Hey everyone,

So a while back I noticed my car was letting out some puffs of smoke. I did a little investigation and determined it would only happen when the engine is hot and starting to move from a stop. No smoke when driving, letting off the gas, accelerating, etc, only at idle at a stop. Depending on the day, it would even sometimes smoke when at idle and not moving.

Since I'm FI, and my turbo was ~10 years old, I figured it needed a rebuild anyway. I sent it out, got a new one back through the Garrett exchange program and reinstalled it. Smoking got ~90% better for a while. Now it seems it's getting worse again. In fact, when at traffic lights I can smell burning and when I pull into the garage the whole garage smells like oil. I'm not leaking any oil on the ground. I checked my oil the other day and it was on the low mark, I usually fill half way, and last oil change was about 1k miles ago. My car has never needed to be topped off before so something is up.

I feared the worse and figured my engine was done but I just ran a compression test and got 220, 210, 210, 215 - OEM headgasket with about 80k miles on the engine, 40k of which has been at 400+ hp so I don't think the numbers are too bad. If nothing else they are consistent.

However now the issue is what else could it be? I removed the PCV and checked it with my air compressor, everything working fine...

Any other ideas? Would leaking valve seals cause smoke / burning smells / this much oil burn / etc?

Thanks!

 

Just want to get this out of the way so we can move on to more productive theories, but how high is your oil level, and how hot is it outside?

 

Current oil level is mid way up the dip stick.

Its only in the low 80s right now and low humidity, I don't usually see any kind of smoke until its 90+ and humid out (if that makes any sense).

 

Could be the valve stem seals. Maybe, do a leak-down test.

 

The only thing I can think of is the seals.

Would a leak down test give any indication of it being the seals? With the valves closed for the test not sure what a leakdown would show me beyond a compression test?

 

You should learn more about how engines work, and some basic troubleshooting skills. Its about coming up with a plausible theory about what could be wrong, then thinking of a way to test to confirm, or rule out, that possibility. It relies heavily on logic, so its a skill some will just never be very good at. This typically results in tbe shotgun method you started with, guessing and sporadically replacing parts hoping one of them will fix it.

I agree it sounds like valve seals. Might also be valve guides too.

 

I'm going to just ignore your first few sentences


To anyone else, short of just replacing them, is there any other way to verify the valve seals before I start tearing into the head? I've been told they don't usually go bad unless the guides are shot but I've read in some cases bad guides will show on a compression test and mine is fine. Short of removing the head and checking for play, any other way to verify the guides?

 

IME, worn valve stem seals and/or valve guides show up as blue smoke on deceleration, using the gearing to slow down the car. Esp, just after idle from this deceleration, if you gun the engine at idle. Big blue clouds of smoke.

I'd try a leak-down test. You may pick up intake noise on one or more of the cylinders. It's cheap and not intrusive.

 

I had this problem with my previous E46. Same thing, wouldn't smoke until I started accelerating from idle, and when the car was stopped for a bit. Turned out to be the valve stem seals for me as well, and I used and it really cleaned things up.

I'm not really one for a lot of the snake oils out there but this stuff is great. Cheap and simple solution to try, and depending on how much you're smoking or what the condition of your seals is, it could be all you need.

 

I love this part....I"m gonna use in my day to day life when I come up against the usual idiots in my job. LOL