Turbo malfunctioning in extreme cold?

[calsbeek]

-11deg. F/ -24deg. C here this morning. BJ74 with a 13BT turbo started just fine but the turbo is acting weird. I started the truck and let it idle for about 5 minutes while I loaded up my kids. As I started down the road, something sounded amiss. I assume it was the turbo that was running non-stop (sounded a bit like a small fan spinning under the hood but not the super high pitched hiss of the turbo I normally hear while shifting for example). AS the engine warmed eventually, the noise went away but the green turbo light took longer to come on than normal, and then stayed on even with my foot off the gas until I came to almost a complete stop...


thoughts on this? Problems or will it just fix itself when the weather warms again?

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

What viscosity oil are you running? Do you have an engine coolant heater you can plug in? Possibly the viscosity of the oil was causing some drag in the turbo journal until it warmed up fulley?

I made the mistake of starting my engine in -25C with 15w40 oil. Bad idea. The oil is like honey at those temps. I hope you're running the right oil for the ambient conditions - just follow the manual's recommendations.

 

[calsbeek]

I changed out the 15W40 for 0W40 about two weeks ago, thank goodness.