ZCboost

Not too sure what's up with the car. I fire it up to go to work, no smoke. I idle down my street, still no smoke. Turn on to the next street, and then it smokes. Smokes around the next quick corner as well then stops. I fired it up yesterday afternoon after work and took it for a drive to see if it would do it again, and nothing, so it only seems to be doing this in the morning when it's cooler out. I gave it boost a few times on the way to work this morning and it doesn't smoke then either. Only for a window of about 30 seconds in the morning.

Possibilities: Pistons rings starting to go, although I've blown a set of rings before and it smoked ALL the time when that happened.
I recently installed a new manifold/downpipe set up in which I had to clock the turbo, but that shouldn't mess up the seals from what I've read.... However it didn't blow smoke at all, ever, before I installed this new set up, so I'm wondering if I did something to the turbo somehow....
Valve guides starting to go maybe?
Any help would be much appreciated.

ZCboost

I just talked to some of our techs here at work (Toyota dealer), to them it sounds like the head gasket is leaking oil into the combustion chambers overnight. That, or maybe a cracked head....I haven't heard much on this subject, but are D16 heads prone to cracking?

ZCboost

Is there any chance at all that somehow the turbo is developing a small pool of oil on the exhaust side over night and then burns it off for those 30 seconds once it warms up?

vaporboy12

valve seals

ZCboost

I mentioned that to our techs here at Toyota and they said based on the amount of smoke I was describing, they don't think that's it, although my neighbour saw me pull away and he said the same thing as you. Either way it looks like the head is coming off this weekend.

LShatchie

what color is the smoke

ZCboost

It's blue, indicating that it's burning some oil somewhere. The most logical solution is that it's the turbo, because all this started the minute we put the new manifold and downpipe on.
I forgot to mention another thing. When we first fired it up with no downpipe on it, my dad put on a temporary oil return line since my steel braided one didn't fit due to the turbo sitting in a different position on the new manifold. The return line he used was far too long. Now I know return lines need to be gravity fed, so what happened was the oil started to pool in the hose and started coming back up past the seal. We could actually see the oil coming into the exhaust side since I had no downpipe on at the time. The part that beats me is that if the turbo seals are now shot because of this, wouldn't it smoke all the time?

LShatchie

sounds like the piston rings to me... i mean if it were the turbo seals it should do it all the time and the smoke would be white like mine is because the oil simply cooks and steams in the exhaust causeing white smoke. when the smoke is blue is usually being combusted in the combustion chamber.

ZCboost

Well, I cooked the rings on it last summer, and it smoked BAD. All the time too, off throttle, on throttle, idling. Didn't matter, it was smoking. Although some signs do point to it being the rings, it just doesn't add up. I checked out the exhaust ports before I put on the new manifold. There were no indications of oil getting by anywhere, even on the old manifold.
I would guess that oil always burns blue, no matter how it's combusted. The exhaust housing on a turbo obviously gets insanely hot, so if oil is seeping in there then it's probably gonna burn off and burn blue.

LShatchie

have you done a compression test?