RDX Turbo is failing at 202,000 miles

[Alastair]

My 2008 RDX, which has been lovely, and my favorite car ever is suffering from a slowly failing turbo. I had been noticing some “glitches” in the shifting over the last 5-6,000 miles and thought my transmission was slipping. Then just recently it started burning a qt. of oil every 500 miles. The clouds of blue smoke at start-up have been epic and disheartening. I’ve been driving it for 11 years and over 180,000 miles.

My mechanics have ruled out the tranny and just scoped the cylinders, which look amazingly good for over 200,000 miles. So they think after talking to their contact at Acura, that it has to be the turbo.

They are leery of the new mostly Chinese made replacements, but showed me the cost for OEM new is around 6,000.00! Which is around the value of the whole car… So that’s out. I’m seeing some used ones pulled from wrecks for around 500-600.00, which seems reasonable. Also saw a rebuild kit of the blower rotor and spindle with associated gaskets for just over 100.00.

Does anyone have any experience with this problem? I could use some guidance. I’m tempted to buy a used one on eBay that claims to be from a car with only 120,000 miles. Looks good…. What do you think?
Any replies would be much appreciated.

 

[BigMic]

Most turbo motors are only good for 200k miles, what is the compression on cylinders ? Blue smoke is the blow by from the rings, cylinders my look good but the rings are wore out, I had an A3 Audi, had 190k, replaced turbo and had massive crank case pressure. Hence rings were bad. I would put a used turbo on it and hope for the best my friend

 

[Alastair]

Thanks much. I bought a used one on EBay for around 560.00. Ou of a car with only 112,000 miles on it. My mechanics installed it and solved the problem. Looks like some of my sensors got pretty gunned up though. Throwing codes, even though things seem good. Hoping for a few more years.