JDMevoBOOST

iTrader: (37)

I am hearing of some FPred failures now too. I'll let the actual owners chime in on exactly what they think happened though.

Erik@MIL.SPEC

iTrader: (94)

And let's just be clear, FP mentioned that an oil feed line issue occurred with one of their Red turbos, which wasn't the fault of FP...plus FP provided a solution to said problem.

crcain

From another thread posted today.. however, as said above these may have all been faulty oil feed line problems? But don't most people re-use their oil feed line from their stock turbo?

Jeff_Jeske

iTrader: (66)

A fellow friend of mine purchased a Green used. It had a minor wheel to housing rub issue that FP repaired under warranty for free.

We do no know the exact history of the turbo. I do not know where FP draws the line on warranty work.

I do know this.... I've run FP turbos on my DSMs. If you are responsible and not ragging it 24/7 they will last forever. Even if you do rag on them they will last longer than you would expect.

JDMevoBOOST

iTrader: (37)

Or sometimes they last less than a month of normal useage. Just like all car parts...sometimes they fail. Other turbo manufacturers have failed turbos as well. It's how the company deal and handles their paying customers that really matters here.

ForcedPerformance

iTrader: (6)

There are always some failures. It is part of success. Thanks to all the guys that have run our stuff for all these years for speaking up with your expeiriences with us.

Guys blow things up all the time if you want to know the truth about it. We wouldnt still be here if we didnt make a good product and suport it well. This is a pretty tough market to be in and remain in business, particualry when every customer service issue gets amplified and multiplied by the internet.

It is possible to destroy our turbos, just like anyone elses turbos. It is possible that we have defects, just like any other product manufactured anywhere else in the world. If we have any doubt about a turbo failure regarding what the cause was, we cover it. But there are many occasions where it is plain to see exactly why the turbo died, not to different than standing in front of a store window with a big hole in it and a brick on the ground and understanding that someone threw a brick thru the window. In cases like that we just cannot give away free turbos. Sometimes this results in trouble with a customer, and sometimes that results in a thread ont he internet.

It is a lot less common for a guy to post a thread and say that he is happy and satisfied. I can count on my 2 hands how many times a guy has called back to say "man that thing worked just like you said it did" but that is how virtually all the turbos turn out.

crcain

Thanks for the reply Robert. Just to clarify, I did not start this thread out of any grievance I have with FP. I've been pleased with FP. What happened is that I was in the process of actually touting the new Red turbo on a thread in the MLR, and several members were acting like FP reliability was poor because of 4 specific cases of failures in the UK. I actually defended FP and asked for those members to identify the failures specifically and they did.

Then I got to think about my own issue, and the other issues I've mentioned in this thread, so I thought it would be appropriate to try to find out more info.

I can think of 4 people I have directly persuaded to get Greens or Reds over the years. So I have been a big FP cheerleader. I'm just curious if there is any validity to the concerns over reliability.

Robert can you speak to the failures mentioned in California and the UK? Can you give an idea of sale versus failure ratios? Is there any stats for Garrett that we could compare the ratios to?

tnt1106

Thank you Robert!

My turbo is working just as you told me it would. The minor installation issues had to due with my Home Depot bolts that are now replaced with Mitsu ones. I am your happiest customer that enjoys his 450+ whp daily driven car.

dieselmd

iTrader: (20)

My good friend has had a Red on his Sti since '05 making well over 400 whp with zero issues. While I'm not fond of Robert's behavior on this forum sometimes, there's no doubting the quality of an FP turbo.

9sec9

iTrader: (2)

I'll chime in and also say, "I'm very happy with my FP-Red". I guess I should be, but I've had the opportunity to run the Green and the Red at quite high boost levels and down the track many times. No failures, in contrast to what was mentioned earlier about us having a failure. crcain, if you recall, I said that I noticed in the logs that our boost wasn't responding as quickly as I felt that it should. It continued to perform, but not like I expected. It was through tearing it down that we discovered an issue with a plate that helps to oil the shaft. I also said that we had turned the boost knob to extreme levels to maintain boost and compensate for a leaking intake manifold. In retrospect, it's pretty amazing that the turbo took so much abuse and still performed. I've now run/tested the HTA White, Green, Red and 86HTA and this is the only issue I've had. On top of that, they've all been run at boost/shaft speeds much higher than the average user.

ForcedPerformance

iTrader: (6)

To be honest with you I am not fond of my own behaviour sometimes, but aside from being on the bullish non politically correct and insensitive side of the road I really do make it a point to stand behind the product as much as facts will allow. If the parts are not perfect and there is no support then there are no sales.

Failures occur. With the Garrett CHRAs I really dont know what to tell you. It is a Garrett BB CHRA and normally you just dont see failures out of them. If you do it is during the first drive around the block, the first time you rev them out. If they live thru the first rip up to 160krpm then they pass the litmus test. If they run fine for a few days or weeks or months then fail it is normally due to the ball bearings becoming very unhappy with their environment such as being too hot, or too dry or rolling over something besides clean oil in the race, also the CHRA becoming loose in the turbine housing and rubbing the turbine blades makes the bearings and the balance very unhappy as well.

There were the inlet parts that fell out on perhaps as many as a dozen 35R based turbos about a year ago due to a improper fit of the insert, everyone invloved got free parts and 100% satisfied as far as I know and the design of the cover was changed to eliminate this problem. There were some dual puck flapper bits that broke in some Greens last year also, same thing, we were next day airing brand new housings out as fast as we could identify who had a problem. These issues were defects, having a bearing fail after running fine for X number of weeks or months isnt a defect, if it were defective it would fail the first time it hit 100+krpm. Things just dont spin that fast and live if there is something defective.

I think what some people are really interested in would be a "turbo insurance policy" where whenever something goes wrong, they can pay a $20 copay and get it handled. I dunno how to set up a turbocharger health care plan.

I know of a man with an exploded Green from the UK, it is in the shop at the moment. The person bought the turbo in the UK from a guy that bought the turbo while he was in florida from a shop that apparently bought it from us. I cannot document the purchase, the dates, anything. It is totaly fubar, assploded, broken shaft and it blew while at a very very high shaft RPM, rang fine for a while according to the report. I quoted a reduced price for replacing the CHRA just as a jesture of goodwill. Try walking into Best Buy with a exploded laptop that you dont have any paperwork on and see how far you get.

tony gibson

iTrader: (1)

Exactly!!!^^^ I have an FP Green with about 35,000 hard miles on it and just pulled the head off (turbo also) and noticed the green had some excessive back and forth play...like I said, 35,000 HARD miles and lots of track passes in the 120mph range...I ran e85 so I almost always run alot of boost. I will be sending it to FP soon to have it converted to a Red...What is this oil feed line issue people speak of with the Red turbo? I want to prevent the problem if I can.

Andy_8

I have had an FP Green Failure.

I bought it from a uk tuner, who bought it from Turbo Dynamics (uk) who bought it from FP. It failed as the finishing touches were the 1.8 Bar peak map. I was literlally 1 week away from the only 2 weeks leave i had in the first 7 months of this year and absolutely could not be without my car running when i returned home.

I did'nt have the time to wait around as the turbo was passed through three companies. The turbo was sent to A.E.T Turbos (a local uk firm well respected here in the turbo market) who pronounced it dead and not a candidate for salvage.

I was told by the company that sold it to me that any warranty was void by having an independant assesment. (had it been salvagable then the intension was to have it BB upgraded which A.E.T could have done in a quick turn around) Oh well..hurt but that's life modifying cars...bit's fail!

I'm now on my 2nd FP Green (yes i bought another one).. (no issues so far) and looking with interest at what the FP Red is going to do in the Uk. If the Red can make 550 Dyno Dynamics Uk Flywheel horsepower (Greens make around 460bhp flywheel here on our pump fuel) then i think it would be a worthwhile upgrade.

Andy

crcain

Thanks for the replies Robert and from the life of this thread I think it is pretty clear there isn't any evidence FP turbos are dying sooner than any other turbos out there.

Question for you, can you give us Evo owners a sense of what boost level would lead to over speeding them? Granted a lot of other factors than manifold pressure will effect turbo speed. But is it possible to use boost as a rough guide on turbo speed?

03whitegsr

iTrader: (8)

FWIW, I've owned 3 FP turbos and have sold probably 15+ other locals on them over the years simply because of how well they have worked on my cars.

I have yet to hear from a single one of those people about having any issues at all. Not a hint of bad customer service, poor performance, or a broken turbo. All happy and all would buy from FP again.

I've always been able to call up FP and ask any kind of turbo related question and know that I was getting a straight answer that wasn't a sales pitch. I almost always end up talking to Robert too. Kind of comforting to know the owner of a company is happy to answer questions about their products.

FP fo'life!