When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I discussed with my tuner friends. We did not go into great detail.
Three things we considered:
1. Leaking "main" seal
2. Leaking internal seal of the turbo
3. Upper oil feed lines
Main seal: You can take a look through the service opening on the underside of the housing, to look for leaking oil. Leaking oil could cause the clutch to slip, but if the leak is slow, it might not. The person that did your clutch work likely did not remove the flywheel, so may not have inspected the main seal.
Internal Seal: If the seals were leaking inside the turbo, it would manifest in burning oil smell in the exhaust
Feed lines : You should be able to inspect without much difficulty.
My car: Upper oil feed line in shadow area of middle of pic.
I can get under today and open the service opening on the transmission and check
Upper greyish pipe is the upper oil feed pipe. Black is the coolant line. You can also see the lower oil return lines connect under the heatshield and so would be hard to inspect. You can see how any of the fasteners associated with the turbo will be hard to remove. Lots of liquid wrench may (or may not) help. Consider your alternatives if you break off any of the bolts or studs.
May be only two bolts to remove that heatshield, but they usually are pretty rusted on.
Inside view of a "main" seal. (Source "esteven". You can imagine where oil might pool if leaking from the main seal. I have not seen if there is an actual gasket between the rear housing and the clutch housing. If there isn't you could imagine oil seeping out.
On earlier FD the oil injectors seem to take their vacuum feed from someplace on the rat's nest. My car has been modified and the vacuum feed is taken from the LIM.
Many folk do not trust their old OMP and so also premix. In my case the injectors were not likely working well, as the vacuum lines were rotted.
I wondered why my oil levels were not dropping as quickly as one might expect.
Checked oil injectors and they’re not leaking, I don’t think the rear main seal is leaking either because that wouldn’t cause heavy smoke from the turbo side no? I drove it aggressively a bit today down a longer road and when I came back it was smoking pretty hard, some smoke even looked like it was coming from the inlet where the y pipe goes into the primary turbo but that could just be coincidence.
also my car smokes blue (oil) like crazy upon cold start startup, I only did around 1.3oz a gallon premix. It stops smoking blue like crazy once it’s warmed up but still smokes blue. Does that mean turbos are shot?
"or me the top connection is connected to the pcv that connects to UIM and the bottom connection is connected to a spot on the block close by under it. That’s normal right?"
Not quite.
Green dot below shows the front intake elbow. It has two nipples. One nipple feeds a vacuum line with some sort of purpose. The second nipple shows a hose that seems to have been erased. This is where the overflow tube from the filler neck is suppose to be connected. The hose runs from the filler neck to a metal tube. At the other end of the metal tube another hose connects to that nipple on the elbow.
What you are seeing up top perhaps, is the hose connecting to the metal tube.
If you can, see if there is a hose also connected to the elbow.
Many tuner shops will block of that elbow connections, and, believe it or not, just let the overflow tube drain/vent to the street.
A tidier solution is to run the overflow hose to a catch can (which then has its own overflow tube to the street).
The normal purpose of the overflow tube is to allow oil pan fumes to vent.
Mazda vents it back to the turbo intake as a pollution preventions step.
But that sets us all up for an event of oil flowing to our front turbo if we overfill the oil.
You said you may have overfilled the oil.
Therefore, I would expect you may find oil in the overflow hose.
If the connection between the metal tube and the elbow is disconnected, then oil will have flowed out into your engine bay.
If not the oil may have flowed into your front turbo.
If that is the case you may find oil in your cross over pipe ahead of the inter cooler, having been blown there by the front turbo.
It is easy enough to disconnect the crossover pipe and feel for oiliness.
If your front turbo is very hot, that oil will burn off inside the turbo.
In some cases that smoke finds its way out of the turbo causing a scary smoke event in the engine bay.
"also my car smokes blue (oil) like crazy upon cold start startup, I only did around 1.3oz a gallon premix. It stops smoking blue like crazy once it’s warmed up but still smokes blue. Does that mean turbos are shot?"
See the explanation above. Check your oil filler neck to see if oil is all the way up to the overflow/vent port.
If your engine is burning oil otherwise there may be a few, not vary happy, causes.
It could be the oil seals inside the turbo (or the housing is cracked) allowing oil inside the turbo and getting blown to your engine.
Again check in the crossover pipe for oil residue.
Your oil seals in your engine may be shot.
Check to see if there is obvious oil in your coolant and/or coolant in your oil.
Smell your oil dipstick to smell if the oil smells burnt.
May be time for another compression test.
( i think it is unlikely your new oil injectors are somehow pumping to much oil.)
do you see the circled oil filler neck there? The second hose that goes down labeled A is what is SUPPOSED to be connected to the primary turbo elbow right? Well for some reason mine connects to the block. When I took my UIM and everything apart, I wanted to put it back the way it was and that line connected somewhere on the block forgot exactly where but it was near the oil fill neck. Maybe that’s what’s causing the issue?
Redbul I think we’re onto something here, check this out
my bottom nipple doesn’t connect to the primary turbo elbow, instead it’s connected somewhere on the block which I’m now concerned why that was done because stock sequential should have it connected to the primary turbo elbow
so I was wrong. Matter of fact I do think it is connected correctly. In this old image, you can see me holding the hose that is connected to the bottom nipple on my oil filler neck. This hose is connected to a hardline that I believe is connected to the correct place on the turbo elbow
The discussions on RX7club regarding premix are all over the map.
The 1.38 ounces per gallon may be for racing applications with no OMP.
Generally I see about 1 ounce per gallon (without OMP) and 0.5 ounces with an operating OMP.
(Remember that a US Gallon is smaller than an imperial gallon.)
The owners manual says the fuel tank is 20.11 US gallons or 16.7 Imperial gallons.
The Japanese manual says 75 litres.
It seems a US Gallon is about 3.78 litres.
well now that we think about it, the excess oil from the exhaust probably isn’t due to premix but due to extra oil that went into turbos from the elbow nipple attached to the overfill nipple on the oil filler neck. That causes extra oil to be pushed into housings (fouling my plugs as before) and the extra blue smoke out the exhaust. As for why it’s leaking there I have no idea
also want to bring up something interesting. When it smokes, sometimes the smoke stops for 30 seconds before resuming while the car is running.
There may be some confusion because the JDM oil filler neck may have only one venting nipple (i.e no PCV valve). The crudest treatment is to leave the one (or both nipples) without a hose. Just venting to the engine bay. The oil pan needs to breathe. .
But that means fumes escaping into the atmosphere.
Hence the automakers were obliged to reroute the fumes back into the intake.
"so I was wrong. Matter of fact I do think it is connected correctly. In this old image, you can see me holding the hose that is connected to the bottom nipple on my oil filler neck. This hose is connected to a hardline that I believe is connected to the correct place on the turbo elbow"
I think you might be able to unplug the signal/power to your OMP.
Read up on that.
Many people eliminate the OMP altogether and just rely on premixing.
Unplugging the OMP may allow you to judge is it is part of the problem. (I don't know how)
[ but I would be cautious about doing that unless you fulling understand what the effect may be.]
You might be able to monitor your OMP function on your Power FC controller.
yes, tomorrow I plan to swab the bottom of the OMP again and check with the light if it has oil infused dye, if so, that means it’s still leaking. If not, then that should be fine but your idea of cutting it off regardless is good to see if it’ll impact the smoke coming from the engine bay
perhaps the current smoke is just all the excess oil that was pushed into turbos still burning off?
checkout this thread, even guys like dale clark say that smoking from turbo area is normal after overfilling oil, I don’t even have any visible leaks besides that one on the LIM gasket but that one never leaked more.
tomorrow I will try to open up the front turbo elbow, clean out any oil on the turbine housing, button her back up, run her, then open her up again and check if there’s more oil there, if there is, then a seal is blown in the turbos. If not, it’s probably just burning off residual oil
also I have boost set to 0 right now which means all boost is vented, maybe after cleaning I’ll increase it a tad to help some oil exit
1. The oil can pool in that front turbo and it may take a while to blow/burn it away
2. The oil can blow through the Y-pipe to the back turbo as well
Meanwhile just went for a fill up:
200 ml of Idemitsu going in.....not very scientific measurement (I have an OMP). That is about 40 litres to go 210 Km (mixed city/highway). Yes that is roughly C$8 per US gallon for Shell 93.
so I started her up today and took her for a much longer drive and went much faster, I even did a third gear WOT and although a loose intercooling piping popped off (simply refit and tighten) I have good news.
firstly, on cold start, she didn’t smoke as much as before. Before, she smoked like crazy! Giant blue clouds. Now, it was normal with very little blue
also, after I got home after my extensive run, she did still smoke but not as much as before from the engine bay. Still smoke though, I had to shut her off then as I went low on gas (only filled 4 gal before when I emptied fuel tank). Will take her to the gas station tomorrow to get gas as well as a good run.
the good news is after that wot run, I don’t think she’ll catch fire at least as I was scared the smoke would get worse and worse. So I’ll drive her around like this a little bit for a few days and see if it completely clears up eventually, if not, well the turbo seals are probably shot then because I see no leaks above or below the turbos anymore.
03-09-24, 02:40 PM
