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Help! I need thoughts on my problem, which is, starting yesterday, a large volume of oil burning in the exhaust, sucking it out of the engine at like a quart in 40 miles.
Needless to say, it's not only a royal PIA to drive it like this, and dangerous, it's embarassing.
General indications on here are it's probably the turbo that has lost a seal.
Car is a '96 CS, with 195,000 miles. It has had the occasional episode of blue haze but generally has run without much sign of burning oil.
Yesterday I drove it 55 miles in the rain and parked it at my girlfriend's, and spent the day with her, then around 5 started it up to drive home. The weather had cleared, and there was, as I drove, a pretty strong blue haze trailing behind. On a hill climb within the first mile it belched a pretty strong blue cloud, and accelerating sort of cleared it. At the next stop sign, about 2 miles, it began belching smoke as it idled, a massive cloud, and I pulled away from it into the convenience store lot right there. A guy who'd been following me pulled in and assured me it was the turbo, his daughter had a 9000 that behaved the same way.
I checked the oil and found it more than a quart low, and added right then. I kept hoping it had cleared up, and sometimes for a bit it would seem okay, then massive smoke again, and near constant blue haze. At speed sometimes I'd need to gun it well above the limit to clear the cloud and keep engine running smooth.
But it runs fine except when oil smoke is heaviest.
Today, 60 miles later, I checked and oil was down a quart and a half. Topped it up. (Oil's not cheap these days.)
Then I loosened the plastic bellows from air cleaner to turbo compressor and no real oil noticeable there, reached in and could find no play, radial or in-out, in compressor wheel. No noise from turbo ever, no seeping or signs of oil on its housing.
I pulled the elbow off at the throttle body and didn't really find any surprising amount of oil there, though of course there's plenty of sticky old oil residue. Given how much smoke I'm seeing I would have thought there'd be lots of liquid oil in the rubber elbow. But maybe the turbo's heat is vaporizing it so it's more an oil mist hitting the cylinders.
Tonight I pulled the plugs, all a uniform tan color, no oil visible on them. Checked compression and got 180 psi on all four cylinders. I was kind of rooting for some kind of a head gasket leak from a pressurized oil gallery straight into one of the cylinders, or a sign of a cracked ring, but no such luck, thank gosh. This bulletin board and the C900 bulletin board make it plain there aren't many other possibilities than turbo, valve stem seals or rings. It's not rings and it's not valve stem seals, tho those probably do need to be renewed - - at head gasket time.
If I tooled right along it was kind of tolerable, but I live in a small city with stop signs and red lights. People kept well back of me as I drove, and I did a lot of sheepish grinning and waving at lights. Glad no one called the fire department or police on me. I'll have to go about 20 miles tomorrow to a junkyard I know has a 9000 with a turbo, hope to pull it quick and easily.
posted by 71.173.8...
, Sun, 20 Apr 2014 09:52:40
, Wed, 16 Apr 2014 14:32:39
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