I have a question about cooling a turbo with water. I am using two thunderchicken turbos and they have a port for water to flow through to cool. Is this worth running? I am I taking a big risk by not running water through them?

 

If they have coolant passages use them.
If this is a non ball bearing turbo it would not be good if you went with out them.

 

Water cooling is better than no water cooling, but not neccesary. If you have it, use it.

I've been running my Talon's non-water cooled thrust bearing T3/T4 pretty hard for the last year, no problems here. I turbo-time it religiously though (regardless of what some people think about it).

 

Those things are built with 2 different types of bearings, some bronze ones and some what look like aluminum ones. Most rebuild kits have the bronze ones, and most of the ones that I’ve found on the east coast have bronze ones were a friend of mine that has been searching them out in CA is finding a lot of the others.

The bronze ones are the same as the non water cooled turbos used and they’ll be fine without water in the jackets, the aluminum looking ones won’t tolerate much more then just track use without water cooling. If you don’t want to run water to the center section get a rebuild kit with a set of bronze bearings and drop them in…

 

I heard that if you want to drive the car on the street, you should use water cooled center sections. It makes sense too. Thats why i have a water cooled turbo.