For about a week now i have been smelling a burning smell for my engine after driving it ,(Subaru 1997 awd 2000 est) and if you look inside the engine you can see smoke rising fron the turbo area. It seems to be coming from just in front of the heat shield (underneith). It smell like burning oil but i dont think it is the turbo itself because it doesnt make any unusual noises and still pulls as well as it allways has. It even smoke when i do small trips (1 mile) amd dont go above 2500 revs. There isnt any oil patches in my drive so i cant be leaking a lot and all the oil levels look ok. I am just worried i am f***ing the engine up whilst driving it like this. Any idears what it could be???

 

rocker cover leaking onto the manifold? would only do it when warm and under pressure. hmmm

im sure the brains on here can help more.

Rich

 

Sounds the one Rich. Same problem when I had my UK97 which had to be looked at a couple of times. Mine appeared to look quite bad where the smoke would escape through the scoops. Fairly cheap to fix though mate so dont worry too much.............just keep your eyes on youroil levels until you get it fixed

 

As above. When refitting dont forget to use some ThreeBond as well for a good seal.

 

Yes it seems worse than it is. Either a rocker cover seal, or if it's more related to when you thrash it - front crank oil seal (slightly more difficult job but again nothing major)

 

yip reckon it sthe rocket gasket on the drivers side - i had to get mine done 3 times!! common fault on these cars!

 

Thanks for the help guys. I was starting to get a bit worried about it. At least when i take it in to the garage i will be able to tell them what the problem is rather than pay them just to poke around under the bonnet for an hour.

 

Another point most people forget to do.... Replace all 6 bolt seals on the rocker cover too Check the half moon plastic bits arn't cracked either.