Blue smoke from my HDI

[pugbug]

Strange one this. I can't nail what's wrong with my HDI, but I need it on the road ASAP.

The main problem seems to be blue smoke from the exhaust, whilst driving normally there is no excessive smoke, but when flooring it the smoke has a tinge of blue with some black, whilst idle and revving it hard 3-4K there is massive puffs of blue smoke each time and even more if the car's been idling for a while and if I rev it afterwards, the fumes coming out of the exhaust also smell strange, not the typical diesel smell. I've not driven it much due to the problem, but decided to drive it around last week, and it is drinking oil. There is no loss of power and besides the smoke it drives as it should.

I'm going to take the inlet elbow off and have a look in the manifold for any oil tomorrow.

What's the likely culprit? A blown oil seal on the turbo? or even worse piston ring issues? It's only done 110K miles and serviced approx every 6-10K with synthetic oils, this time I did use 10W40, where normally I use 5W40, but I had ran out.

I have purchased a new GT15 turbo, but don't want to go through the hassle of fitting, only to find the problem is elsewhere, any help greatly appreciated!

[4WayDiablo]

Yeah sounds like your on the right lines I was thinking piston rings/scraper ring tbh but could be turbo

If you have just purchased a turbo you may as well stick it on and see what happens.

Get a pressure test done and see what it says

[Ruan]

Could well be valve stem seals... Does it smoke like hell in the mornings on first start? That's the telltale for stem seals, if not I'd go with turbocharger...

[Mr Whippy]

I'd go for the turbo first.

Surely stem seals would be apparent mainly on start up when a large volume of oil has made it's way into the cylinders?

Since it goes away at steady state driving but is there when boosting hard or running nearer vacuum (idle) then it starts to feel like it's intake pressure related (ie, either high vacuum or high boost)...


Never really seen any HDi's with valve stem issues either, not at 100k miles any way.


Hmmmm

Dave

[Poodle]

I've had two HDi's with over 170k on the clock and neither featured valve stem or piston ring issues. Both had a replacement turbo at some point in their lives though, so that's definitely where i'd look first.

[pugbug]

Thanks for the replies guys!

There is only a small puff of white/blue smoke on startup, it's very difficult to tell theres something wrong with the car and intermittently, after sitting in traffic at the lights and then accelerating out, there is plumes of blue smoke, that's when I first realised there was a problem a few months ago. Replacing the turbo looks to be a very daunting task... There's so little space