and dimensional tolerancing. It's well known, Chinese turbos fail just by looking at them. Then what to expect from a turbo, even genuine, rebuilt with these Chinese parts?
5. WARRANTY: So you still want to give it a shot to save some money??? Just consider that when your home made rebuilt turbo fails again, you'll be back to square one with a turbo that's even more damaged, more expensive to repair, collateral damage to your engine and mostly: more downtime on your car...On the other hand, a professional remanufacturing by any reputable turbo manufacturer is always warrantied. In the unlikely event of a problem, the inspection, repair or even replacement of your turbocharger is covered by the warranty of the remanufacturer.

Hopefully, with these facts in mind, concerned ebayers will be able to make a clever choice between the "DIY rebuild kit" and the professional, warrantied turbo remanufacturing.