I have an S5 turbo that has been smoking a lot from the turbo side in the engine bay. Rebuilt the engine with a turbo rebuilt by someone that has been highly referred. The car is completely stock with all emissions. I let the car idled for about an 1 and took it for a test drive. After about 10 minutes of driving in town smoke is coming out of the hood. The smoke smells like oil.

Oil residue can be found in the air intake to the turbo, the hoses to the intercooler and in the intercooler. I know some oil can be found in those area but it looks excessive.


Any thoughts or explanation why this is happening?

 

How's your oil pressure? Any chance with a fresh build it's so high it's pushing out the seals on the turbo?

 

Oil pressure is about 60 during idle and about 70 or so when accelerating - measuring oil pressure from an oil filter pedestal. The person who rebuilt the turbo did a pressure test up to 110 PSI

 

If the oil is in the intake pre-turbo, are you sure your pcv system is properly functioning and doesn’t have a ripped diaphragm which would cause oil to get sucked into the intake? I don’t know what your pcv/oil catch can setup is but worth asking.

If there was no oil pre-turbo, but post turbo - pre intercooler I’d suspect the turbo.

 

I agree on checking the pcv system. You should naturally get a little bit of extra oil in the intake from the pcv functioning correctly, however if it is broken or the vacuum lines hooked up incorrectly, it could be sucking more into your intake than it should

 

No catch-can setup at the moment - but the PCV valve is something I'll look into. Before the issue started, the vacuum lines were all replaced as a preventative care. Maybe the lines were swapped or the PCV failed.

Thanks for the support.