Hi,

One thing that I have noticed recently is that when the car is being started it _sometimes_ kicks out a puff of smoke. The odd thing is that this 'puff' varies in quantity and it doesn't do it all of the time. BTW... the car has full decat exhaust, not sure if that makes a difference or not. Also note that it has done it when starting from cold and, very occasionally, when starting from warm, say having stopped off somewhere for a couple of hours.

So...
1. Is it anything to worry about?2. If so, what could it be?3. Is it common?

The car drives fine, made good power and torque at PE in January and generally goes like the starship enterprise, just curious as to whats happening really.

ta,
Matt.

 

Matt

I'd be interested to know as my MY97 does this as well. Full de-cat etc

Cheers



Iain

 

My car did this too for a while after I got a full decat put on. However after a month or so it stopped happening!

Don't really know if this helps or not!

 

hi guys,
if it is white smoke, then it may well be the turbo


ian

 

Matt - my £0.02p worth.........

as a general rule:
puff blue smoke = oil
puff black smoke = rick fuel
puff white smoke = water vapour/steam

Only caveat to this is if you have a 'major' oil burn situation - like when the turbo bearing oil seal went on my discovery - you can get white smoke, but for oil to make white smoke you are talking monster oil leak/burning (eg, all 6 carriageways of the M40 motorway obscured!)

Oil burn at startup only could be turbo bearing seal or valve stem seals, does she puff when throttling after the overun eg, go down hill with throttle off in relativly low gear, floor it, get smoke ? if so then oils getting sucked in from turbo or valve stem seals on the over-run. If smoking all the time suspect piston rings....

Good luck

 

thanks guys...

O.K... I have phoned both Cheam motors and Listers and spoken to them about it.

Re: valve-stems they say it is _very_ rare for it to happen at all, let alone on a car that has done 33K miles.

Re: Turbo - they say it _might_ be that, although again, apparently extremely rare for it to happen at such a low mileage. If it is the turbo it's another £800 down the subaru-drain If so, would you get an uprated one?

Re: type of smoke - it's blueish if it does it at all, it doesn't do it on tick-over (I've watched it for about 5 minutes) and as for over-run, I'll try it. I have noticed that on occasion, when really going for it, it might kick out a bit at high revs but it's hard to tell how much etc - heh, maybe thats just the blur in the mirror

Now... one thing that is quite interesting, I checked the oil and it's, how shall we say, 'full' as in a mm or 2 above the top dot on the dipstick! So... Listers think that it might be because it has a bit too much oil in it.

It's having an interim service tomorrow anyway so we'll take it from there.

ta,
Matt

 

It recently happened to me when i changed mine to full de-cat.

Took it to subaru and was nothing more than having too much oil in engine.

Changed oil and filled to correct level and the problem was cured instanly.

Mel.

 

Mattski,
If it is too high then get it dropped down straight away.

Too much oil causes a high crankcase pressure and so the breather vents more oil into the inlet side of your engine which is not good.
The higher pressure can also blow the oil seals which may not be a problem on low mileage cars as the seals will be realtively new.

Andy

 

it would seem that it was all a false alarm, Cheam say that the turbo is fine... it's also had its interim service and feels much much better than before and it also is not kicking out any smoke! I suspect it was due to being 'full'...

 

phew......good news!