Help.. 83' Riviera Scary smoking... Got few Questions

[BuickNewb]

Hey, this is my first post in this forum I hope to get some help, I recently got a 83' riviera Turbo that is smoking like a car I have never seen... the enigne doesn't sound bad tho... anyway I was told by the symptoms that was a bad turbo. I try to look around the engine bay and I found some oil on to of the breather hose (i think air filter) and it looks to be coming off I think PCV valve, I notice also that is looks to be missing some vaccum hoses... I think I'll ask this later tho... I'm trying to see if is possible to narrow down the problem, so I was wondering if I could plug the oil inlet line for the turbo to see if is the turbo seals...so actually my concern is if the turbo bearings will be alright incase is not bad if I let it idle like that... any comments?

and the other thing is since I found oil on the intake hose it looks like oil is coming out from the pcv valve, is that a sign of what? can it be from the missing vaccum hoses? I''ll appreciate all the comments...



D.

 

[esinger]

Hi, you may want to post this in the "Before Black" section. I may be mistaken, but your car has a slight different setup than ours.

With that all said, my experience is that a PCV drawing oil into the intake normally will not cause excessive smoking like your describing. Turbo seals gone bad will cause an embracing amount of smoke. When I first bought my car it had a bad seal and it would smoke for like the first 5 to 10 minutes and the smoke would go away. I sent off the turbo and had it freshened up and it stopped.

Just my 2 cents

 

[Turbo Riviera]

Do not under any circumstance disconnect the oil inlet to the turbo and run the car.

As long as you're not smelling a sweet smell like coolant, then your diagnosis of a bad turbo seems accurate. Is the smoke from under the hood? or out the tailpipe?

If it does smell sweet, you're looking at a bad head gasket.