Hey guys so I had put quite a few miles on my chinacharger and it ran great and had no smoke or anything but after maybe 5k miles it started smoking a little. As the smoke gradually got worse I assumed it was the oil seals in the turbo so I went and bought another turbo and put it on and its smoking a Lot. Like James Bond style smokescreen. I didn't have an oil restrictor at first so I just out a 1/8" rivet in the line and it is still smoking.. Should I splurge for a smaller oil restrictor or???

 

You are using Begi's china gt28 right? I don't think it requires a restrictor as it has journal bearings. Does it smoke all the time?

 

Well my first turbo was a begi t25/28 and it was smoking a little at idle but lots more on accel and decel. This new turbo is a ebay gt2870 and its a journal bearing turbo so it shouldn't need a restrictor but I can't figure out what else it could be

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir7ss...ature=youtu.be
Here's a video of the matter. Ignore the loud exhaust leak...

 

that's not the turbo.

 

That makes me sad :( Guess I'll check the compression here in a bit

 

Even with a journal bearing turbo, some will need a restrictor. But that will depend on the amount of oil flow to the turbo, and the oil return from the turbo.

How many miles on the valve stem seals?

The extra head from the turbo, can cause the valve stem seals to get crispy and hard if they are high milage factory installed ones.

 

80k miles on the seals. I rebuilt the engine but left the head alone..

 

That is where I would start, the factory used a low temp rubber seal.

Get a good set of blue vitions.

Smoke on start up, stop lights and long idle periods, is commonly bad valve stem seals

Smoke all the time, bad rings, blown turbo seals.

Smoke on decell, bad oil scraper rings

 

I think I have a spare set of those somewhere. My compression test results were 180, 170, 170, 170. I can't tell if it's coolant or oil :/ I'm taking off the turbo and am going to see if its the seals causing it to smoke..

 

Nope.

 

Not to threadjack but I need to do valve seals on my car, I bought the supertech ones from 949. I figured they would be all blue viton, but only half of them are. Am I right to assume the blue ones should go on the exhaust side?

 

Yep. Half for one side and half for the other.

 

Head gasket?

 

i've blown a couple of head gaskets - one on my ms3 and one when i had my nb. my smoke was never that bad.

 

I blew a head gasket due to me not torquing the head properly upon reassembly and it was actually worse than that. But I could be wrong. If you take the head off check it with a straight edge to make sure its not warped also. It just doesn't appear to be oil related to me. One of the easier checks to do is pressurize the coolant system and see if it holds, if not, your head gasket is blown. (Unless you have a leak somewhere else, obviously)

 

Last time I saw that level of smoke from a tailpipe, there was a hole in the #4 piston.

 

Well thanks for those comforting posts! I disconnected the turbo and lots of oil in the exhaust. Ran it and no smoke so it's not the engine. That makes me very happy. I put a smaller restrictor in the oil feed line and i'm going to see if that helps any. Kind of weird that it would do this with two different turbo's.

 

Tell us more about your oil drain line.

 

That is way more smoke than just valve seals. Unless they're missing completely.