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Turbo Smoke?

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Sagecoach

Active Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2002
Messages
302
Is there an easy way to tell if your turbo is leaking oil and causing exhaust smoke as opposed to rings or stem seal smoke? I'm sure this has been addressed before on the board, but I can't get the search function to work. Thanks in advance.
 
Pull your DP off and look for oil traces, pull your intercooler off and look for oil. You could always just pull the whole turbo off and look for some kind of oil leakage. What are the symptoms? Does it smoke after the car is warmed up? does it smoke right away at startup? Does it get worse while sitting?
 
Doesn't smoke at start-up (my cars with bad stem seals did). Smokes when sitting after warming up and running pretty hard.
 
If it only smokes at idle, and not while driving, I would say it's your rings. Check your IC piping to be sure though.
 
I just went through this same thing last weekend. Just out cruising I noticed oil smoke when I got stopped at a light. Took the car home and it was smoking oil BAD! I started to cry a little inside lol. After checking the pcv and finding nothing I shut the car off and called it a day so I could get a fresh start on it the next day. Started working on in the morning and noticed another issue, the gasket from header to the turbo had blown out. I pulled the turbo, took out the gasket and checked the turbo for shaft play while it was out, there was more than I think there should be for as old as the turbo is(less than 8k miles) but didn't see any oil in the hot side or outlet. So I bolted it back up and the smoke was still there the next day, so I knew it wasn't residual.

While waiting for my compression kit to come I just decided to look under the hood again and there was oil seeping between the exhaust housing and downpipe. I pulled the turbo again and the inside of the housing and downpipe was SOAKED in oil. The outlet was still dry. I ran a hose from the oil feed back into the driver side valve cover and started the car. No more smoke was present. :D

Kinda sucks about the turbo giving up but no I can go bigger and not worry about the motor....right now.

Helpt this helps.
 
Tom, I'll have to check to see if it's smoking while driving. Qwic87gn and Murt: Thanks for the tip. I'll have to pull the turbo and take a look.
 
could be your intake gasket. If it doesn't smoke all the time, just in breaking or after hard excelleration, you may have popped it. :eek:
 
My seals & centersection in turbo were leaking although it didn't follow as precise a pattern as some have had... it did it at stop lights, but only some of em, and temp didn't seem to matter that much.

I also had to add a restrictor in the feed line since the -6AN was too big for that particular turbo.

After the new center-section & seals & restrictor, not one puff of smoke, ever.

Phil
 
If you see that the turbo is good, pull the plenum to see if its oiled in there. If so theres a good chance the intake gaskets are leaking. Which was posted earlier.
 
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