My son's car suddenly will not spool at all. It is like a normal four cylinder car. I'm not very knowledgeable about turbos. This is my first post here. I hope someone can give me an idea where we can look. There are no unusual noises before or after it stopped working. He does have a chip, but it has been in there for a couple of years. Any ideas where to look? It's a 2001. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

And whats the boost gauge say?

He most likely has a boost leak or in in limp mode. If it was an exhaust leak, you would hear it.

 

He does not have a boost guage

 

Well get the kid one. How can you know that its not spooling if you have noidea what psi he is running? You 2 need to go down to the parts store and grab and install one and see whats going on. Until then, everything is basically a guess and this thread will go no where

 

I suspect the car has gone into safe mode due to an overboost condition. Take it to Autozone and scan for codes. Write the numbers here and have them clear them. That should take care of the problem.

 

Same problem over here. Holding a vacuum of 20 yet boosting 0 PSI, maybe 1 PSI at WOT. In my case it is not safe mode, my car dosen't give any codes.

 

Have you checked your charge piping yet?

 

I had the same problem. The tubo is spooling but very little, and therefore you probably can't hear it.If you don;t have a CEL you probably will get one. I'm not guaranteeing anything, butyou probably need a new MAF. I had the same symptomsand it worked for me.

 

another thing you should look into is your waste-gate. the waste-gate controls your boost. it is located next to the turbo (gold in color). when waste-gate fails, the air is bypassing the turbines. very common for this to fail. search the forum for instruction to test the waste-gate.