This is a long story but please read it, I will try and keep it as short as possible.

So beginning of last year [06] I bought a T74 turbo from Innovative. The turbo was purchased through the shop I work at http://wallsrodcustom.com/. Due to some mechanical and financial issues I only got to drive my car for a short period of time, approx 150 – 200KM’s. We have very short summers here so the car was stored for winter and a plan was made to get the car finalized.

Over the course of the summer we have a few problems with my boss’s car, a 67 Camaro running 2 Innovative T80’s. For whatever reason the drivers side turbo seized up twice on us after basically 0 KM’s of use. Both times my boss had to cough the bill for repairs. Innovative blamed it on us saying it was a lack of lubrication.
After being rebuilt twice and now being upgraded to their “F2” bearing design, everything seems to be going fine.

Flash to spring 07, I bring my car out in early May, the horrors of the T80 failures pretty much forgotten. Drove the car straight to the shop to put the car on our dyno and do a few pulls to clean up some areas. Everything seemed good on the dyno so we unstrapped the car and went for a rip on the highway just to make sure everything was ok. After a couple runs on the highway something didn't sound right, it sounded like there was a jet plane under the car or something, the exhaust was really loud. Everything on the laptop, temps, pressures, etc. were good so we eased the car back to the shop and started checking things over. No visual problems were found so I started the engine back up and reved it a couple times. My buddies told me the noise was coming from my turbo so we pulled the air filter off and gave it a spin by hand and right away we could tell the bearings were fucked. So I’m extremely pissed since I was planning on going to a local track day within the next few weeks. We call Innovative up and explain the situation, they say to send it back and they will check it out.

The turbo arrives to Innovative on May 31. I figure I’ll give them a couple days to look it over and if I don’t hear from them I’ll call and see what’s going on. A week goes by and I hear nothing so I call up and speak with Justin. Justin is the main guy we had always dealt with when choosing and ordering turbos for ourselves and our customers. During our conversation with Justin, he tells me that the turbo failed because of their bearing design and that they had had a lot of problems with this design and that they were going to repair it under warranty and upgrade it to the F2 bearing for free. I was stoked. I was told within a couple of weeks I would have the turbo back and that they were just waiting on replacement parts. I tell this to my boss and he’s pretty choked that they made him pay for his repairs but he’s like whatever, it’s done now.

This is where things go to ****. About 3 weeks later I still have no turbo so I call to see what going on. I have trouble getting through to anyone this time and the automated “which extension do you want” just keeps passing me from voice mail to voice mail. I leave a message asking about my turbo. No one ever calls back. I keep calling and finally get through to Justin. I get some BS about “still waiting on parts” and I know things are not looking good.

I have now gone through 3 months of waiting on hold, [at least 1/2hr per call], getting transferred from Justin, to Joe, to who knows who. Hearing everything from “we’re still waiting for parts”, to “we’re not sure if this is going to be warranty” and back to waiting for parts. The latest was “it’s going to be shipped out any day now”. On Aug 17 I received a UPS tracking number from them but guess what? It only says billing information received and the package does not move.

I am at my wits end and don’t know what to do. I call, I e-mail, I’ve been extremely nice, I’ve been a total *******, and nothing is getting through to these guys. I have threatened to get a lawyer involved as well as coming down there in person to deal with. The owner, Ola who my boss has personally met and dealt with at PRI will not return our calls or e-mails.

What do you guys think I should do? I have now lost another summer of driving my car and unfortunately cannot afford to buy another turbo to replace this one. The T74 cost me a good chunk of change and right now I feel like it's never coming back. And if it does come back, can I even trust it? To add insult to injury 2 of my close friends also purchased T80’s but due to financial and personal issues their projects have not been completed. After seeing what is happening to me they are scared to use their turbos. They don’t know whether to sell them and take a hit or to run them and chance a failure.

Please give me some advice guys. If you know anyone at Innovative, please have a heart and tell these guys to give me my turbo back!

Thanks for reading this.

Chris

 

that sucks

 

I've had similar experences with my gt72. Justin is a good guy you just have to stay on him. I've blown 3 compressor side oil seals on my gt72 with less than 500 total miles on the turbo. I only paid for shipping with the last failure and I was told they changed the center section for their new bearing/seal design but after about 350 miles on the street it blew out again. btw pulling off the block with a .035 restrictor, -10 return up high on the pan, proper amount of oil.... no fault of mine.

good luck

 

Garrett

 

holset


?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SwappedTURBOegg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">holset


?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Werd you can run one without lubrication and it still lasts a week or two Def ditch these guys for what you are spending you really should not be having any issues.

 

unfortunately my post here wont offer you any help or advise.....but fwiw we spent a lot of money to become a innovative dealer. purchased a bunch of turbo's all at once to meet their buy in requirement.

every single last turbo we bought...the car smoked like all hell. oil just pissing out of the turbo's. each time we called them about it, they said it was a lubrication problem and blamed our oil return lines. come on now, ive been doing this long enough, i think i know how to make a proper oil return line.

one of these leaky turbo's was on my DD at the time. i took their pile of junk turbo off and put on a precision. that precision turbo is still on my buddy's car 3-4 years later running perfetly fine.

another friend of mine has had his innovative BB turbo rebiult by innovative F I V E times now....and it still smokes. if your riding behind him, when you come to a red light you cant even see his car from all the smoke from the turbo. his oil feed and return lines couldnt be any better. its on a VW 1.8T which has the easiest oil return path ever.


i wouldnt sell a innovative turbo to my worst enemy. all the money we spent on our buy in was a waste, because our account has been innactive because their parts and customer service sucks

innovative

 

That really sucks that other people are having the same problems we are I didn't want to come on here and bash them but I felt I needed to let other people know what is happening to me so hopefully it won't happen to too many others.

BTW my car smoked too

Innovative

 

dayme... that sucks mang

 

shitty deals mang

 

For getting dicked around.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Turbo-charged &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">unfortunately my post here wont offer you any help or advise.....but fwiw we spent a lot of money to become a innovative dealer. purchased a bunch of turbo's all at once to meet their buy in requirement.

every single last turbo we bought...the car smoked like all hell. oil just pissing out of the turbo's. each time we called them about it, they said it was a lubrication problem and blamed our oil return lines. come on now, ive been doing this long enough, i think i know how to make a proper oil return line.

one of these leaky turbo's was on my DD at the time. i took their pile of junk turbo off and put on a precision. that precision turbo is still on my buddy's car 3-4 years later running perfetly fine.

another friend of mine has had his innovative BB turbo rebiult by innovative F I V E times now....and it still smokes. if your riding behind him, when you come to a red light you cant even see his car from all the smoke from the turbo. his oil feed and return lines couldnt be any better. its on a VW 1.8T which has the easiest oil return path ever.


i wouldnt sell a innovative turbo to my worst enemy. all the money we spent on our buy in was a waste, because our account has been innactive because their parts and customer service sucks

innovative </TD></TR></TABLE>


You guys should band together and start some sort of class-action lawsuit. As long as your lines met their requirements, you'll have a case. My guess is they have a crap design and dont even have any published requirements (documented for that particular time) for oil line sizes... If that was the case (no published requirements), you'd have money in no time. You can't have the wrong lines if they don't have published requirements.

 

sell me your teg..so you can get your supra

 

to innovative..
without a doubt i'd get a lawyer..

 

Sorry to hear. I was hoping to see your car at the track this upcoming weekend.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SickBastard &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Sorry to hear. I was hoping to see your car at the track this upcoming weekend.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I think Brian is going to let me use his turbo so i hope to be there for sat

 

shitty deals

 

**** Innovative


I'd like to see them chime into this thread if they have got the *****.

 

If they treat all there costumers like that this company wont last long

Innovative suck's big time !

 

boourns

 

check out the comments from these guys. doesn't sound to good.

http://www.supraforums.com/for...54197

 

i have also had some horrid ITS experiences... a race team i was working with had TONS of problems before switching to borg warner, i have TWO supra's at the shop now that are getting gt42r's after the t72's took a dump with hardly any miles on em. and the its gt6something on my buddys integra lasted through the dyno session, took a dump the next day at the track... this was a track only car.. bearings siezed up in all of em.

 

All I know is that "it is due to lack of lubrication" is such a pathetic cop out excuse. Man up and make the bearing design right the first time. Do your research and development and don't sell **** to customers and then blame them with a miserable excuse....pathetic, simply pathetic.

 

OBX turbos &gt; Ebay SSAC turbos &gt; ITS...lol

At least if the Ebay turbo gone with 0 miles, you have hope that the next one you buy can last a month and at a fraction of the cost... For ITS, the rebuilt one is going to be f*cked 99.99% just from the stuff I am hearing about them all over the web...

It's unbelievable the price of the ITS turbos are selling for... I would burn their building down if I bought a batch of POS turbos. At least launch the turbos at their shop and use them as missiles/projectiles...

 

i have a question.... i have an innovative turbo on my car which i've gotten thru a trade. I got the car and it smokes sometimes... but it's a light color. I kno it's not oil, or too much gas... and def not headgasket cause the temp looks good and radiator fluid is all there. What color does a turbo smoke when it does smoke? i'd like to kno because if the turbo is shot, i'd like to call up innovative. The previous owner also told me that he had got the turbo rebuilt because it smoked before. so yea, i'd love to kno