This is what I get confused about with so many RB options. I spoke to Rob last year about upgrading when I thought my stock turbos were going out... and the options were endless. I had a lot of trouble deciding what to go with for long term reliability and got overloaded with choice!
I assume the concerns over a TD03 and TD04 for reliability would be relating to the amount of extremely high boost pulls being made? I street my car 95% of the time and rarely abuse my turbos. For me, it seems like TD03 would suffice?
Certainly seems like TD03 is sufficing for
@gone335i !
Really it is an upward power chain of options, trading off for a little budget and spool the higher you go.
From 2010-2015 all we had were the TD04 Center Section based Classic RB's, and we started to get to the TD04 Center Section based Super RB EVO lineup (ie. 19T) at the tail end of that timeframe as well.
The early Super RB Options were fairly potent but they did endure some failures, some sooner some later. We actually stopped their new sales for about a year and they were re-released very late 2016 with many quality improvement changes including an offering for 15T/17T/19T. Another vendor stepped in with a Super RB EVO-like product around the time we discontinued new sales on them and quite frankly we were happy to get away from it as we re-thought some things that we believed were leading to some issues.
Back to 9/2015 and at the beginning era of the inlet craze, we began selling the TD04 Center Section based RB Next Gens. These were a replacement of our discontinued RB Classics, and is a common rebuild we perform of RB Classics produced over the first 5 years of production. This offering has been a beautiful success, extremely unproblematic, with still a nearly bulletproof track record even after a full 3 years of production.
Late 2016 we released the RB Next Gen Plus, another TD04 Center Section based option, along with the numerous aforementioned updated Super RB EVO options. All of these products too have been absolutely fantastic, and to date we have seen no failures that we could have avoided by a manufacturing improvement (ie. we can't avoid the user blowing an engine, etc) and as such the quality levels have been nothing short of phenomenal. The Super RB EVO options are essentially the same thing as the RB Next Gen (15T), RB Next Gen Plus (17T), and Super RB Stealth (19T) options aside they have a larger native TD04 compressor cover.
Also late 2016 we started to realize the amount of OE TD03 Center Section cores we had on hand were overwhelming despite the hundreds upon hundreds we'd offloaded to competitors over the years and on Ebay for next to nothing... so figured it was time to put them to use. There entered the RB OEM/RB OEM TD03 center section based product line. These are basically OE replacements that we began selling 10/2016 with literally zero defects to date and believe it or not they have sold like hot cakes non-stop. Perfect product and a great way to help people out not looking for more power but still retain great reliability while not spending a lot of money. Also a great way for us to trim down on our "set aside" TD03 Center Section inventory that was otherwise going no where, literally hundreds upon hundreds of these centers were on the shelf and now we are down to our last few. Good stuff.
Late 2016 into early 2017 we began the RB Ones (Stage 1+) and mid into later 2017 the RB Twos (Beta Stage 2's); both TD03 Center Section based offerings. The RB Ones went straight into production and we have had 2 occurrences with them to date, 1 set an admitted user error causing FOD to the compressor and another some extreme abuse case (we did not get this set back yet but suspect the engine was toasted too). We've sold over 50 sets of these and overall they've have been great, and absolutely perfect from a manufacturing standpoint. The RB Twos we wanted to take a bit slower, so we fairly quietly put them into a beta program 10/2017 to the tune of 6 sets. As we'd expected/hoped they too have been perfect to date, and we feel are now 100% production worthy.
After some fumbles over the years with new products with fairly significant changes, we have learned it is never a good thing to toss many sets out to the world because sometimes you just do not see issues until many many months later. As stated earlier a manufacturer may see defects start to appear but it could take time, usually around 3-9 months, but that doesn't mean the masses will get the inside scoop. Generally speaking the masses may either never find out or even if they do it will take a year or much more.
All of our products have power ranges that we recommend they be used within, and they are all proving to be very high quality day in and day out so there is no best answer of "what is the most reliable". Ultimately pairing off power goals and usage patterns with budget and spool helps us decide what is best for the consumers, all we really want to do is to fit each customer with what fits them as a whole the best. Indeed it all can be confusing and as Fillippo indicated reaching out is what most do in order to help us help them to personalize their order.
Rob
