I just re turboed my car, tuned hondata, made a couple nice 1/4 mile passes and now I'm seeing puffs of white smoke off boost, like at idle after boosting. I figure headgasket. No problem. Put in ARP's tonight, gasket looked fine. (had head off a couple times and reused the stock bolts) Went for a drive and AHHH!!!!!!! white puffs after boosting and comming to a stop. Pistons tops and sleeves looked perfect. Any ideas??

 

is your turbo water cooled? If so, maybe you have a leak...

 

RINGS?

 

no watercooling yet.

Rings = blue smoke

ttt

 

sounds like making your turbo may be going south. mine started doing that too. I would drive and then after i stopped, it would blow out a little white smoke at idle. it would just get worst and worst till I took out my turbo.

 

oh man, i hope not, its brand new!!!! There is no oil in the down pipe but my muffler tip is all oily!

 

is it rebuilt or new new? how was your return(good drain, kinked?)

 

Sounds like the Turbo Seals... Where did you get the turbo from??

 

its a rebuild from mjm. Lots of people have had turbo's from them up here and no problems yet.

 

do you have access to a similiar turbo that you know of in good working order? like to try it out. or put your exhaust manifold back on see what happens.

 

does it usually smoke at the turbo, the muffler or what? i think i may have the same problem, but mine smokes from the flex pipe section. ONLY after a hard boosting run.

krazy

 

ya, i was chatting with a friend of mine and he suggested to take the turbo off, drive it around hard and check if its still smoking. I guess I'll try that

 

yup thats how I found out it was my turbo. took it off and it didn't smoke anymore.

 

i was having the same problem,it was because the exhaust housing was not tightened down all the way .after clocking the turbo i forgot to retighten all the way.after i tightened it back down it was ok.

 

turbos

 

Sounds like you have a small head gasket leak to me. One interesting way to check is to do a compression check. If you get one cylinder with especially high readings it could be from a coolant leak in that one particular area. It happened to me once.

 

Checked coolant passage that goes through intake manifold and head? gasket OK? what about the TB anywhere the coolant could leak in?

 

compression 160 160 165 160

 

i still think you should try and put your stock exhaust mani back on and drive it for a bit to really see if its motor related or turbo. thats after you check everything on the outside of course. after you put your exhaust mani back on, there will still be some white smoke cause of the oil in your exhaust system. mine did it for a couple of miles before it went away.

 

You could also try a leakdown test. I had the same problem, but it ended up being my valve seals.

 

i know how it feels to have that stupid white smoke and what you're going through is similar to what i've gone through so i hope this help:

when i turbocharged my car the first time, the engine blew up 3 months after due to running lean and high boost. i had the engine rebuild and properly break-in.

i returboed my car again after the break-in. 3 days after the install, i test drove the car to see how the hack would perform. i was amazed at how smooth it ran and it pulled strong. seeing how strong it ran i decided to head home and upon waiting for the garage door to open there was a huge cloud of smoke coming out of the car. i thought something underneath was under fire. i pulled in the garage to take a better look but the smoke was gone while idling and i couldn't see exactly what color the smoke was coz it was alread dark.

eversince that smoking incident, the car would always smoke when i boosted the car a bit and idle it. it was embarrasing and frustrating and the smoke was blue. i thought it were my rings but still refuse to think of it coz i just rebuilt the engine and i also notice that if i drive out of boost the smoke is not that big and sometimes none. so i was switching my thoughts between rings and turbo seal.

i did all the inspection i could do like check if there's any oil on the coolant reservoir as well as radiator, checked the oil filler cap for some milky stuff, check if there's smoke coming from the dipstick hole, but everything checked out ok. i remove the charge pipe and it was clean so i thought maybe the turbo exhaust side seal was dead. i then notice that my exhaust pipe(no muffler yet that time) got traces of oil - sludge, so i thought something is spitting oil in the pipe.

one day, i decide to put a muffler in and after that let a mechanic do a compression test. after i installed the muffler and went to my mechanic the car didn't smoke at all anymore. my mechanic thought i was joking about the smoke coz there was none to be seen even after repeated revs. he then proceeded to do a compression test but everything checked out ok and hasn't smoke until now.


my thoughts are: maybe when i blew the engine some residual oil was left on the pipe and since i reused the pipe those oil residue produces smoke each time the pipe is hot OR maybe i was using semi-synthetic oil and the oil level was a little high and the turbo seal can't handled it so it spit some oil in the pipe but when i switch regular oil and top off to the correct level, the turbo doesn't spit oil anymore but there's still some residual oil in the pipe so when i had my muffler installed plus a section of exhaust pipe, the heat of the welding must've burn all the residual oil off hence no smoke after putting in muffler.

since you said you're turbo is brand new we can assume that it's working fine. you did a compression test already and the readings between each cylinder are close so engine must be good. so i would suggest you try cleaning all the oil residue in your pipe and muffler. make sure no traces of oil will be left and see if it will smoke again. good luck.

 

Good post dude. I have the same oily residue on my thermal tip but... one would think that the exhaust being so hot would burn all the oil before it got half way down the muffler! I took my downpipe off and had a look and it was dry, as was the turbine wheel, opening. Since the smoke is getting progressively worse I'm gonna try running it n/a this weekend and see how that goes. What a pain in the ***. The car is smoking when i come to a stop now even if I don't boost at all!!!! argh!!!