So yesterday I go out to start my FD in the morning. I start it, a little puff of oil on startup, but it's been doing that. When I go back outside to drive off a about two minutes after I start it, it starts blowing massive amounts of oil smoke out the tailpipe. So I quickly shut the car off. It made no abnormal noises while it was running, I know this because I can clearly hear it inside my house due to the fact that it's running a fairly unrestrictive exhaust.

So I pull a spark plug today, and I it was a little damp with dirty oil. I haven't pulled the intercooler piping off to check for oil in there, but is usually a little film of it.

Under boost, the turbos did exhibit a little bit of smoke. If I kept the motor at constant elevated revs, oil smoke would come from the exhaust. If I revved the car up to around 7k, and let it rev down, it would shoot a whole bunch of oil smoke out the back.

I originally though it was the turbos, but I have blown a set before this, and those ones exhibited a fair amount noise and stuff before they went. The engine was rebuilt at 59k by Hayes Rotary (previous owner, not my choice) and the car currently has 79k miles.

Long story, short, something in my car is smoking large amounts of oil, and I'm trying to figure out just exactly what is causing it.

 

I'd lean towards oil control ring failure. Very rare on FDs (that have been properly built), more common on high mileage FC and FB engines.

Let it warm up and see if the smoking decreases once you drive the car. Also, if you let it sit for an extended period of time (ie a week) check to see if the smoking is worse than if you start it daily.

 

im trying to diagnose same problem. i get huge amount of smoke once exhaust worms up. And when i replaced turbos with other used once. it happened again on second test drive. when i had turbos out. i start the engine to see if oil would come out from exhaust manifold , didn't see any.

I just install this new engine in, So im thinking its ether something with vacuum hoses not right when i put it back or something else.
would deleting pcv cause this problem?

 

I'll try to drive it tomorrow after it's warm.

It's funny you mention the letting it sit deal, cause if I didn't start it daily before this issue arose, it would smoke noticeably more upon startup when I did start it, which could be the oil control rings letting in excess oil while its sitting? Also when I swapped in a newer set of turbos, it sat for about a month, and upon startup there was tons of smoke.

 

Try starting to the car without the oil filler cap on and let it idle. See if it affects/changes the amount of smoke.

 

I just went out and started it for the first time in about two days. It still smoked pretty good when I started it up, and having the oil filler cap off didn't didn't really affect it. It started to smoke slightly more after letting it idle for about a minute or two.

I would take it out for a drive but it is smoking too much to do so, although I did put it in neutral and revved it to around 7-7.5k to see if it would build boost and it built up about 5psi or so, and it seemed like it was smoking a little less with less vacuum.

No oil coming dripping the turbos also, btw.

So the removing the filler cap did nothing, so it probably isn't the PCV valve

It builds boost fine, so it doesn't look like the turbos are the culprit

It does, however, smoke a little less at lower vacuum levels, the smoke level doesn't fluctuate much, and the motor was rebuilt by a shop notorious for bad rebuilds. All these point to Oil control ring problems.

Anything else I can check before I order a new motor?

 

Not getting boost and leaking turbo oil seals are two totally separate problems. The seals can leak a lot of oil into the intake path even though the turbos still boost properly. So, IMO, a turbo oil seal leak can still be the problem.

 

You could remove the turbos, plug up the coolant/oil lines and run the car. If you have a lot of smoke pouring out of the engine this way, it's the engine.

 

Based on everything the OP has stated here in this thread, if I'm a betting man it's his oil control rings.

 

Is that based on the troubleshooting, or the engine builder?

 

Both, but mainly the former