My friend has a 99 Ls for sale that has a Greddy 18g turbo system installed on it. I got a chance to drive the car, but my concern is the reliabilty of the turbo. the turbo starts to build boost at around 3k rpm and when you press on the gas while your driving you can see smoke out of your rear view mirror(more than usual). i dont know if the car is running rich during the higher rpm's and therefore producing the smoke. He did say that he noticed a little oil in the charge pipes and since then he has installed a catch can. Any ideas on what might be causing this or does the car need a tune. The car is still running the greddy blue box at 8 psi.

 

ALWAYS GET A TUNE!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's going to go boom otherwise.

 

If he's not tuned he's going to start running into problems really soon. Dumb idea to run around boosting with a tune, kills any reliability that kit may have had on his car.
~Ben

 

that sounds to me that the turbo need to be rebuilt cuz the seals are blown. I run 16Psi for the track and i dont have any smoke at full throttle, but now that its blown itz crazy smoke under boost and eats my oil.

 

With great turbo comes great resposibilty....remmember that pete!

that goes for supercharger as well

 

Did you do a leakdown and compression test prior to strapping the turbo on?

Sounds like worn piston rings that became worse when boost was introduced.

 

I don't know the history of the engine, but i will see what i can find out about a compresion test.