Turbo - Karput

As an owner of a series 3 Patrol 3L T/D I have sat back on this site reading about some poor bast**d who has had major problems with their early model Patrols without too much care. Motor blowing up, air flow sensors not cooperating. Well that was until today when I took my young (50000K) Patrol to the local Nissan dealer for a check up because of lack of power pulling a 2 ton caravan. My mechanic thought it was the air sensor but to my suprise I got a call to tell me that the turbo is karput. Oil was leaking into the turbo and that they would need to replace the intercooler.

Thank God for warranties as the dealer had it signed off by Nissan Melb and I should have it back late tomorrow afternoon.

There was no signs of what I would have thought a major problem, only a puff of white smoke from the bonnet scoup and bugger all power up the Toowoomba Range. Seems that the oil had been leaking for a while and the turbo was not working efficently.

Of course the dealer told me that they had not had a series 3 with that problem, but I could not be the only one that has experinced this in the past 3 1/2 years. I'm just pleased that the warranty has been honoured and that with fingers crossed, the Patrol should be behaving itself in the way it should.

I will have a lot more empathy for others when I read about mechanical failures in the future. The only thing that I will be doing next is taking out the extended warranty before mine runs out in December. Things tend to happen in 3's.

Cheers, Patrick