Heavy white smoke on rebuilt motor upon startup

Joined
Jul 31, 2011
Hey guys,

I did a stock motor rebuild in my WE4. It did run before disassembly. I had a local reputable shop change out the valve springs and resurface the heads. Bottom end looked good, so I left it alone. After reassembling, it started up and ran a little rough, but ran on it's own upon first start. While making sure I had enough oil pressure (good oil pressure), it poured white smoke out of the tailpipe. I let it run for a couple mi utes to see if the smoke would subside, but it didn't.

First, I checked the PCV to find it good. Next, I took the downpipe off to find the turbo saturated in oil, dripping through the downpipe. Intake and intercooler side of the turbo is clean and has no shaft play. Took the turbo off the exhaust manifold along with the crossover pipe and found oil in the bottom of the crossover pipe.

After seeing the oil in the crossover pipe, I removed the spark plugs to find 5/6 spark plugs have oil on them. Looking inside at the piston, all the pistons were shiny (oil covered). I checked compression and had around 125 across all cylinders (a little low but nothing alarming).

At this point, I'm kinda throwing out the possibility of a bad turbo and leaning towards the heads that I had done at a local shop. I am feeling this way due to the oil in the crossover pipe and oil on the spark plugs/pistons with compression being fine. Unless I am jumping to conclusions?

What is the next steps I should take to diagnosing this oil issue? Any input is greatly appreciated!

Thank you
 
You have oil covered spark plugs. So you need to work from the cylinder backwards toward the air filter.
 
That's kinda what I'm working on, but dont want to take the heads off again if I dont have to. With the compression being fine, I'm assuming the rings are fine. What else should I look for that could be causing oil to get into the cylinder? What has been known to cause this besides rings and valve seals (they were replaced)? How common is bypass through the exhaust valve since it doesnt have an actual seal?
 
I’m guessing your oil pressure is to high and blew out the turbo oil seal. Just a guess .
 
That's kinda what I'm working on, but dont want to take the heads off again if I dont have to. With the compression being fine, I'm assuming the rings are fine. What else should I look for that could be causing oil to get into the cylinder? What has been known to cause this besides rings and valve seals (they were replaced)? How common is bypass through the exhaust valve since it doesnt have an actual seal?
If you have the heads off they should have machined the valve guides to fit valve stem seals
 
How's the coolant level? Did it go down or is there bubbles or foam in there? You can do a coolant system pressure test to see if it's not sealed.
 
Verify intake bolt torque and
intake gasket seal.

Thank you, I will definitely verify this!

I’m guessing your oil pressure is to high and blew out the turbo oil seal. Just a guess .

Oil pressure was around 50 at first start up and settled around 25 PSI

How's the coolant level? Did it go down or is there bubbles or foam in there? You can do a coolant system pressure test to see if it's not sealed.

Coolant level seemed fine. I definitely check again and look a little closer.

Do a leak down test it will tell you a lot more usable information then a compression test does

Thanks, I will look into that and let you know what I find!
 
Someone else here had a similar issue. They ran it without the turbo and the smoke went away indicating the turbo was at fault. Hopefully you have cool neighbors though for this test.
 
One other thing. If you only ran ran it for less than ten minutes you might run it more. Maybe something spilled in the exhaust pipe while it was apart. After a good run it will all be pushed out or burned off.
 
Ran it without the turbo and still got smoke.

Coolant looks good. No bubbles or foam.

Did a cylinder leakage test and got about 20-25% leakage across all the cylinders (used modified HF tester since that's what was available atm, not sure how trusty it is), but did heard hissing out of the oil cap/turbo oil drain.

Since the compression was fine but had air coming out the filler cap, I'm guessing compression rings are fine, but oil control rings are shot?

Also, on one cylinder, when covering the oil filler and turbo oil drain (air coming out) I got a suction on top through the breather hole on the passenger side valve cover. Never seen this before. Any ideas?

Didnt have a chance to check intake bolt torque or gasket seating.
 
Since the compression was fine but had air coming out the filler cap, I'm guessing compression rings are fine, but oil control rings are shot?
IMO, 125# compression, considering all the cyls were oil coated, seems low.
Rings on upside down?
Wrong ring package?
Oil expander ring messed up?
 
IMO, 125# compression, considering all the cyls were oil coated, seems low.
Rings on upside down?
Wrong ring package?
Oil expander ring messed up?

Rings are stock. Left the bottom end alone during the rebuild (obviously big mistake). Everything looked good and cylinder walls were smooth when heads and pan were off. Guessing they're not as good as they seemed and possibly all carbon'd up in the groove..
 
What was the reason for the top end rebuilt in the first place? Blown head gasket? If so it may have hurt a ring or two. Could also have gotten coolant and oil in the exhaust system which will take some time to burn out.
 
With that much oil I’d eliminate the turbo first. If it’s pushing that much oil into the exhaust the oil return is probably blocked or restrictive. If it continues to push oil after eliminating the turbo as a problem. Plug the pcv. Remove the plenum and pressurize the crankcase with 3psi air pressure. Spray a small amount of soapy water in the intake where the intake and head meet. If this passes pull the valve covers and look at the valve stem seals. It’s very rare all cylinders would have oil in them unless the wrong size rings or pistons were used.


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You say it ran b/f the disassembly. Was it smoking then? Did you disassemble the short block or just pull the heads? If it wasn't smoking like that b/f and the short block wasn't disassembled then the rings are probably not the issue. That would point to the heads. Maybe resurfacing screwed something up and it's not sealing with the intake. Did you use head studs? It's possible the stud it a touch long and the nut is bottomed out on the threads. That will not give enough clamping down on the heads. You say the worked on the valves, like Bison said the seals might be screwed up.
 
Took off the plenum to find oil right away inside the intake and even on my PP.

I originally installed the valley pan metal gasket. Should I try the other individual printoseal style intake gasket? Or stick with the metal valley pan gasket?
 

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I'd Check your head gaskets, if it's white smoke you're geeting coolent into your combustible chamber, how was your leak down test
 
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