Taz_devil

Hi guys, feeling a bit concerned here

2001 ASDM bugeye, stock apart from GFB crank pulley

I hadn't driven anywhere in a week, and turned the car on with the bonnet up for no particular reason. I noticed some wispy smoke coming from the heat shield area and immediately freaked out. I had done an oil change a few weeks ago, thought perhaps I over filled or something, that it was leaking from a seal and burning oil. I took it to my mechanic today and he noticed the clamp on the back of the hose that connects the intercooler was completely loose (I hadn't touched this, or noticed this before) and was dripping a fair bit (as in, it was completely covered around the hose and clamp) of oil. He tightened it up and assured me it was fine and just burning the oil from the drip behind the intercooler. Not satisfied, I let it idle for a long time and went for a short, spirited drive. When I got back, smoke was billowing from the bonnet and when I checked under the hood, it appears to be coming DIRECTLY from the turbo itself. I'm not very knowledgeable with turbos yet, and saught the internet for answers.

There doesn't appear to be smoke coming from the muffler, it is coming from under the heat shield, and is a wispy grey sort of colour, not really sure about the colour to be honest. I cant see how any drips of oil from the back of the intercooler could have gotten into this area to be honest. I am thinking the seals in the turbo are on the way out, whence large amounts of oil passing into the intercooler. The turbo itself is very rusty and covered in what looks like oil residue, particularly where the pipes join.

What am I looking at here? Could my hunch about the turbo failing possibly be correct, despite being told otherwise?

debbiesonic

iTrader: (7)

It’s a perfectly plausible diagnosis. If there is oil inside the pipe work it’s almost definitely turbo seals, but you would usually notice blue smoke from the exhaust as well. On the plus side a replacement stock turbo isn’t desperately expensive compared to some. Or the you have the option to have it rebuilt.
What I would check is that the oil is definitely inside the pipe work and not just around the connections as there are 2 oil pipes connected externally to the turbocharger, the top one is the supply connected with a banjo bolt and copper washers the bottom one is the return which is a push fit secured with a spring clip. Make sure it’s not just one of those that is leaking.
Equally the rocker cover gasket is a common failure, when that goes it leaks directly onto the up pipe below the turbo and will create a lot of smoke under the bonnet as it burns on the hot exhaust.
All worth checking.

Taz_devil

The thing is, I was a massive noob at the time he was explaining the situation to me. 'I don't care what anyone says, all turbos will bypass some oil' or something like that, as he was tightening the hose clamp on the back of the intercooler where a bunch of oil was dripping. I never actually put 2 and 2 together at this point, that that hose is for AIR from the turbo. From what I understand now, some amount of oil blowing through there is normal, however, this looked to me like it was saturating the inside of the pipework and my gut tells me the seals that are supposed to keep oil inside the turbo have gone. I can't really get at all the bits under there and don't want to take them off at the moment, I'm having it rechecked on Friday. I cant see oil obviously dripping from any other connections either.

As for the rocker cover gaskets, I had a look in this area. I can't see dripping out so to speak, but the outside of the rocker covers are fairly caked in oil residue, not sure if this is normal. I also can't see how if oil was leaking from here, it would get to the location I could see smoke coming from. It was obviously a bit hard to stick my head under there due to the smoke, but it looked to be coming directly from under the heat shield, and no where else.

I actually hope it is the turbo at this point. It has done 265 000kms on its original parts, at least replacing it now means it's done. There is also an exhaust leak somewhere near the uppipe or downpipe region that he picked up a while ago, told me it was fine for a while. I'm having that done next week as well, I figure, if the turbo needs replacing, it would probably be easier to just do it together at the same time. I thought at first that the smoke WAS exhaust leaking up from there, I wonder if the two are related somehow

debbiesonic

iTrader: (7)

It's true you do normally find a film of residual oil in the inlet tract pipework, especially on higher mileage engines. Whether it be from the turbo seals or from crankcase venting. But in an ideal world there shouldn't be. And if oil is dripping there is obviously an issue somewhere. Perhaps rather than replacing the turbo for the just for the sake of ruling it out, maybe ask them to thoroughly clean all the pipework out while they have it off. At least that way you could check it after a couple of hundred miles to see any more oil appears internally. If not you know it's an external leak.

Taz_devil

Ok, so it turns out it was the rocker cover gasket leaking... I began to suspect this as the most likely cause after watching several videos of this issue. So that's all good.

As far as cleaning out the pipe work, can I just do it myself perhaps? I don't mind messing about in there, just takes me a bit longer than it should as I'm still learning where everything is and how it all fits together.

There are several suspect noises that the car has begun to make since I bought it (as detailed in a previous thread with 0 replies :P). I'm still pretty worried about this and don't see how this could be related to a leaky gasket. I am also getting more persistent rough idling and quite high idle ~1500 when starting from cold (settles down to around 600 or something when warm). I swear it didn't idle this high when I first got it.

I'm starting to severely regret buying this car, given that I am too scared to enjoy driving it. Whenever I have a bit of fun, a new noise appears/worsens. Could be any combination of things slowly starting to kill the engine i suppose. I had a 99 RX impreza with 310 000km on it, that engine ran a LOT quieter, had no weird noises and never had one issue. I didn't consider that at the time that a WRX puts out nearly twice the power, therefore probably wears twice as fast. oh well