Hi folks, posted something last night about a whistle coming from my turbo 530d. Went into dealer today and it needs a new turbo, wastegate not working properly and the turbo is as i thought on the way out.

The car is under warranty, however the part alone from bmw is ?1150 + labour. So any of you guys whos warranties are running out with a slight whistle get it into the dealer now. Cause with it being about a 3 hour job you must be looking at nearly ?1500.

They told me they do have a slight whistle but you should barely hear it, when my window is down it is fairly loud.

 

We choose to accept turbo characteristics and risk of failure.

I'm surprised you didn't notice any performance degradation.

Some might say ?1500 isn't even a set of wheels.

ABC

 

Yes, it's true. Starts with a whistle. Mine failed 5 days ago on the highway. My car is a 2004 530d with 30.000km.
After getting an warranty extension from the factory, dealer replaced the turbo and i only payed labor, about 200 euros.

 

Mine is whisteling when the engine is under hard load, is that a warning sign or what? The performance is as usual. Hope it wont break down before the new one arrives.

 

aren't whistles generated by blow-off-valve? my old turbo car had HKS blow-off-valve creates loud whistles (show off) like bus's air brakes. it whistles when butterfly close and release unwanted boost at once.

waste-gate would never generating any noise (or too low), it slowly release the air while pressure build over limit. It's also where you control the boost, you can simply tighter the spring and delay the release which add more bar of pressure. over tighten the spring can blow your engine.

 

I think the whistling occurs under load ie when accelerating not when changing gear 'ala blow off valve type sound. A whistling turbo is usually a sign of internal wear and therefore replacement.

 

Those dump valves sound totally different. More an aggressive hissing sound.
Whistling shouldn't really be audible on a well working turbo.

On my former E39 I had one go and before it went, it sounded like a good old Phantom fighter jet taking off next to me. Performance decrease wasn't noticeable big time until it left me with a loud bang.

 

the whistle he's talking about are the bearings. use a good valve cleaner in the oil to keep the bearing from coking. the $10 at oil change is good insurance. have had many turbo and never a failure. i will also never buy a air cooled turbo.

 

I don't have a whistle noise but from time to time the turbo sounds kind of low frequency boomy. This happens for a day or so and then goes away. I was wondering whether it's maybe the particulate filter burning off accumulated soot every once in a while.

 

No loss of power at this stage. The whistle starts whilst just accelarating slowly starts at 1500 up to 2500. And is more noticeable with the window down.