I was driving home from work today on the way to pick up new belts for my FD, but when I parked and was cooling the turbos, smoke start coming out of the passenger side!!!!! I got out, opened the hood hoping I wouldn't be greeted by a fire, and saw smoke that appeared to be coming from the intake pipes. I have an Apex i power intake and that is all. It was installed properly and has been on for 2 months now.

the smoke cleared quickly and I coudn't source it. so after picking up the belts I drove home. I inspected the engine bay with the engine running, a little smoke came out after about 2 minutes of lookign around from the rats nest. I shut the car down and turned on the fans and overheat exhaust. then a bit more smoke came out.
could this be the sign of a clogged pre-cat? or something worse? I just replaced a leaking air pump hose, and all my other hoses apear in good order, no coolant leaks either. any one else get this problem or have an idea of what it is.

 

Check to make sure you're not losing coolant quickly. Could be a loose or craked coolant hose.

 

What color was the smoke?

 

it appeared a thin brownish to white. it wasn't extremely thick. but enought to be alarming to me.

 

What did it smell like? Oil, coolant, or fuel? If it was white I would say coolant, brown to black could be fuel or oil. If you smell coolant, check the turbo coolant lines. Next there is a small coolant line on the back of the waterpump housing, that connects to a metal pipe on top of your motor right next to the solenoids (long sentence). Check those 3 coolant hoses first. Next if it's fuel (really bad) could be a faulty fuel pulsation dampner, or leaky injectors, but I'm pretty sure you'd know if you had an engine fire. If it's oil, I'd look at the oil line from the turbo to the motor. The gasket there is notorious for leaks. Let us know what you find out.

eric

On a side note everyone be vary wary of leaky fuel pulsation dampners/injectors. If you smell fuel these are the 2 most likely culprits, and they lead to engine fires.

 

check your cat, sometimes when it starts to melt it will smoke and it looks like it is comming from the turbos.

 

Sounds like an oil leak. I had an oil leak from the intake manifold, and it smoked out the passenger side.

Could be something else, but sounds like an oil leak with the oil just burning off the engine.

 

it did not have the scent of coolant. and temps were good. smelled more like oil than anythng else. I will check out all the lines tonight and let you guys know what I find. thanks.

my engine was rebuilt a year ago on the 12th.

 

There's a possibility that you had some oil seep onto your cat and the smoke will come right back up where you saw it. I have a slow oil leak and my cat has oil on it. I've seen smoke there as well and traced it back to my cat.

 

The turbo compressor was lightly covered in oil along with the y-pipe. there must be a slow leak of oil somewhere. I got the car up on a lift, and couldn't see exaclty what the problem was. it's definately oil. so I guess checking all oil passages in the area would be best. I'm gonna go see the Mazda rotary tech tommorrow and have him look, I'm sure he has seenit before, and I'll post what he finds.

 

Mazda says to just replace the turbos. I found a loose hose. the upper intercooler hose is loose on the turbo end, not the intercooler end. this seems to be the source of the leaking oil. Is this a big problem>? should I be okay if I just put the silicone hoses on? hopefully I don't have to rebuild the turbos already....

 

Seems to me if your turbos were blowing oil and really were bad that you would smoke out of your exhaust quite a bit as well, not just from the engine bay. I have a leak very similar to yours right now that I have traced to the oil return line from the primary turbo to the rotary housing.. easiest way to check is to get the car up and take off the precat/downpipe and heatshields to check it out. Aside from that it is normal for a bit of oil to be in the intercooler system, part of PCV.. jumping to a conclusion like 'replace the turbos' without checking everything out thoroughly seems premature. I would never trust Mazda.

Matt
93 SSM

 

last time I saw smoke and oil in the pipes I had to replace the twins at 80k miles How many miles on the turbo?

 

Check everything out. But shop for some used turbos. Everyone is always looking to sell them. You should be able to get a nice used set with good mileage for about $600. Not too shabby, considering they should last at least another 40-50K miles.

 

there is 96k on the original turbos. the engine has about 10k

 

Your turbos are going to need to be replaced if you want to boost reliably without any bog. Just do a search for used ones or think about going single.