Wanted: WTB Detroit Diesel

Looking for a turbo for the 8.2l Detroit. Needing complete plumbing as well

If your wanting to find all of these parts to add to a naturally aspirated 8.2, my experience with these is the NA units live a much longer life. The turbo units had a lot of problems with head gaskets and bolts.


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Not the case. I need a spare turbo. Both are already turbocharged. Wanting to get a spare for the loop in a few years.

Man these things are tough to find.


1986 Mainship DC

"Wanting to get a spare for the loop in a few years. "

Good idea , much of the loop is regulated to 10klicks , about 6 mph.

The low power required may easily gunk the turbo.

Have you tried Diesel Pros or Gold Coast Power? You don't mention your location, better yet, have you tried your local MTU / Detroit distributor ? You need to make sure you get the right one, there are a variety of turbos for the same engine depending on HP and rating. Run the boat up to speed for 10-20 minutes every day or so and it won't get gunked up. 90% of the loop allows this. Turbos are expensive, and if cared for, very reliable; it never once occurred to me to pack a spare. Have a good mechanic check them and the engines out before departure.

bunker7 said:

Looking for a turbo for the 8.2l Detroit. Needing complete plumbing as well

Click to expand...

Try Superior based in Detroit
They just rebuilt mine

You may also want to check with Erik at Marine Diesel Service (MDS) in Costa Mesa CA. He posts in the 8.2 forum on boatdiesel.com and has helped me with a couple of questions and parts on mine.

Thankfully no issues with my turbos yet, I have done all my cruising lately at trawler speeds so will make sure i goose it a little more often

We would like to do the loop a couple of years down the road and difficulty with parts and mechanics for the 8.2's is a little concerning. I picked up a couple of the exhaust elbows from peninsular with the same thing in mind to have extras on hand.

Good luck - and let us know if you find a good parts source!

I'm thinking now to have an adapter plate fabricated to replace the turbo and still allow exhaust.

Thoughts?

Depends , on some turboed engines the compression ratio is lowered, some not.

Check with DD if you want to toss it .

Truthfully the turbo was locked up for a long time. I motored for a month not knowing it because I never got above 2200 rpm. I know the engine runs without it just not at its best. The adaptor would be a "get to a port" solution and not a permanent fix. Should be simple. "Should be" the key phrase.

Also of importance is that if the turbo didn't ingest anything harmful to cause a come-apart then just lower your RPM and keep going.
I pulled my turbo off in June thinking I could have it rebuilt in a couple of weeks.
Not the case.
That's why I want options if this happens again.
The engines themselves are absolute beasts and run great.

Found!!!!

Bought a turbo with a 1 year warranty, no core charge From superior turbo in Detroit. 1700.00 !!!!!!its in the mail.

They mill out the housing to accept a Borg Warner cartridge.

Call and talk to Craig. He said he will have 3 more finished in 2 weeks. Did I mention no core charge?

bunker7 said:

Found!!!!

Bought a turbo with a 1 year warranty, no core charge From superior turbo in Detroit. 1700.00 !!!!!!its in the mail.

They mill out the housing to accept a Borg Warner cartridge.

Click to expand...

You're welcome !

bunker7 said:

Found!!!!

Bought a turbo with a 1 year warranty, no core charge From superior turbo in Detroit. 1700.00 !!!!!!its in the mail.

They mill out the housing to accept a Borg Warner cartridge.

Click to expand...

Good info. I'm curious if the old turbine section was damaged such that it couldn't be reused? Air Research, right?

By the way, a couple of other spares I'd recommend is either an engine water pump (different than the truck engine) or a rebuild kit, and probably a fuel shut off solenoid. I also carry a spare starter, but it's a very common item.

I believed some of the phony balony dock talk about these engines ten years ago when I bought the boat (over one with Volvos) and started gathering parts. No turbo as yet, but I have a magnifluxed and decked block, set of heads, new cam, all the bearings, solenoids, turbo pistons/rings, gaskets...on and on. And in ten years I have replaced absolutely nothing on the engines except belts and some hoses. Absolute gems. Even bought the rack setting tool...looks like for no reason. By the way, MESA in Birmingham make new exhaust manifolds...stupid expensive, but available.

Back when I was shopping for a boat, I contacted Johnson and Towers who had marinized the engine in our boat. Spoke with one of the old engineers who worked the project back in the 80s. He took me through the variants and changes to the engine as they worked their way up in power. Based on that info, I've often thought about downsizing the injectors to the 220 HP size, as that's the only change from 220 to 250HP. he JT engineer said if an engine with the larger bolts didn't blow up in the first few hours...it wasn't going to (speaking of the 250).

The engines do tend to "load up" when running for hours at 8.4 knots. Thinking maybe a slightly small injector would help a little. That said, they start and run so well that I hate to mess with them. Guess I'll just keep running them up to 2500 for 5-10 minutes every couple of hours...definitely cleans up the exhaust. I've noticed that they run at about 165-170 degrees at slow cruise, and then heat up to 180-185 at 2500 with a load.

The "fuel pincher" moniker is well founded in my experienced. By the way, the folks at JT sent me their prop curves for the engine, which have proven to be quite accurate. Transmissions in our boat are MG502s with 2:1 ratio.

Love the engines...great V8 exhaust growl. Thank goodness I didn't buy one with Volvos or even 3208s.

PM me if you want to compare notes. Thank you and mbevins for the info on the turbos.

Great info Semi Planing

I had a lot of same conversations before we bought ours and so far so good. Love the fuel consumption at trawler speeds. Thought about buying parts too JIC - but have only picked a pair of the compatible peninsular exhaust elbows. Mine were marinized by J&T and same trans - also have original owners manual and a parts catalog if anyone ever needs something for reference.