Following on from me thinking my turbo's fooked due to the engine smoking, I've just noticed my little breather filter thingy on the left hand side of the rocker cover full of oil. I've checked the pipe on the right hand side of the head and this is also has lots of oil in. Could this be my smoke problem or does this point to the turbo being knackered?

 

It could cause it to smoke give the breather system a good clean out but if it keeps happening then it could indicate a bigger problem

 

Is it the standard breather and are you running more boost than standard?

If so get it modified - let it breath better and you'll notice a big differece!

 

A good engine should not breathe much at all!!
If you have high crank case pressure then you should do a compression test because your piston rings may be on there way out!

 

I maybe wrong here, but if oil is present in the pipe and breather, it maybe an idea to remove your crossover pipe and check its free of oil. If its not, you will find that oil has found its way into your intercooler, which isnt good. Parts affected would be the throttle housing, crossover pipe, joining hoses (throttle and boost) and intercooler.

If oil has got its way all round those parts, clean everything and it would be advisable to replace the little breather unit. It only costs pennies to replace and will no doubt help solve future problems.

 

No oil in the intercooler or crossover pipe. I'm now convinced it's the breather thats at fault as when I opened it there was nothing inside it and I'm missing the 1 way valve!
Can I just block off the pipe that goes to the bottom of the meter head?

 

Right, I've now blocked the meter head pipe off and got rid of the breather altogether so there's nothing connected to the left side of the rocker and I think I'm now smoking MORE!!!
Can anyone help me!!! lol.

 

So are you just venting to atmosphere now? Is it 100% blue smoke? If it is then you have oil getting into the chambers somehow! If it's black smoke then your just overfuelling, and if it's white smoke (steam) then it's water so could be head gasket.

As the return to the metering unit is blocked off and if it is blue smoke the only way oil is getting into the fuel/air mix and being burnt is past the piston rings or your valve stem seals have completely disintergrated!
As i said above get a compression tester and do a compression test, they are only about £15 from halfords!
If your Comp is good (150psi min across all 4) then i'd go with stem seals, again only if it is 100% blue smoke!

 

Valve stem seals have been replaced on thursday as I thought this was my problem. Bottom end has just been reconed with new rings. I'll go get a compression tester now, what sort of pressures should I expect to see on the tester?

 

If its new bottom end then 12bar (175psi) across all 4 mate.

Test as follows:

Warm engine (15mins running)
Remove all 4 plugs
Screw in tester into No. 1
Accelerator to the floor
Crank for 10sec

Take reading...

Repeat for 2,3, and 4.

 

Just done my comp test and it shows nearly 10 bar, all 4 exactly the same. I have just noticed a nice big pool of oil under the car and it looks like its coming out of the bottom of the turbo I think there's a bolt missing and it's coming out of there, I'll go take a couple of pics tell me what you think.

 

If they are standard pistons then 10 Bar is really low mate!!
If you have a puddle of oil on the floor i bet it's coming form the oil return pipe from the turbo to the sump, it will be split! Runs onto the exhaust and looks like you are smoking from behind as your going along!! It's just above the starter motor mate.

 

This bolt is missing under the turbo and has oil on it


All this oil has just come out from somewhere as it wasn't there 10 mins ago!

 

If 10 bar is low, what is my problem,.............. for feck sake don't say bottom end!!

 

I would imagine that even though you have changed the rings perhaps the bores were not within tolerance and you would have needed a rebore and oversized pistons? Did you have the bores meassured for wear to make sure you could just replace the rings?

Check the oil return pipe you can see in the photo (sometimes splits where the jubilee clip is overtightend), because i'm not sure if oil passes through that part of the turbine housing where the bolt is missing.

 

i had the same prob recently oil from the same place my oil seal had gone i took my turbo apart and rebuilt it and problem solved cost me 22 uid to fix

 

10 bar is not low at all! It's perfect, especially as they are all equal. Your rear turbo seal has gone, nothing wrong with the engine.

 

10bar for a fresh bottom end is not perfect!
Mine is 12bar, as is my brothers S1 that was recently rebuilt, my engine was about 10bar before the rebuild!!
IMO 10bar is the minimum before you need to be thinking about a rebuild, 2 bar is a lot to be down on compression.

 

Wonder if I have low comp pistons in my engine!!! So what does the compression test actually test? is it just piston rings or head gasket? this is the 1st time I've done a comp test

If I'm 100% sure it's the turbo I'll just get another, but if there's a chance it's something else I can do without the expense if ya know what I mean
Thanks for all the help guys

 

Rings, Bores, Head Gasket, and how well the valves are sealing.

 

Fresh engine's have poor ring seal for one, they take a while to bed in. My 7.4:1 engine was about 8.5 bar. These compression testers are quite primitive, what you are looking for is that all cylinders are equal. The actual reading varies on cranking speed, oil grade, coolant/air temperature etc, which is why they have a green area between about 8-14bar. You can't use them to diagnose pumping efficiency, you need a leak down test for that.

 

Fair play Rick, those variables do make a big difference!
The engines i was talking about have both done about 5000 miles so the rings are bedded in nicely, and are using the same oil, with new starter motors and new batteries, so are very similar!