The Disco Potato

There is something faintly heroic about arranging to buy a precision German turbocharger from a man called Joe in deepest, darkest South Wales - and discovering he is not a bloke in a lay by at all, but a twenty something with a proper unit and a race MX 5 in pieces inside it.

Not a tarp and a Halfords toolkit. A real workshop. Cars on ramps. Panels off. The faint smell of oil and determination.

The Garrett had been fitted to his 1.6 race car. Which, as it turns out, was ambitious. The turbo was not the weak link. The cylinder head was. Boost arrived, torque followed, and the head lifted. Oil everywhere. Turbo untouched. There is something reassuring about that. It did not fail. It simply exceeded the tensile strength of its surroundings.

Joe mentioned, almost amused, that one chap had offered him 400 quid if he could collect that day. As if urgency halves the value of forged internals. Joe’s reply was perfect. "How much for collecting tomorrow then."

Quite right too. Because this was not a mystery hybrid wrapped in bravado or a Chinese knock-off. It was a genuine GT2860RS. Serial plate intact. 836026-5014S. Made in Mexico. No shaft play. The sort of thing that would have been £1,600 to "2,000 new when people bought them in boxes with warranty cards rather than in conversations over workbenches.

To add to the theatre, I had spotted another Garrett in Chichester for 200 quid. Either a GT2560R or a GT2860R, the advert cheerfully unsure which. No obvious part numbers. Rebuilt “a few years ago”. Not used since. With the usual crack by the wastegate post. Cheap for a reason. The automotive equivalent of “possibly Labrador, possibly horse”.

Joe, by contrast, did not just wipe the oil off when the 1.6 tried to redecorate the engine bay. He had the turbo professionally inspected and dynamically balanced. There was even a German report from TurboService Berlin to prove it. Proper serial number on the sheet. Proper balancing graph. Spun to well over 100,000 rpm on a machine that knows what it is doing, not on a forum thread.

Which rather undermines the chap who thought 400 quid and a sense of urgency would seal the deal.

What made it better was that Joe did not just take the money and vanish. He started talking injectors. Flow rates. Sensible duty cycle margins. What works on a BP4W and what does not. He suggested a fuel injector specification that actually aligned with the power target, then said to tap him any time if I needed advice. Which, frankly, you do not always expect from someone in his twenties selling performance parts. Petrolhead, yes. Forum parrot, no.

You stand there looking at a 1.6 that lost a head gasket to enthusiasm and think: on that engine, it was too much. On a 1.8 Mazda MX-5 engine in a Triumph GT6, it is exactly where it should be.

You drive home with a Disco Potato in the boot, a German balancing report folded in the passenger seat, and the quiet sense that sometimes Marketplace is not a swamp at all. Sometimes it is just a young bloke in South Wales who knows what he is selling, knows what it is worth, and is not daft enough to knock 300 quid off because someone is ready to collect.

Oil all over his engine bay. None in mine. Yet.