Valve or Turbo Seal

[Phil92TSI]

My Talon has been producing a lot of blue smoke(burnt oil) from the exhaust especially when I coast to a stop. I assumed that this was caused by the vacuum in the intake sucking oil down the valve stem seals, but when I looked at the plugs, they really didn't look oily or sooty. For months I had a little puff of smoke on startup, but nothing too serious. It has been progressively getting worse especially in the last couple of weeks. To rule out the compressor side of the turbo, I pulled apart the IC piping and there was no oil in them. I'm leaning toward valve seals, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a car smoke this badly from valve seals and you can smell the burning oil after driving it. If the turbine side of the turbo seal leaks will it smoke like I'm seeing or just make the exhaust oily from droplets? The head was rebuilt about 12,000 miles ago although I'm not sure what work they did to it. Maybe they put crappy valve seals in. Also the PTE turbo only has about 10,000 miles on it and has no shaft play last time I looked at it a month or two ago. The compression check showed 150+ psi across all cylinders.

 

[oldman]

If the compression numbers are good, my guess would be the seals as well. As to what might have caused this, I would suggest make sure the crank case is vented properly. Good luck.

 

[Phil92TSI]

I just wanted to post a followup post documenting the fix for my oil burning. The problem was the valve seals, specifically one exhaust valve seal. The seal had worked its way off the guide and was just loose on the valve stem. I replaced all the valve seals with OEM seals and put the revised lifters in while I was at it. The result is no more smoke or lifter tick.