^ Smoke start off not so bad & quickly gets worse.

How bad of a situation would a bad oil seal be?

 

had the same symptoms tmadlem84..
turned out to be oil blowby that would collect... then as the warmed up... she burned it out of the exhaust..
the smoke that were coming off the turbo area was due to a blown secondary intake pipe gasket that was leakin onto a hot dp...

 

So what kind of repair $$ am I looking at? (assuming it's not a coolant seal).

Main oil seal bad cost
Oil blowby fix cost

We talking couple hundred... couple thousand... new engine...?

 

could be turbo going bad also ......one thing that strikes me as weird is the smoke coming out of youre engine bay ....that i just dont get
did you finally see where the smoke is coming from?

 

my money is on a bad turbo, I had this happen last month

if it smokes right at startup and the smoke disipates with time thats a coolant seal, if it doesn't smoke right at start up much but gradually gets worst as the exhaust heats up then thats the turbo.

The good news is that good used turbo's are available cheap

 

That's what it's doing. I've got a bad set of turbos (they were SUPPOSEDLY recently replaced) maybe Chris @ Banzai can salvage the 2 bad sets into one good one

But I'm going to Banzai @ 11am on Friday. Hopefully it isn't TOO expensive... as I can't afford a lot right now... so a big repair would mean storage

 

Another update:

I towed it home today. Car wouldn't start. It would crank & sound like it was ready to fire & run, & so I would let of the ignition & it wouldn't start. So after trying to start the car the 'normal' way 3/4 times, I just held the ignition on for awhile & it did finally start.

If that helps diagnose anything...

 

maybe you should save up for a single turbo?

 

^^ That wouldn't happen for awhile. If it's the turbos, I'd prefer to pay $1k to get them rebuilt than $5-8k to go single.

Besides... I want to keep this car mostly stock... as I do plan to sell it in the (distant) future when I'm financially ready to buy a 20B FD. (One of my life goals )

 

sorry to bust everyones bubble on the turbo theory, but i think the car would still start with a blown oil seal in the turbo!!!

just like i said above, it might flood!!! to unflood, hold down gas and crank for like 10sec. do this like twice. this will clear the chambers.
or until u stop seeing smoke out the tailpipe.

if that doesn't work, time to pull the plugs... have fun, i did mine 3 times in a month.

i honestly think its a bad seal now with this symptom and will be very surprised if its not.

but hope for the best. hopefully im wrong, a rebuilt turbo is a lot cheaper than a rebuild!!!

 

if it doesn't smoke right at start up much but gradually gets worst as the exhaust heats up then thats the turbo,

this is the kicker. I have had a rotary with a very badly blown coolant seal, every time it started smoke would be in the air as soon as it was running because there was literaly coolant in the combustion chamber that was burning up. With a blown turbo this doesn't really happen so much because at least for several seconds the surrounding metal isn't hot enough to smoke of the oil, and for the first 30-40 seconds or so the exaust heat gets absorbed by the cold metal, keeping it cool enough to prevent the smoke.

Next the original poster described not being able to drive the car because the smoke was so bad. This can very easily happen with a blown turbo or with a bad oil controll ring (which is much more unlikley).

This is not likley to happen with a bad water seal. Water doesn't combust or compress and its conductive. Ever do the water treatment where you let the car suck up a gallon or so through a vaccuum hose. Its smokes a fair amount right, but not so much that you can't drive. How good does it run, the awnser is it barley runs.

For these reasons the original poster is most likley burning oil, in order of likleyhood, bad turbo, sucking oil through the PVC system, very unlikley bad oil conroll ring (as these also cause near instant smoke).

 

It's definitely not a sweet smelling smoke. I had my wife go out to give her sniffer a go at it & she described it "like a campfire", & said it definitely didn't smell sweet.

I would associate burning oil with that campfire-esque smell that you get when a motor hasn't run for awhile. LIke when you try to start that old mower cuz your new one broke... & it's full of nasty fuel & oil & smokes a while until it burns off all the old crap.

 

all you guys that are saying bad turbo are forgetting that he specifically said the smoke is WHITE. White smoke= water.


Tmadlem84,

are you sure it's white? not bluish... I've had bad turbos before and instantly I knew it was oil due to the color.

 

Maybe he's somewhat color-blind?

dave

 

turbo oil smoke can be described as whiteish.

Bottom line, could the car leak enough water internaly to make it undriveable due the amount smoke. I would say no, the car would barley, be running at that point, and certainly not idle.

 

His symptoms are really confusing. He says white smoke, but then later he says he sees no coolant loss. Either he is color blind, or he is not reading coolant levels well. Either way they are going to be big fixes. Changing a turbo = pulling a motor, or a lot of squeezing your hand in tight spots. Coolant seal = Rebuild. Either way I say take it to banzai and let them deal with it. If you dont have over 1000 I would just store it.

 

Well I'm at least going to find out what the problem is. It wouldn't make much sense to just put it in storage because I can't afford a $1,000 repair right now... because there is a chance it isn't a turbo/engine rebuild issue.

I would describe the smoke as white... but how blue are we talking? Would it be just a really hard to see blue? I know it wouldn't be a navy blue... but it would be an obvious shade of blue?

& the exhaust DEFINITELY doesn't smell sweet. I had 3 people put their nose to the test on that one, & none said "sweet"

 

not in my experience.

coolant smoke is pure white because it is steam and it is easy to spot. The blueish smoke that we are taliking about is exactly that. Smoke with a blue tint.

according to you there is a lot of smoke coming out so you should be able to identify rather easy if it has indeed a blue tint to it. Of course do it in the middle of the day and when the sun is out and shinning.

 

Maybe I wasn't looking closely enough at it...

I will start it up today to look again. I'm going to Banzai tomorrow (assuming UHaul finds me a trailer)... but I would prefer a diagnosis tonight rather than tomorrow.

But if it's coolant, shouldn't I get a STRONG sweet smell? I would not classify the smell of the exhaust as sweet at all & people on here have made it sound like it is so sweet you can't miss it....

 

I seriously doubt you are burning coolant. In most cases, coolant seal failures take a while to get to the point where the leak is so large that there is a ton of smoke being produced from the amount of coolant being burned.

It is possible to miss a lot of those early signs, but even then the smoking doesn't start out heavy (I've been through it).

This is also why I hate defining 'smoke' by colors. In most cases, the "blue" smoke is not "all that blue". In most cases it's a very light blue which to a LOT of people can and will look white. It's better to try and analyze what fluid levels are dropping more rapidly than they should as well as possibly examining the exhaust track to check for fluid. If its combustion related (i.e. coolant seal or fuel from being flooded), then on startup some fluid will be pushed into the exhaust system.

 

Yeah if you ahve had 3 people that it doesn't smell sweet then it probably is not coolant.

I had a smoking issue a few months back. Sort of the same symptoms with not smoking upon immediate start-up, but right after. It was smoking pretty good, but not as much as you are describing. For the life of me I could not figure it out what it was and was about to pull the tubos because that was the only thing I could think it was. Turns out if was the freaking map sensor. I must have cracked it when I was changing the oil filter. It had a massive crack on the bottom side. It almost all the way around the little vacuum nipple.

I changed it and blamoo no more smoke.

Just something cheap to check. Not saying this is it, but just take a look.
-JOsh

 

I just thought of this. (Should have mentioned sooner).

I changed my oil back around Aug 06. When I first had the problem with the car, I checked the coolant, which (aside from spraying a SMALL bit) was full. Checked the oil... which was a quarter of a quart low. Granted... could just be a small oil leak somewhere... but I keep in the habit of checking the oil periodcally... so the oil was PROBABLY (can't remember for certain... it was several months ago) full when I put it in storage... but now that I've been driving it for a couple of weeks... it is a 1/4 quart low...

 

well rotaries do burn oil (not like we didnt all know this) but that seems at a very excessive ammount.

 

PROBLEM SOLVED!

I thought you guys would appreciate knowing the results of my trip to Banzai racing.

First off, Chris & Elaine are awesome! WOrth every penny & more. I was very impressed with Chris' knowledge & how they run their business. A guy came in to the shop while CHris was working on my car & Chris gave him free advice on how to fix the problem himself. Any other shop would have told the guy "sure, we can fix that, bring it in", but not Banzai. Plus, Chris gave me a used OEM Downpipe gasket, as my gasket was an RX7Club type & he said it wasn't a very good quality of gasket (the gasket he gave was worth $60).

Anyways, one of my hoses for the turbo system had basically blown itself to smitherins. It wasn't like a hole in the hose, the hose just about blew itself in 2, in 2 separate places. This was causing the car to run very rich(which caused the smoke). I may have gotten that explanation a bit wrong... as my knowledge of the car is a TINY bit less than Chris & his wife.

So he fixed that problem, & discovered that a vaccum hose which worked the secondary turbo was 100% (literally) clogged... so my 2nd turbo had NEVER kicked on since I had the car. Chris told me... "that 2nd turbo is going to make it faster" & I was like.. "okay, faster... but it can't be THAT much of a difference... it is still 10psi..." So he took me for a test drive & I about shat (past tense of ****?) when that 2nd turbo kicked in!

Long story short... problem solved for a VERY reasonable amount of $$, & Banzai Racing is awesome! I can't wait for their BBQ coming up April 19th!

 

awesome. they are great people i am having my first business transaction with them on the new DIFF brace they are making and they answer every question quickly and are very nice about it.