Ok... So I take the intake tube off the turbo to find the silencer ring hanging out inside the tube.

I'm not sure how or when, but it came off the turbo and was bouncing around in there. I think it came off a couple days ago when the tranny guy took my truck for a test drive. He was driving it hard and barked the turbo pretty good a few times. Luckily it didn't hit a turbo fin. As you can see in the pics, it grinded all around the compressor housing. Those metal shavings must've gotten sucked into the engine. How bad is this?

 

if there's no turbo damage except what we see, the shavings were likely in the intercooler core. doubtful that any would make it up and over into the engine.

 

How does the ring look?

 

That's the big problem with removing the ring, not getting the snap ring seated good when you get tried of the whine and reinstall the silencer ring.
Yours is not the first time I've heard of this happening, never heard of any serious damage, yet...

 

yeah I hope the shavings didn't make it to the engine... The ring looks intact, little scraped up.

The engine runs fine and it still chirps when I turn it off. So oh well... Guess time will tell. I'm so happy I caught this. I would've never known until one day the turbo exploded.

 

So what made you take of the air intake. was it making a funny noise ?

 

That's the crazy thing. I removed the intake box so I could swap out the PCM behind it. I was experimenting a while back. When the tranny guy hooked up the scanner, it showed that I got a PCM from a 4x2 truck; so I put the original one back in.