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Leaking turbo among other things..

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whoa

10+ Year Contributor
32
0
Sep 23, 2009
Portland, Oregon
Hey all. I've been a lurker on these boards for a long time, I recently acquired a 2g talon tsi awd from a buddy. I have helped him with this car for a couple years.

Just some background info on this problem. The car would barely start after 5 mins or so. When it did start, it had trouble idling by itself until it was warmed up. We rented an ECU code reader from Autozone and found that the MAF was bad, this was the only code that the reader pulled. They didn't have the MAF at Autozone, so we went back, started up the car just to let it run for a bit while we went to another Autozone to pick up the part. Turns out this Autozone is closed, so we head back. It's been probably 20 minutes now. We turn down the street and see huge billowing clouds of oil smoke coming from this car. Uh crap.

So it turns out that the turbo has been spraying oil. Not quite sure why this happened but I have a theory I'd like to run by you all. When we pulled the oil cap off, probably a good 30-40 psi (guessing) blew out of it. This leads me to believe that the PCV is probably sticking or just not working at all, as I checked compression on all cylinders and got 185psi on each (not piston ring blow-by). What I'm thinking is that crankcase pressure built up, adding more pressure to the oil system and leading to turbo seal blow-out. Is this possible?

I picked up a MAF used from a member of this board today and popped that in, the car starts up just fine now but still idles terribly and will not rev past 1.5k. When I pull the intake tube off the turbo, I can see a good amount of oil in there. Pressure is still building in the crankcase, I have not replaced the PCV yet. Going to go pick one up right now.

Does anyone have any advice for me?
 
Yeah it's really rich. It runs like it's got a huge vaccum leak somewhere, but I tested for leaks with my boost leak tester, holds 10psi for quite a while before it leaks out the leaky BISS. I replaced the TPS today with one from a Mitsu Mirage that I picked up for 10 bucks. Tested the sensor and it's perfect. I put it in and adjusted it correctly. Reset the ECU and the car started up and ran great for about 30 seconds. Turbo was able to spool and boost, I saw it hit about 10psi or so on my boost gauge. I drove it around the block and halfway it started blowing a huge cloud of blue/white oil smoke and bucking badly. Limped it back home at 2mph. Turbo is definitely needing to be rebuilt.

The TPS didn't fix the main issue though. When it's idling and I unplug the TPS, the idle smooths out and it sounds normal, stops blowing rich smoke. I am guessing that it must switch to some preset fuel map and into limp mode when I unplug the TPS. One other very suspicious thing is that if I unplug the MAF while it's running, nothing changes. I really need to buy/borrow a datalogger to figure out what is going on at this point.

I can make a video a little later tonight, kind of worn out right at the moment.

Edit: One other strange thing. It was my understanding that the car should not boost when it's in neutral/park, or rather when it's not under load. When I start this thing up and have the turbo system all hooked up, it definitely does boost when it's in park/neutral. This is an automatic too.
 
.

I can make a video a little later tonight, kind of worn out right at the moment.

Edit: One other strange thing. It was my understanding that the car should not boost when it's in neutral/park, or rather when it's not under load. When I start this thing up and have the turbo system all hooked up, it definitely does boost when it's in park/neutral. This is an automatic too.

ok it should be making any boost at idle.... so im guessing you have the bov vacuum line disconnected and/or your bov is stuck closed...!!!
 
ok it should be making any boost at idle.... so im guessing you have the bov vacuum line disconnected and/or your bov is stuck closed...!!!

Well, when I say that it's boosting, I didn't mean that it's boosting at idle. There is vaccum at idle as there should be. I'm not sure whether or not this is normal (never owned a turbo car before) but if I reset the ECU so that the car will run decently for a bit and rev it up, I get boost in park/neutral and the BOV vents when I let up on the gas as it should. I just thought that I had read that they shouldn't build boost unless they're under load, ie not in park/neutral.

Edit: gonna go make some videos.
 
Well, when I say that it's boosting, I didn't mean that it's boosting at idle. There is vaccum at idle as there should be. I'm not sure whether or not this is normal (never owned a turbo car before) but if I reset the ECU so that the car will run decently for a bit and rev it up, I get boost in park/neutral and the BOV vents when I let up on the gas as it should. I just thought that I had read that they shouldn't build boost unless they're under load, ie not in park/neutral.

Edit: gonna go make some videos.

i stand corrected
 
How many psi are you getting when you hit the gas at idle? if you sit on it for a while and hit the limiter it might build a few psi, not that i would suggest it unless you have a 2 step setup. My car will blowoff at 0 psi of boost but i also have a tial so its probably different.
 
YouTube - VID_20100703_163553.3gp

Ok. In this video you see me plugging in the battery after resetting the ECU. Then I start up the car and stall it out by giving it too much gas. I restart it, rev it up to 2000rpm at WOT and then I go into the engine bay and unplug the TPS. It's really hard to hear over the loud ass fan which is running 100% of the time, the open turbo, and the intake, but the idle smooths out pretty nicely. I plug it back in and it goes back to shit.

Then I unplug the MAF and it stays exactly the same, shitty. BUT! When I plug the MAF back in for about 1 second you can hear the fans shut off. I can't replicate this by doing it over and over as you can see in the video. I'm thinking now that something is going on with that connector or the wiring even though I already checked the MAF to ECU wiring by checking continuity on each of the wires.

Edit: in this video you can see that I've bypassed the turbo, I would make a video with it all hooked up but I have the intercooler out right now, draining the oil out so I can attempt to clean it.
 
dam i cant think of anything else wrong but maybe your maf plug has some sort of malfunction.... or a wire isnt getting enough current.... try having it plugged and start moving the wires around and follow them as far as you can and keep shaking... if it gets better at times then im guessing its the wiring...!!!
 
So I ordered an obd2 to usb interface from ebay for like 14 dollars. Gonna be about 2 weeks until I get it cause it's coming from China. I'll update this again when I figure out what's really going on here. I bought evoscan, hopefully that will help me out. I'm too burnt out now to continue trying to troubleshoot like I have beed :mad:

Edit: Checked both ECU's out. Both had a burned up sensor ground as in this article. http://www.dsmlink.com/wiki/blownsensorground?s=sensor ground
Soldered in a strand of wire in place of the ground track and the car runs fine aside from a wastegate dump at 8psi or so, which is not a real problem.
 
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