|
Whoa whoa whoa, this is getting out of hand. VW does not use a crappy turbo.
They did opt for a VNT design to make the engine as driveable as possible. This turbo can spool to 6psi of boost at 1400 rpm and 15psi by 1800rpm, holding 15 psi all the way through 5000 rpm. It is a very capable turbo. The wide range of vane position makes it susceptible to a few issues potentially. People who never use the full range of the VNT vanes or get the turbo and engine hot enough by driving too slow will accumulate soot in the entire mechanism and suffer performance issues relating to this. The dealership will nearly ALWAYS tell you the turbo is shot and needs replacing, in a bid to generate $1000 of income for themselves. Unfortunately people usually believe them and then complain loudly on the internet when all they needed was an actuator cleaning.
On the other side of things are people like vwbeamer who run a crappy chip tune (no offense, but upsolute sucks as is known to overboost), then pull a heavy trailer and expect everything to be fine. vwbeamer, do you have a boost gauge? The turbo is very durable under certain conditions but becomes endangered at anything over 20 psi. It is also very close to the surge regime during full throttle under 1800rpm. Operating at heavy boost and low rpms will shorten its lifespan for sure.
One can find many people over 200k miles on tdiclub.com still on their stock turbo (and fuel injection pump).
Oh and per the biodiesel question, yeah, use as high a % as you can. I see you are in the midwest, so you'll want to run a B20 mixture whenever the low temperatures can dip under 35 degrees F. But 100% is fine all summer long.
|