I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it. Here’s my stance on it. Its a chinese turbo. Through and through. you can ceramic coat it, paint it , swap out the wastegate, but at the end of the day its a chinese turbo. It has nothing on OEM manufacturer quality and reliability. But the thing is Chinese turbos are super cheap, people run them, they blow within 10k mi, but they can afford to keep replacing them.
Ebay fills the chinese turbo market quite well. But then comes Frankenturbo, they bundle a chinese turbo with a manifold and maybe some extras, charge you 2-4x what it costs them, and sell it as an OEM replacement. This seems very fradulent to me. They are asking well over OEM prices, and delivering bullshit, you get a turbo that won’t last you even a quarter the lifespan of an OEM unit. This was my first complain to Doug, back when he would still reply to me on Audizine.
I told him, it seems alright, it’s a chinese POS turbo, but people will buy it, but you are asking an insane price for what you are delivering. In a way its fraud, he is making this unit out to be something that it simply isn’t.
He also seems to have an obssession with talking about EGT’s which I think is hilarious because he does absolutely 0 manifold design, and I’m pretty sure the turbine wheels he uses are off the shelf as well. I mean the f21 is straight up a chinese k04. The F23 appears to be a k04 housing clone with an uprated wheel. Machining is subpar, 2 of them over on audizine have blown already out of 3 or 4, and you stop to wonder why could that be? because you are pushing a turbo that has poor manufacturing into it. Garrett, BW, etc, they run very precision tolerances, take a look at the spacing between the compressor wheel and cover, or the turbine wheel and turbine housing, its less than a millimeter, and you have to account for heat, bearing wear, and that is usually it, the bearings are shit, they wear out, the turbo starts having some play and bam, that compressor wheel is spinning 100,000k RPM a second, hits a wall and because its poor quality it isn’t designed for burst containment, shatters, and you have a turbo with no compressor wheel anymore.
I don’t blame you, Doug sells you gold plated shit, he makes you believe its a good product, thats his angle. Part of it too is that people think you get what you pay for, which is usually true in the automotive industry. Generally $ invested gets you better quality, but in the case of frankenturbo, the guy just charges outrageous sums for something that he is walking away with a 50-70% profit margin.