Why is it smoking?
 

Well, its really hard to tell again (as is most problems with my car).

It starts up perfect, no smoke or anything. I drive it around for about 15-20mins under normal conditions and turn it off. I come back about 30 mins later and starts up fine again but this time its smoking. Its doing so quite a bit and I can clearly see its blue smoke. It does this for about 30 seconds and then stops entirely, nothing on the way home.

So after I get home, I wait another half an hour and take apart the intercooler and look for oil from a possible damaged turbo oil seal and theres no oil residue in the I/C but there is a slight amount in the elbows to and from the I/C . I pull the L1 spark plug and the flat section right after the threads was covered in a brownish substance, oil I assume?

So at this point, im not sure what to conclude. My NA was failing from a bad OCR (oil control ring) and it was a gradual problem building up and would smoke on a cold start and not after. This is doing the opposite.

Is it my ocr failing again or could it be due to a tweaked ratio of premix it might be getting for some reason? Any experienced insight would be appreciated.

Hmm - It burns off after 30 seconds? - Sounds like a normal high mileage turbo.
When the engine is cold the residual oil in the intake tends to cling. When the engine is warm, the oil in the intake is more fluid, gets blown through & burned off.
If you are not already using 20W50 SJ oil, maybe switch to it on your next change.

Keep in mind that in a turbo with bad oil seal, oil can escape into the *exhaust* side AS WELL as the intake side. IF it goes to the exhaust, you'll never physically FIND/SEE it, but you will still get smoke.

Another thing to consider is that oil gets thinner when hot. So, after being shut down warm, the oil inside the rotors is far more likely to be able to leak past worn oil rings than when cold.

I wouldn't worry about too much right now. Sounds like normal wear. How many miles you have on it?

*agreed with above*

turbo rebuild??

Thanks a lot for the advice, those are excellent points I overlooked.

The engine/turbo have about 45k miles on them and the engine seemed to be in very good condition but the turbo's had a hard life under my ownership due to the boost numbers its seen with my mods.

So I guess to find out any further information, id have to remove my downpipe after a warm run and check for any oil building up? Was the oil on the plug normal then? Thanks again.

Edit- What exactly would cause oil control ring failure?

Smoking
 

If your smoke is coming from the exhaust manifold and it has a anti-freeze smell and you are losing a small amount of antifreeze over time one of your oil seals are bad. If not, keep driving and have fun.

May I ask what antifreeze smell/loss and oil seals have in common?

Hey,

Have u got a turbo timer by anychance. Try leaving ur car idle in the drive way for 30 seconds turn it off. Then start her up again and see what happens. Worked for me so i bought a turbo timer

Cheers
Chris

Nah, dont have a timer on it currently so I just time it myself for about 10-20 seconds. Everything seems to be ok ever since then. Havent had any smoking issues at all. Seems kind of sporadic.