Turbo, white smoke out the exhaust, ideas?
 

I'm running the D3 kit, not like it matters, but on idle lately smoke has been steadily coming out of the exhaust. Crop dusting everything and just fogging up every stoplight and drive-thru.

I'm thankful that it's white smoke which means that it's oil hitting a hot surface as opposed to blue smoke, which means something is seriously wrong. I checked the oil drain line and there are no kinks to stop flow so that leads me to believe that the turbo is possibly getting too much oil from the feed line. On a couple of websites that I visited, the word "oil restrictor" was tossed around, which basically restricts the flow of oil into the turbo. But it's just a guess at a solution. And I wouldn't want to restrict flow unless I knew that was the issue, because a turbo without enough oil is soon to be a dead snail.

The car doesn't seem to be losing much oil, I'll check again later today to make sure. It's just more of an annoyance when I know not everything is working 100%.

Any ideas?

Blue smoke is oil, black smoke is too rich, white smoke normally is a class alpha fire... Like DI seals... J/k NFC what white smoke means in a car.


Running e85?

White smoke is water. Pics of smoke and is your turbo water cooled?

Taken off of yahoo answers so take it with a grain of salt:

Its probably not random. I would be willing to bet its anytime you accelerate heavily.

There are two different indicators as far as oil smoke goes. Some smoke under heavy acceleration and some on deceleration.

When it smokes under acceleration, you are getting blow-by past the rings on your piston. Not good. It usually means something is worn out. Just piston rings if your lucky (which is still very expensive to get to), or the bore of the cylinder is out of service limits, worn out.

When it smokes on deceleration, your valve seals could be failing, sucking in oil from the top of you cylinder head. Not nearly the bummer of a spent block but still expensive.

It could be moisture from a bad gasket too. Check your oil and see if its frothy. Also, Oil smoke has a distinctively different smell than antifreeze or cooling system smoke.

It also could just be condensation burning off. That will usually go away after 10 minutes or so.

Random tips..
Sometimes if its bad gasket, an excessive amount of water will drip from your tail pipe. ...and if its a blown head gasket, sometimes going up a steep hill will quickly drive the temperature up.

I don't have DI seal issues, or at least I shouldn't lol. D3 replaced the seals with new ones and the current ECU has all of the issues fixed on it. Glad we got that out of the way too, don't want to be one of those guys with a blown engine over something small like DI seals, with no warranty to replace it.

It only smokes at idle. It's not like a cloud shoots out when I accelerate. It just casually streams out of the exhaust at idle.

Is it always going at idle or does it go away with time, what's you geographical location? Humid?

It's pretty random. 75% of the time or more it'll do it at idle. It used to be on and off, but now it occurs more often. Atlanta is very humid right now, but I don't know if that makes a difference.

I can't get pics until later.

It doesn't smoke on cold start. It doesn't shoot out smoke on acceleration. It just casually streams out smoke on idle. It used to be more random but now it seems to do it almost at every stop.

Is it using any water? Check your level.

What do you mean?

White smoke, in large amounts would be coolant. Not a good thing.

Coolant levels are perfect.

You might just be seeing condensation (steam) that happens to most cars on cold mornings, or in humid conditions.

Does the smoke linger, or does it disappear after a few seconds.

Smoke will not dissipate.

also, run the car for a bit, even run it hard for a bit, and then see if it still smokes at idle. Usually, once the car and exhaust are all up to temp, the steam (if it IS steam) usually will subside.

Could be oil (perceiving as white)..do you have any oil pressure gauge or reading?

I don't know how relevant this is, but what you're describing sounds exactly like what my Mazdaspeed3 did when some seal was blown and a bit of oil was burning in the turbine. It was a somewhat common issue and my turbo was replaced under warranty.

I know they say oil makes blue smoke, but it just looked like a big white cloud to me. It also wasn't constant. If I recall correctly, when my A/C compressor would kick in, the smoke would increase. Basically, under a slightly higher load, the smoke would come on. And it wasn't blasting out clouds of it while I was driving or anything.

Had white smoke on my wrx a few months ago. Turns out the turbo had shaft play. Give that a look.

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Turbo? Subaru engine? White smoke? Ahhh i'm having cracked ringlands flashbacks

Do you have the forward cat installed?,....when my forward cat came apart I was blowing white smoke.

Oh my god you described it perfectly. I'm gonna yank it off and send it to Precision after what you just described.

Did you check with Precision to see if you should be running a restrictor? It seems most modern turbos need a restrictor, but I would have thought that if you needed one D3PE would have put one in. I would have to say that your turbo is the most likely source.

I was just told that restrictors void the warranty of the turbo. Good thing it never had one.

I am researching that now. What model and type Precision turbo do you have?

It's a custom Precision turbo, the model doesn't officially exist as a production turbo. Its unofficially a 5534e model though.

That doesn't help. What style center cartridge is it?

5534 are usually journal bearing, which don't need restrictor..

He probably only had the billet wheel upgrade or something like that.

Usually a restrictor is needed on a Ball bearing turbo I.E GT/GTX garrett series, B&W EFR series, All Precision BB turbo!

But they usually comes with it at the same time!

Yes and I'll probably upgrade to BB when I send it back in for warranty.

sounds like a blown headgasket

Wouldn't a BHG run terribly, smoke under acceleration, have coolant on the oil dipstick, and many more issues I'm not seeing?

Yes normally it would. depends on how bad its blown. That may not be your problem. Its just a common reason for white smoke. Its a hard one to diagnose in the forums. I hope you get it figured it out.

this happened to my friends car after adding forced induction, and it ended up being his fuel injectors. Idk if you're still trying to figure it out, but if so check to see if one is stuck open

A stuck injector would likely cause black smoke and would cause a miss. A good way to isolate the problem to a single cylinder (if it is in fact related to one cylinder) would be spraying each header tube with WD40. You would see the solvent quickly dissipate from the normally operating cylinders. The one with the problem would allow the solvent to run before dissipating.

Just saying it's a possibility. It was tricky because everyone thought it was a blown head gasket when in fact it was just a hung open fuel injector.

Is to take it to a Subaru only mechanic, one that deals with after market parts.

We have a few here in PA, every where I've lived I've found one close, find a souped up wrx, STI, fxt, or LGT, and ask them where the go to get work done.

Depends on where the gasket blows. But with your smoke/vapor only at idle I would highly doubt it's a head gasket. Blown head gasket on a 12:1 engine is going to be very very noticeable.

It's actually 9:1 now that I've got rods and pistons.

The smoke seems to be getting a bit worse. I "may" have seen a bit of blue mixed with the white smoke yesterday. It's definitely not a sweet smelling smoke either which pretty much rules out coolant. I'm likely burning oil if I did see that blue. Seemed to be mostly white today. I also noticed that if I idle long enough, the smoke will go away. Like 5 mins.

Another symptom. It doesn't seem to smoke when I drive it like a grandpa. Does this all seem to lead to the turbo? I can't take it off and send it back to Precision for another week so I'm just trying to make sure that's what it is.

its good bud.

im in the same position

or the oil seals in the turbo