Exhaust gas turbocharger for an internal combustion engine

An exhaust gas turbocharger for an internal combustion engine having a turbine with a rotor chamber (10) and a rotor (4) rotatably disposed in the rotor chamber (10), an exhaust gas guide section (2) which is arranged in an exhaust gas tract of the internal combustion engine and through which exhaust gas discharged from the internal combustion engine is conducted, a guide apparatus (12) arranged around the turbine rotor (4) and comprising a support ring (13) with rotatably mounted guide vanes (14) and a contour sleeve (15), wherein, for fixing a first distance (A) between the support ring (13) and the contour sleeve (15), at least one spacer element (16) with a longitudinal axis (17), an outer surface (18) and a cross-sectional area (19) is provided, the exhaust gas guide section (2) being a spiral channel (8) with a spiral inlet flow guide tongue (20), and the spacer element (16) being positioned in a region positioned radially outside, and spaced from, the guide vanes (14) such that the trailing wake line (21) of the spacer element (16) extends essentially through the center of a flow space between two adjacent guide vanes (14) of the support ring (13) without disturbing the inlet gas flow around the adjacent guide vanes (14), the inlet flow guide tongue (20) forming a guide tongue trailing wake (23) and one of the spacer element (21) being positioned in the region of the inlet flow guide tongue trailing wake (23) such that the trailing wake line (21) of the spacer element (16) coincides with that of the inlet flow guide tongue (20).