Thread: For those with a diagnosed stuffed turbo (error P132B)

Hey guys.

Sorry for the longish post but;

Had a bit of a drama with my D3 turbo diesel.

The engine message came up on a trip "engine system failure", with a resulting power drop. Of course it happens when towing a fully loaded car trailer 1/2 way between Melbourne and Sydney. Left in auto the fuel consumption went to crap and it struggled to pull the heavy trailer. I firstly tried resetting the battery and this helped for about 15min, but it came on again. It was pretty dark so I pulled over for the night. The next morning the car ran ok for about 20min and the danm message came up again. As it was daylight there was a plume of smoke under load from 1700-2300 then it went away, so I decided to run the car in manual mode, keep revs up about 2500, and the car ran fine with full power and no smoke.

Upon arriving in Sydney, I popped into Trivetts and got the codes read and the main one was P132B, which they diagnosed as a stuffed turbo and it will cost about 5k to repair (ouch).

The internet is a beautiful thing as I entered the error code, searching here came up blank, but there was abit of info on the UK forum Disco3 but not much. The diagnosis was the variable vane turbo was not activating the low RPM position, which would explain the smoke as excess fuel, and why the car worked fine at higher revs.

I found there is an Actuator service kit (LR023086) which is available for about 20quid in the UK, which is better than replacing the turbo, but the turbo is not in a real friendly position in the TDV6 so it would be about 12-16hr job (not 5k but still a nasty 4 figure bill). Apparently the turbo actuator gets jammed up with carbon either due to the car not being driven hard enough, and the EGR valve makes the intake a little messy.

With more reasearch with other diesel VVT setups alot in different cars had similar issues, and they had a very good success with using an intake de-carbonizing treatment. Seafoam is the preferred supplier for this, but it happens that subaru bring it over hear and market it as "upper engine cleaner", so for the princely sum of $36 I purchased 2 bottles of the stuff.

The procedure is pretty simple, with a pre warmed engine, just disconnect the airbox and spray 1/2 the contents of the can down the intake shaft and let it sit for 5min or so, then next step is have someone start the engine, and under some light RPM deliver the rest of the can. It ran pretty rough at this stage bellowing some smoke to the atmosphere (sorry EPA) and after the contents of the bottle are finished just let the car sit for 10min or so.

Upon restarting she ran a little rough and abit of smoke for a few min but with a road test, to my delight there was no "engine system failure" message and the car run like a bullet. The mrs driving it most of the day today, still no error message and car runs better than it ever has.

Its early days, and It may need a 2nd treatment, but it looks like the VVT needs periodic de-carbonizing to keep the turbo healthy. Seems a similar phenomenon with all VVT turbos.

Hope this helps people with similar issues

NOTE: I was pretty happy with the towing when car was working, 1800kg or so, 110-120km/h, was returning 11L/100km, the BAS remap was making its presence felt

Yep - us Subaru owners(soon not to be with the new D4 on the way)swear by that stuff! Not sure why Subaru themselves stopped using it routinely though ...