The turbo sounded fishy, so I looked for a replacement. On eBay I found a seller offering new turbo’s for a Mitsubishi L300.
What turbo does my Mitsubishi L300 have?
They sell two different versions of the TD04 turbo: one water cooled turbo which bolts to the downpipe with 5 bolts and a turbo without watercooling which bolts to the downpipe with 3 bolts. My 2001 L300 needed a water cooled turbo with 3 bolts to the downpipe. That puzzled TurbosEclub but they where very helpful. To get me the right turbo, they needed the Mitsubishi part number. Fortunately, in the Mitsubishi L300 Offroad Facebook group, Grant got me the right information:
The L300s always had a TD04-09B, oil cooled up to 1996, water cooled later. 4D56 engines fitted to other vehicles after 1996 had a water-cooled TD04-10T. There’s no problems upgrading to the 10T if you’re buying a new turbo. The exact model of your existing turbo is stamped on the compressor housing, but if you want a TD04-10T the number should be 49177-01505.
I supplied the part number to TurbosEclub and that led me to this turbo, which isn’t advertised being for an L300. It’s equivalent to a TD04-10T turbo, so this would be a small upgrade from the stock turbo.
Small issue fitting the turbo
These turbo’s aren’t Mitsubishi parts and it didn’t come with a wastegate actuator, so the original one needed to be transplanted. That introduced one small problem: the hole in the rod is a little too small to fit to the wastegate. The metal is incredibly strong and a normal metal drill wouldn’t do the job. I got a tip that fixed this: use a drill ment for concrete and have a lot of patience. The drill will melt it’s way through the metal. Afterwards, the drill is toast.
Recommended?
The turbo has been on the van for a few weeks now and I’ve driven about 900 KM’s. Too soon to say anything about the durability but performance is equal to the original turbo. It would be great if the turbo came with an actuator. Seller turboseclub (99.6% positive feedback from 1720 sales) is located in China but ships from the UK. It only took 2 business days to get it shipped to the Netherlands and both the price and shipping costs are very reasonable. So far I’m very satisfied with the purchase.
