Yeah, I guess you are right, but I was hoping to get a break sometime with this stuff. I'm waiting to hear back from Turbos Direct about this, but I doubt anything will come of that conversation. Luckily rebuild kits aren't very expensive, which surprised me since most places charge around $350 each to do a rebuild. And that's getting it to them in a box and their not having to pull it out of a car. Maybe there's more to it than I could gather from the videos I watched....
Heck, I've watched the videos enough times lately that I could probably do one right now without even referring back to them for guidance.
Guess I need to order a couple of rebuilt kits anyway. I'm assuming this is what people refer to as a T3/T4 hybrid turbo. T3 turbine combined with a T4 compressor. Oh well, I'll be learning how to do something new, I suppose.
I'm actually toying with the idea of redoing ALL the threaded holes in the compressor housings just in case the others got overtightened, but not to the point where the threads let loose. Yet...