turbo replacement

my car when it gets warm, is pissing out blue smoke, which i am reliably informed is probably due to the seals on the turbo probably being knackered. whats best to do?? is it to buy a new turbo or get a reconditioned one, and how much is it for each of the above, and how much to get it fitted??? needs doing as i believe its losing a lot of power, as well as chewing through a lot of oil!!!

as ever, many thanks

chris

The cheapest will be a standard recondition, costing about £200-300 off the top of my head. To hybridise the standard T28 to a 360 degree bearing starts at about £400 rising to £600 for a top spec one like the GTI-R or superspool. A GT28R is a good option at around £650 on the current fccuk group buy, this will never smoke even with a decat and is a roller bearing turbo for great spool up. Fitting of a turbo costs about £100-150 unless you fancy giving it a go yourself, there's a full fitting guide on fccuk and it's only a days work.

is the smoke generally caused by the turbo, or is it due to other problems?? it only happens when i am sat in a traffic jam, and the car warms up. doesnt happen at all when it starts up, only when getting hot.

It's usually the turbo that's shagged, or the oil seals are gone. This is exacerbated if the catalytic converter is removed, because of the loss of back pressure. They say that you can test if the oil seals have gone by leaving the coupe running for five minutes once warm, after this period if you're getting a lot of white-ish smoke, then it's done for. However in practice you'll also notice a lot of smoke when booting it if you look in the rearview.
If you replace/recon the turbo and you're still getting smoke, well, you got problems!

there is a lot of smoke once the running thing when warm is done, as i said, it happens when in traffic, but no sign of it in the rear view when i boot it!

no cat, and really only started doing it when i took it off, been off for over a year now, but i aint been driving it for a leong time, and now noticing a few little things going wrong. there a few more, but lets get one thing sorted at a time!!!