Burning oil/ smoking

[turbosam6]

My car has a lot of blue smoke at idle. It does not smoke on cold start up, it has to be running for at least a few minutes to start smoking, then it gets worse the more you drive. Sometimes it will come and go, although lately its been doing it more often than not. This is a new motor, with about 200 miles on it. I'm pretty sure the rings have sealed, and if not, I would think my smoking would be more severe under throttle. When I give it boost, it will leave a cloud where I start, then clear out. It mostly does it at idle, and on deceleration, but mainly at idle. I have brand new GN1 heads, suspect the valve guides are bad. I would hope they would not be bad from the get go. Its smoked from day one. No appreciable oil loss. I have no pcv, just breathers. I tried a pcv system, it did not help. All it did was eliminate the smoke from the breathers, which I assume is normal from a car with no pcv. Anyway, the oil looks clean, theres no oil in the up pipe or throttle body. So its not turbo or pcv. That leaves rings or valve guides. Like I said, the rings should be sealed by now, or at least the smoking would be getting better, not worse, if it was rings. Is there anything else it could be? I'm going to look down the runners with the plenum off to see if there a vacuum leak in the intake gasket. Sorry for the long post, just frustrated.

 

[Intercooler]

This motor in my car now did the same thing. I kept haggling Steve Yaklin thinking it was the 83's and Max-Effort. Just kept driving it and it went away. These Total-Seals are like that from what some have told me for a while after first start. What rings do you have?

 

[turbosam6]

Can't remember what rings he said, cast something or other. Not gapless, I know that. This is very blue smoke, not like rich or white like coolant. Its blue. I think its fouling plugs now, the car started to miss a little today.

 

[salvageV6]

Could possibly be the turbo exhaust side leaking oil into the downpipe. I'd pull the downpipe orr and look after running the car a minute or two, look for fresh oil.

 

[AirBuick]

SalvageV6 brings up a good point. If you've recently blown a motor, many times pieces of metal go thru the bearings in the turbo compromising their seal. We build a new motor and immediately begin to doubt whether the rings are set. Most of the time, it's the turbo and have to get it rebuilt also.

 

[GSX-PKV]

My car had a similar problem. It was caused mostly by a bad turbo seal on a brand new PT67 turbo and very sloppy and out of spec valve guides on new GN1 heads. You could see no oil in my downpipe but the car smoked like a diesel at high vacuum like at idle. Paul

 

[turbosam6]

Theres no oil in my down pipe, I forgot to mention that. I'm using the same turbo from my other motor, it never smoked on there. Paul, I thought you had a vacuum leak into the lifter valley causing your problem? What did Pete do to fix the heads?

 

[GSX-PKV]

Pete thought initially the smoking was a pcv problem or the intake leak. I blocked the pcv and he put on a new intake gasket and it still smoked a lot. Pete sent the brand new turbo back to PTE who fixed the bad seal and then Pete took off both heads and measured and then replaced all the valve guides. He said the guide tolerences were to be 1.2 to 1. 4 thousands and my tightest guide in thise expensive brand new GN1 heads was .4! Nice quality control there, Champion.

Pete is a good guy, does quality work and he had to do all this extra work because the products his vendors provided to him were the problem. Thank god that I bought everything through Pete!

Now the car does not smoke at all and has much less valve train noise also. Paul

 

[turbosam6]

I'm glad to hear your cars doing well Paul, maybe some day mine will as well. I pulled the plugs today, they are BLACK. I know squat about reading plugs, but my Felpro says the a/f ratio is at the richest, maybe 10:1, not enough to foul plugs. I think they are fouled. They are black as midnight, and have oil and some grime on them. Its definitely burning the oil. I pulled the upper plenum off, and heres my problem: My makeshift catch can pcv setup did not work, so theres oil everywhere inside, so I can't tell if I have a vacuum leak, since they all look wet. I cleaned it up, put it back on, now I'm off to get new plugs. I'm going to drive it like this for awhile, and then pull the plenum again to see if I have any vacuum leaks drawing oil up into the intake.

Thats cool Pete took care of your car Paul, he's a nice guy. He has my old shortblock now, checking for any problems. I guess a bunch of people told him I was full of sh!t, I'd love to know who, but screw them anyway, Pete has seen with his own eyes the oil psi dropping problem. I may end up pulling these heads and having Pete fix them.

 

[turbosam6]

OK, this car wants me to kick its a$$. I put in a new set of plugs, since the others were fouled, cleaned up the oil mess from my un successful pcv idea, and proceeded to start the car. BOOM!BOOM! to pops out the tailpipe, cuz I'm a retard and hooked up the entire driver side bank of plug wires wrong. Fixed that, and fired it up. No more missing, thanks to new plugs. Let it warm up, and took it for a drive. It never smoked. I drove and drove around the 'hood until I was convinced it wasn't going to happen tonight. Why isn't it smoking now? It got plenty warm, as warm as its ever been anyway, oil temp wise, and it didn't smoke. The only thing I can think of is that my pcv made the rings seal, and that was the cause of the oil burning in the first place. It only had the pcv on for about a half hour of run time, idling a lot and driving around a bit. Any thoughts on this?