[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Since we are armchair mechanics 🙂 here is a different theory:

I listened again to the video and heard a small popping upon decel. Do you have headers?

If you are not having a significant drop in water level, and oil level is not dropping either then that popping may be afterfire.

Afterfire is not backfiring but unburnt fuel in the exhaust. Then I remembered you have a performance chip in it. Could that be causing it to run rich? Or at least delay in the injectors cutoff??

The kicker is that it is not consistent. Seems to have larger plume at first ( idling longer ) then less. hmm. ( Pass compression test then turbo seal is my bet)

There are some guys that feel the synthetic oils due to their more slipperiness can get past seals causing leaks. More of a long shot here as your car probably speced a certain oil due to the turbo anyway.[/quote]

I went back to stock so the pop is always with stock

[Coronita]

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[Coronita]

[quote=ucodegen]@flu – if the steam from the exhaust has a ‘funky’ smell combined with a bit of an anti-freeze smell, it is getting into the cylinders and being burned. If it is just an anti-freeze smell, then it is post combustion. With the way turbos are designed, the water jacket is outside of the bearings and you will not leak into the exhaust. You would get water in the oil before leaking into the intake or exhaust. See http://www.sjmautotechnik.com/trouble_shooting/turbo.html%5B/quote%5D

Holy sheet. Where did you find this website? Thanks…

[Coronita]

Well it looks like Cruz is going to win Iowa.

[Coronita]

The turbo if it is an issue would be surprising considering I only run synthetic for the past 16years and the car has a turbo timer that leaves the engine running for two minutes after turning off the ignition so that the oil can cool without cooking the turbo. I was running a boosted chip though. The KO3 aren’t exactly known to last that long under a lot of boost. Car has about 110k miles.

And Brian, most cars these.days are moving towards turbo to meet cafe emission rules. So forcing people to drive newer cars is forcing people to go more from an n/a engine to those that are turned and as you say less reliable.

[Coronita]

Ok Hobbie and Hatfield.

Riddle me this..

I drove on the freeway for about 30 minutes to work today.
And let’s just say that I was heavy on the gas most of the trip there.

I pulled into my parking lot and didn’t shut off the motor, but did let it idle for about 2 minutes…. And then this….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWE3JdNwGAg&feature=youtu.be

Notice the first time I give it a lot of gas, white smoke…2nd-4th time…nothing….

Ideas?

[Coronita]

[quote=mike92104]Have you witnessed the “white smoke” any other time you have started it? After sitting for a month, I would assume a significant amount of condensation would have built up in the exhaust, and was probably steaming off once it was warmed up enough. If you haven’t seen it since, I wouldn’t worry about it.

As far as the turbo, I thought most were oil cooled.

The Rotella T-6 is also available at Walmart in 1 gallon jugs for $22. Chevron has their Delo synthetic diesel oil for $19 or so. I run the Rotella in my diesel liberty.[/quote]

BTW:

Thanks for the heads up about Walmart as a second source for the Rotella T-6. I was about to got there to pick a jug up, but It so happens that Amazon delivered my quarterly supply today. I have a subscription service for this stuff from Amazon and they deliver about 4 quarts of it to me every 3 months, since that’s how often I change my oil in the miata, being that it’s abused every month.

The Rotella T-6 is the most underrated oil. It’s a great product that I don’t think many people know about, and most importantly, it’s cheap. $18-22 for a 4 quarts. Mobil 1 will easily set you back close to $40… It might not make that much of a difference if you change oil every 6 months or a year, but I tend to do frequent changes on the miata.

[Coronita]

[quote=mike92104]Have you witnessed the “white smoke” any other time you have started it? After sitting for a month, I would assume a significant amount of condensation would have built up in the exhaust, and was probably steaming off once it was warmed up enough. If you haven’t seen it since, I wouldn’t worry about it.

As far as the turbo, I thought most were oil cooled.

The Rotella T-6 is also available at Walmart in 1 gallon jugs for $22. Chevron has their Delo synthetic diesel oil for $19 or so. I run the Rotella in my diesel liberty.[/quote]

I think the white smoke did come up if I give it a lot of gas at startup. But if I drive it for 30minutes or so, no it doesn’t happen.

The turbo has both oil and coolant lines running through it…

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]I’m not familier with your engine so this is a guess. Are you sure there coolent to the turbo? Maybe it is upstream that is leaking and since turbo is down low is could be pooling and burning off creating smoke. But again, turbo gets hot pretty quick and I would guess that vaporizes fairly quickly.

Plus, you probably would notice more coolent loss than a drip or two. hmm

Ya know…..

Suppose you had a leaking valve guide or turbo oil line and it dripped oil down and ended up in the turbo when engine off. Since the oil wasn’t burned the the cyldender it would heat up in the turbo and make whitish smoke just as mentioned an external oil leak onto a hot manifold, but this would still be internal and come out the pipe!

Unless it is a huge leak, after it burns it off it should run clean. And your coolent drip is a small external drip. Nothing more.

Bet new smog guy is all you need. Fingers crossed.[/quote]

Hmm good points…. Yes, literally the drip is maybe one drop every few hours or something like that.

There does seem to be a “burn off”….If I drive the car for 30-40minutes, I don’t get this nice white puff of smoke. I’m pretty sure it’s not condensation though. The nice white puff only happens on a really high rev and only within the first 15-20 minutes from startup…

Oh well, I’ll flog the car a bit and take it to another smog guy.

[Coronita]

[quote=moneymaker]I’m about to do the timing belt on my 2002 VW Jetta TDI. Instead of taking the front of the car out I just need to lift the engine. Makes me wish I had my grandpas old 1960’s F-100. Dealers want 1000-1800 to do it and since it is supposed to be done every 80,000 miles I guess I need to learn to do it myself.[/quote]

Lol… I bought my timing belt kit from amazon. Gates timing belt kit. (Don’t buy the water pump from gates). I think I spent $250 total for the kit + waterpump and another $26 for the special coolant.

I also changed out all the accessories belts and the thermostat, and some additional belt rollers for about $150 more, because once you have front off, you might as well do all those things too.

I guess I didn’t need to…

Don’t lift the engine, just take the front off. It’s easier. If you’re really good you don’t even need to take the front off. The audi/vw’s front can be pivoted forward about 4-5 inches and you can get your hand in between to work. I took everything off because if you remember, I had a fiasco with getting some of the bolts off one of the pulleys.

http://piggington.com/ot_garage_gurus_i_need_some_suggestions

Edit: Holy sheet. Just reviewing some of the pictures I took last time, I forgot what a PITA it was to work on this thing about a year ago. ….

[Coronita]

Hobie and Hatfield…

Thanks for your technical support and suggestions….

After further examining thing, I am suspecting the culprit might be the turbo….

The 1.8T’s single turbo sits on the lower passenger side, and that’s roughly where I’ve been seeing an occasional droplets of coolant on the ground. (I checked the radiator and hoses, and those were fine. The water pump is also fine (it’s in the middle/center position, so that’s not the source of the leak…

I suspect that somehow coolant is leaking within the turbo into the xhaust outlet, which would explain the white smoke coming out of the tailpipe.
Thoughts? Here’s a rough picture of how things are (not my car)

Unfortunately, the catalytic converter is right after the turbo, and with a coolant leak, that probably means my cat is dead too. Interestingly, I’m not seeing any fault codes for from my O2 sensors, and from the ECU scan, everything looks ok. So it’s just weird.

Man, this is going to be a bitch and half to fix.
Parts cost aside is the least of my concern.. Labor is up the ying yang, even if it’s my own labor…
I think most of the front will need to come off again…. And dealing with bolts on the cat and turbo after they’ve been heated and cooled for 16 years is not going to be fun…

I really don’t want to revisit this again:

[img_assist|nid=25707|title=timing belt hell|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=600 | height=500]

On the plus side. Maybe this is the solution to my track car. Maybe the cat has to come off, and maybe the turbo is shot. Maybe would be a good time to put in a larger turbo, take the cat off completely and just run a straight pipe, and just PNO the car and leave it for track duty…. heh heh… I do need to swap the tranny too, but I’m guessing those should be pretty easy to find in the junkyard.

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Small nuance here. Oil leak onto hot exhaust will produce a ‘white’ smoke with a slight blue tinge. But that is easy to smell and track down looking at the engine. But, if it coming directly through the exhaust pipe and is white. That is coolant.[/quote]

Thanks. It was coming from the exhaust.

I just switched to a thicker oil (rotella t6/for turbo diesels). Its not a vw spec oil, but someone on bobtheoilguy ran it on the same engine on a vw and had an oil analysis done. it did as well if not better than most vw speced oils. Besides, it’s a last ditch effort for this car, so things like coming the turbo is probably not on the top of list things I should be concerned about.

Amazon is selling it for $18/4 quarts woth a subscription, which is cheap for synthetic. Its the same oil I put on my sc miata, so if this works, I don’t need to maintain a big stock of different oils. I also topped off my coolant but I am pretty sure the leak is external, since I did see a drip. The coolant didn’t look dirty, and the oil looked fine.

I’ll post my finds in a week.

[Coronita]

[quote=spdrun]Or register it out of state and park where a cop can’t see the license if they drive by every day 😉

But why even discuss cheating the system? As described, it sounds like there may not be anything wrong with the car.

Drive it, warm it up, take it to another shop. It sounds like it may well be fine.[/quote]

I wasn’t going to cheat the system, I’m just merely pointing out that the system itself isn’t exactly taking gross polluters off the road.

[Coronita]

You know. A lot of people cheat the system (or at least bend the rules) and it doesn’t require finding a shady mechanic/test place (which is getting harder to do)….

I’m not suggesting that anyone should do this or that I would do this myself…But many people get around the bi-annual smog check simply by changing the car’s registration address to one of the counties in CA that don’t require a bi-annual smog check…That’s how some track cars that you know aren’t road legal due to emissions get their registration stickers

http://www.city-data.com/forum/california/719232-no-smog-counties.html

[Coronita]

[quote=spdrun]Googling STAR, it seems to be some sort of enhanced inspection program. I didn’t see flu write anything about being directed to such a station.

But yeah, I’d drive the thing, take it to a different station with a good reputation, make sure it’s warm when being given for inspection, and see if it passes.[/quote]

Yes, it was a STAR/test only station.

[Author]

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