I have been helping my friend out on his turbo b18c1 since he is burning a good amount of oil lately. In the past 2 weeks his car has going from a faint amount of smoke to a good amount upon startup. The motor is tuned to run on the rich side and runs the sc61 turbo.

Originally, I recommended him to check his downpipe and intercooler piping for oil. No oil found, the exhaust side of the turbo is actually bone dry... with the exception of a large amount of soot. The drain/feed lines were not clogged or restricted in anyways. So I want to say the oil seals on the turbo should be ok, but is there any way the seal could be slowly giving since he is not smoking too severly? He also mentioned to me that he did run about a quart low on his car for maybe a day or 2... during which he only used the car from getting to point A to point B without putting heavy load on it.

A cyl leakdown test was also performed which yielded: 12% 12% 9% 12%

The numbers look good, but I know they can be misleading. My next bet would be ring-wash from running so rich. The motor roughly has 4000 miles since it was tuned. Occasionally he also runs race gas (100octane) on his set-up when he heads out to the track and when he wants to run the motor hard. The only thing he has done from the time it ran properly to when it started smoking was pull his valve cover off to check his valve-lash specs. Nothing else was changed other then the oil which yielded no metal shavings.

So basically when you check for ring-wash you want to pull your plugs, adjust the piston position with the crank, then use a light and look at the top of your pistons to see if they look 'washed' as compared to a 'dark/sooty' consistancy of a healty turbo motor... right?

Any other ideas out there?

 

When your friend had his motor built did he do anything to the head? where valve seals replaced with new ones?

art

 

Are u sure his return line is not kinked even the slightest? On my last car it had a little kink in it and when the motor got hot the tube would become more flexible and it would kink worse which then caused me to blow oil like crazy. Just something to check.

 

Yes, the return line is fine. He just removed the turbo last night so he plans on running it with just the manifold to see if the motor still smokes.

If it does, then I guess it is something internally wrong.