smokin and more

[me612]

well the car started smokin pretty bad today. smokin whitish outta the exhaust. we just recently put a used head from the trader on it, and after that was done, we did a compression test, which was from right to left, 140, 110,130,70. ya i know, not really that good. But the car worked, and it was gettin me back and forth. Well i didn't know if it was the piston rings or the head causing the low compression. So i took the head we had just taken off to Napa, and they basically refurbished it, and it passed their vacuum test. So since i didn't know if it was the head on the car or the rings causing low compression, i figured id just put in some new rings when i put the refurbished head on. well that was the plan, until today the car started smoking. I honestly can not tell if it is anitfreeze or oil being burnt. I know antifreeze is white, and oil is white/blue. but i still can't tell. i've had 2 turbos go once and i swore the smoke looked white, but was told that if a turbo goes, its always gunna be oil being burnt, but i thought it looked white. so anyway, i also had a light pop on on my dash, a little amber light under the boost gauge and i have no clue what the light means. looks like a rectangle with like maybe 4-5 verticle lines in it. also there is some oil on top of the tranny, i can not figure out where the hell its coming from, and u can also just smell coolant when i opened the hood after driving it. So far all i've really done, is wash kinda wash out the engine so maybe i can see better where everything is leaking out of. cuz its leakin into the engine bay, and also must be leakin internally sumwhere cuz its blowin white smoke outta the muffler. In a little bit, imma check for shaft play, and check the IC piping to see if there is crap built up in there, cuz id like to isolate this problem a lil more, and the turbo is a pretty quick and easy check. I'd do a compression test, but like i said, before when we put the used head on, it already had low compression, so what good would another one do. im pretty sure the head gasket is good cuz i just put it on, but low compression kinda points towards a head gasket, but i know its not what caused low compression in the first place because it had low compression from the very beginning. but anyway im just kinda posting up to see if anyone has any input, ill kinda keep posting what i do, kinda use it as a lil log book of exactly what i've done to troubleshoot this b!tch. i dunno, maybe it'll help sumone someday.

 

[turboholic]

-Pour some oil into the combustion chamber and redo the compression test to see if the # change, # will increase if the rings are bad.

 

[me612]

Werd!! imma go eat me some rib sandwhiches and then do that. are u talkin like about maybe a cap full of oil? how long should i let it sit before i crank it over?

 

[turboholic]

-Try 2 caps, the piston is about 3" dia and sitting at an angle, make sure to open the throttle plate 100% to get consistance reading.

 

[me612]

cool thanx man, im eating right now, ill give it a shot in a little bit, btw, i noticed ur from socal, u know sean or tony or randy? i know sean pretty good, tony i just talk to a lot, and randy, i've only talked to him like a dozen times, he was always askin how i liked my rnr 50trim kit to see if he wanted to buy his. im only about 3 hrs from diego

 

[turboholic]

-I might know them by face, I having been to RRE for a while due to other hobbies and work.

 

[me612]

well sean used to drive a white 1g tsi, sold it and now has a white 1g gsx. Randy has a maroon 2g gsx makin like almost 400 whp. Tony had a green like 92 tsi, wrecked it, now has like a blue 1g. but anywho, i just did my compression test and was rather suprised by the results. here's what i got going from right to left. 175-170-165-170. So im guessing it just had to seal up a little cuz that last time i did a compression test, it was fight after i installed the head and hadn't even driven the car around at all. So im guessin it just had to be ran a little, cuz my compression seems awesome now. So i guess that kinda eliminates the headgasket, rings, pistons. So i then took off the j-pipe from the turbo to see if there was any like oil or anything in there. well i didn't see anything, so i took off the upper ic pipe just in front of the tb elbow just to check again, and still nothing. So i then took off the intake to see about shaft play. Wasn't a whole lot of shaft play, but while spinning the wheel, it sometimes got a little difficult to spin. So im beginning to think that the turbo is bad. could it be possible some sort of seal or sumthing wnt bad, but just on the exhaust side because the intake side seems clean, cuz i found no oil or any sort of build up in any of the intercooler plumbing. So could maybe a seal from just the exhaust side have gone bad and its burning right there? i dunno the internal workings of turbos to the extent of knowing where all the little seals are and stuff. But any other ideas would be appreciated. Any checks i should have made that i didn't. thanx

 

[me612]

ok well my buddy is giving me and old 14b so imma pop that in, see if it fixes the problem. if it doesn't then i guess ill just go after the headgasket.