What is life like with your car? Let us know and win £500 in John Lewis vouchers | No thanks

What is causing my X-Trail's turbocharger to fail repeatedly?

I own a 2005 Nissan X-Trail 2.2 diesel Sport that was five weeks old when I bought it, now with 39,000 miles on the clock. A local garage has diagnosed a whining fault as indicative of my turbo about to fail. This will be my fourth turbo in the car and follows the replacement of my third one in May last year. Could you please suggest what the root cause of these failures might be? The engine electronics were ‘remapped’ in 2012 at a Nissan garage but this seems to have had no beneficial effect. Nissan accept no responsibility for the problem.

Asked on 27 April 2013 by GS, Macclesfield

Answered by Honest John
The most common reason for turbo failure is owners switching off the engines when the turbos are red hot, which causes the oil in the turbo bearings to carbonise. It also causes oil in the feed pipe to the turbo bearings to carbonise, reducing the amount of oil getting to the turbo bearings. That's why the next turbo fails, and the next, and the next.
Similar questions
My husband is looking at buying a SEAT Altea TDI. I've read a few comments on the internet about the turbo blowing and costing a fortune to repair. Is this a common fault? We had a Ford C-Max TDCI a year...
My 2006 Skoda Octavia 1.9 TDI PD Estate has just completed 150,000 miles, 145,000 miles in my ownership plus 5000 as the dealer’s demonstration car. The only major expense I have incurred was for a dual...
We are considering replacing our 2007 Skoda 1.9TDI Estate as it has now done over 100,000 miles. We have been extremely happy with it, mostly using it for 150 miles at a time for motorway driving. We have...
Related models
Excellent, honest vehicle, decent to drive on road and best in class off road. Better than original Freelander.