Smoking Turbo

[SkylineLvr]

Well shortly after getting my car back from getting the head gasket replaced, I've run into some more smoke out of the exhaust.

At first I figured it was due to the cold weather, but recently I've noticed that it has been smoking a lot more then normal.

I'm not sure on the brand my turbo is, the previous owner purchased the car with most of the mods already done to it, so he didn't know. He said it was a garrett, but by looking at the turbo housing, it looks to be an ebay/China unbranded turbo.

How much is it to get a turbo rebuilt? Probably better off just purchasing a new one huh?

 

[Luke]

i had a damaged turbo on my car and hi-dev told me that most rebuilt turbos are likely to go again so bought a garret gt2871r and have been told its a good turbo
sorry to see you have turbo problems and that i cant be more help hope you get sorted mate

 

[Jordan]

If it was me I'd just buy branded dude, wouldn't fork out to replace a cheap Chinese copy

 

[spoonman]

bad luck with the car mate, once you iron out the problems you will enjoy it and think its awesome, at least a turbo core is not a big issue to get too and fix

 

[SkylineLvr]

Yeah I'm looking into possibly getting the gt2871r. Just gotta save up for one. That'll end up pushing everything back until probably late summer now.

 

[Joeh]

Dude, what is going on with your car? Where are you based? I can come and have a look I don't want you to discover other issues at a possibly 'too late' stage...

If the head gasket job wasn't very well done you can get this problem too. Did they skim the head and/or use a good quality metal head gasket?

Joeh

 

[Auss15]

That looks like water vapour to me, a blown turbo wont put that much smoke out on idle

 

[Joeh]

Looks a bit blue for water vapour, would be better in day light

I'm thinking it's overfueling though, as he's been playing with the map. & injector correction, hope its not being driven like this, if its is running super rich you're going to force blow-by and damage your engine

 

[SkylineLvr]

During the daytime, the smoke looks white. I was hoping it was water vapour, but the cloud of smoke just seems too thick to be that.

As far as me playing with the map. The only changes I've done was what I was playing around with yesterday, which wouldn't explain why it's been smoking like this previous to me adjusting the injector correction.

 

[Auss15]

Over fueling and it would be black, the only thing it will damage is O2 sensor, Cat and plugs. It will also rob you of power. What was the air temp at the time of the video and the running temp of the car. Do you have a Cat converter fitted?

 

[SkylineLvr]

The temp was probably around 0C, plus or minus a few degrees. As far as the running temp of the car, not sure. It was still pretty cold as I only had the car running for a few min just to see if the adjustments to the injection correction did anything noticeable with my idle issue, which it appears to have stopped the surging.

Yes I do have a cat fitted, I plan on taking that out and installing my decat this weekend when I do my brake upgrade. Currently my car is just sitting in the garage until the weather clears up a bit. I don't plan on driving it much, but I will fire it up tonight and let the engine warm up to running temps and see if the smoke lessens up or not.

I did have the car at the shop last week and they ran the emmissions test and said everything came back perfect. The guy also said that once they got the car inside the shop, they couldn't notice any smoke. So I think I'll run the car up to running temps, then close the garage door down and see how the smoke looks.

 

[Auss15]

With cold air temps, the engine not up to operating temperature, and as the Cat is still cold, I would put it down to being warm H2o vapor coming out and hitting the cold air which is more noticeable in Winter. When I was living in Canada, in the middle of winter everyone's cars would constantly have water vapour clouds coming from the exhaust especially ideling. H2o is a constant emission, when the engine, exhaust and cat are hot it evaporates off.

 

[SkylineLvr]

I had to swap cars with the wife during lunch. So I had to drive the Silvia to work. I only work about a mile away, plus it's on a military base and the max speed limit is about 20mph. I let her warm up a bit, not long enough to reach max temp, but a good 5-10 min. The smoke actually looked a lot less then before. It may have actually just been condensation. It's not billowing out like it appeared to last week.

 

[Joeh]

Could be buckets of water in your exhaust, only way it will go is by driving it, idle isn't going to help much

 

[JDM_virgin]

i would say that the smoke is far to blue for water vapor in the exhaust, that would go once the car is warm-plus it wouldn't run like a bag of turd. it is more than likely the turbo that has gone especially since you have said that it looks like a Chinese compacted ash turbo has been fitted. what power are you running in your car? sub 330 ish and i would recommend the standard turbo as they are reliable units. recon turbos never seem to be brilliant imo. but obviously if you are running high power figures then upgrade the turbo.

as for the head gasket not being fitted properly, they car would be billowing out white smoke as water vapor (literally like a co2 fire extinguisher) and also check the oil and water colour as oil can go into the water as well as the other way around. water in the oil is no where near as bad as water in the oil