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.