T25 turbo whine and white smoke?

WhiteTsiAwd · Dec 7, 2004

Well my friends got a stock 97 gst. He beats on the car pretty bad. Today he was messing around and got on it and it just lost most power. He says it feels like hes only boosting like 5 lbs. So heres the deal. The turbo will whine when boost starts. So what could this be? I assume the bearings but thats my guess.
Any help is great.

Update: on his way home, it stopped whining but when it did it blew out a huge cloud of white smoke. He said the oil looks real milky, and it is also having white smoke come out the dip stick, weird huh, aswell as the exhaust.

So my guess is that the turbo is screwed, obviously but about the smoke and stuff i dont really know. I think it might have somethign to do with the oil/water lines in the turbo or something? I dont know, just a guess. Please help!

blackGSX2g · Dec 8, 2004

Well white smoke is burning coolant, and you saying the oil is milky leads me to believe that you've got coolant and oil mixing together. I'm guessing he has a leaky headgasket, have him do a quick compression test to see.

As a side note, if the oil has alot of coolant in it, I would not be driving it around as it loses alot of its viscosity and you don't want that stuff circulating throughout your engine. If you have bad oil going though your turbo, it may destroy the bearings in it as well as the main/rod bearings in your motor.

DSM_23 · Dec 8, 2004

Oh well his turbo is blown. That is established. My main question is would the bearings in the turbo messing up, somehow bust some lines or something in the turbo to make it mix oil/coolant? Also, would putting on a new turbo take care of it IF it was just the turbo that is messed up?

p.s.-just realized I posted with a buddys account, its still whitetsiawd. Sorry

blackGSX2g · Dec 8, 2004

DSM_23 said:
Oh well his turbo is blown. That is established. My main question is would the bearings in the turbo messing up, somehow bust some lines or something in the turbo to make it mix oil/coolant? Also, would putting on a new turbo take care of it IF it was just the turbo that is messed up?

p.s.-just realized I posted with a buddys account, its still whitetsiawd. Sorry

The lines on the turbo won't mix...they are completely seperated. Common problems that mix oil and coolant are warped head/bad headgasket or a damaged oil cooler (where you put the oil filter). I'm not sure if the turbo is gone or not...check for shaft play and start from there. Having coolant plagued oil is not good for anything though.

97ClipseDSM · Dec 8, 2004

The turbo seal is blown. Time to upgrade to a new turbo. Mine did the same thing, and so far im driving around with a blown turbo, it wont boost past 7 psi, sometimes itll boost 10 but itll instantly drop to 0. I have plenty of blue smoke coming from the exhaust, and to make sure the turbo was done, i checked for shaft play. And there it was

WhiteTsiAwd · Dec 8, 2004

Ok, thanks. I didnt know if they could possibly mix by any means. Ya, I knew that the head gasket and oil housing would cause the coolant/oil mix, but I didnt know if it was possible for it to mix from the turbo. Reason being because all of this started with a whine of the turbo.

97ClipseDSM: did your turbo whine before it went or when it was on its way out? There is a substantial ammount of shaft play with the turbo, so I figured its time to upgrade anyways.

Also, if we did a compression check, would that tell us if we had a warped head or not? If not then how could I go about finding this out? And where should we start looking for the cause of the coolant/oil mix?

Thanks for all the responses. Keep them coming guys, please!
Cody

97ClipseDSM · Dec 9, 2004

WhiteTsiAwd said:
Ok, thanks. I didnt know if they could possibly mix by any means. Ya, I knew that the head gasket and oil housing would cause the coolant/oil mix, but I didnt know if it was possible for it to mix from the turbo. Reason being because all of this started with a whine of the turbo.

97ClipseDSM: did your turbo whine before it went or when it was on its way out? There is a substantial ammount of shaft play with the turbo, so I figured its time to upgrade anyways.

Also, if we did a compression check, would that tell us if we had a warped head or not? If not then how could I go about finding this out? And where should we start looking for the cause of the coolant/oil mix?

Thanks for all the responses. Keep them coming guys, please!
Cody

The turbo whined when it was on its way out. Youll still be able to drive your car around untill you can get some $$$ for a new turbo, just make sure to check your oil everyday. That smoke thats coming out of the exhaust is because the seal inside the turbo is blown..and its leaking through your exhaust. Check the exhaust for some oil. My turbo started smoking, than it whined, than i felt like more loss of power everyday, and its on its way to be buried. Untill you replace the turbo youll have to put up with the smoke, whine, and oil leakage. You should also do a compression test like everybody stated. I would also drain all the oil out of the pan and check for coolant. Then go from there.

WhiteTsiAwd · Dec 9, 2004

And if there is coolant in the oil, what to do? Would just changing the oil be good, along with checking it regularly? If there was coolant in there and I just changed the oil, would the coolant come back, assuming it is b/c of the seal?

Thanks for all your help.

97ClipseDSM · Dec 9, 2004

WhiteTsiAwd said:
And if there is coolant in the oil, what to do? Would just changing the oil be good, along with checking it regularly? If there was coolant in there and I just changed the oil, would the coolant come back, assuming it is b/c of the seal?

Thanks for all your help.

Coolant in oil=Blown headgasket. If it is indeed blown, do a compression test and make sure you didnt f#ck anything else up. Get a new headgasket and if the head is fine, youll be alright. Do a compression test & go from there.

WhiteTsiAwd · Dec 9, 2004

Wouldnt bad compression just mean the rings are bad? Not a head gasket or would a bad head gasket give bad compression also?

blackGSX2g · Dec 10, 2004

WhiteTsiAwd said:
Wouldnt bad compression just mean the rings are bad? Not a head gasket or would a bad head gasket give bad compression also?

It could tell you both. If you aren't getting any compression and dropping a bit of oil in the cylinders doesn't help, that means its the head or the gasket.

97ClipseDSM said:
Youll still be able to drive your car around untill you can get some $$$ for a new turbo, just make sure to check your oil everyday.

Also, be careful when you are running your turbo blown. My t-25 did the whine thing and had a ton of shaft play too. I drove with it for a bit while I was getting the money together and checked the oil...no problems there. Anyways, my motor broke about a month later and when I dropped the pan, there were globs of babbet from the old bearings in the turbo. It felt like orange clean...very gritty :thumbdown I'm sure that wasn't good for anything in there...I ended up doing a 6-bolt swap with new everything and replaced the turbo, but it made me re-think some things I previously thought were safe.

WhiteTsiAwd · Dec 10, 2004

Alright, kool. I'm going over to his house this weekend so we can take the turbo and oil pan off to see what the damage is, if anything. So i'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully its just the turbo and there isnt any coolant in the oil.

Thanks for the help, again.

CorrupTTalon · Dec 10, 2004

i just had the same thing happen to me.. two saturdays ago my turbo was whinning then it finaly blew.. the compressor shaft snapped in half and i had the biggest cloud of smoke behind me, that people were pulling off cause you couldnt see.. haha

well two weeks later, a car towe fee, and a used T25 its replaced..

but its not running right... it still smokes(but not as bad) would that smoke be part of the oil left in my exhaust burning away?

the turbo had 40k miles on it, and it had the tiniest bit of shaft play, which i was told was normal and would go away as you hooked the oil lines up....true?

could the turbo have no shaft play but still leak oil?

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