Hi
Hope some one give a little help on trying to figure out what should I do.
I have blue smoke coming my exhaust, already received a friendly warning…. That being said, I do have blow by not severe but it’s still blow by, it is a 2000 F350 with out CCV mod….. I need to mention that the truck is still very strong, responsive and can easily achieve 70-75 MPH on highway, las week I did haul a goose neck with 6k of steers for about 50 miles, truck never hesitated or lacked power… so yesterday trying to address or avoid a ticket I tried first to see how my turbo looks. There is where I found oil on the tube and the turbo, I also see that the wheel fins do not look in good shape( attached pictures) NOTE: I do not have any shaft movement up/down nor sideways…wheel spins freely, no weird noises from the turbo. When taking the CCV out for inspection, oil came out of it, not to much or exaggerated but rough estimate like 7-10 ml. The question is: should I rebuild or get a new turbo?? Blue smoke and oil on intake side
I am not sure if the oil on the 4 picture dripped when I took the plastic tube out since it had also oil on it.

 

that wheel is in rough shape, but you can get a new wheel fairly cheap. if there is no play on the shaft the chances are the oil is coming from somewhere else the easiest way to know for a fact is to remove the turbo, remove the exhaust housing and the compressor housing and check to see if it is leaking oil from either side of the turbo, thats where it will present if the oil seals have went bad.
also changing the seals and bearings in a turbo is not a difficult process, I have rebuilt multiple garret journal bearing turbos over the years, they used to offer kits on ebay for the parts. not sure if they still do or not though.

I would guess that you have an issue with your crankcase ventilation, but only some exploratory work will let you know for sure. how much blow by does your truck produce? does it smoke more when you are under boost? I would pull the cap at the oil fill and put a couple of layers of muslin/cheese cloth over the cap and take it for a drive to see if it is still smoking with the cap off. the muslin/cheesecloth will prevent anything getting sucked in but you would have effectivly no pressure in the crankcase. if it stops smoking then you know its not the turbo, its the crankcase vent system.

 

Little amount of oil from CCV is normal.

That compressor wheel is horrible.

May even be out of balance becouse loss of material.

I recommend rebuilding for that turbo,just in case.
With a new turbine wheel,If it is out of balance,shaft may have seen extra stress.

 

That compressor wheel isn’t great, but it’s not bad enough to cause any problems.

The oil you describe is 100% normal and nothing to be concerned about.

Your turbo and CCV do not appear to be a problem.

What most people describe as ‘blow-by’ is also perfectly normal. There will be some oil vapor escaping the filler neck under normal conditions. PRESSURE in the crankcase is indicative of a problem. Commonly, people turn the filler cap upside down and cover the hole. If the cap doesn’t blow off/levitate - there is no problem.

So, it would appear your smokiness is coming from somewhere else.

It could still be turbo, if the smoke gets worse after extended idle but tends to clear as you roll down the highway. But, you’d normally see oil at the turbo outlet/downpipe.

You may have bad external injector o-rings. This would allow engine oil to mix with the diesel and once bad enough, can create a smoke show that Cheech and Chong would be proud of. Typically, you would notice engine oil consumption as a symptom of this. Draining the fuel filter into a clear jar to inspect can help identify oil contamination. Add a piece of cheap 5/16” ID vinyl tubing to the water drain discharge tubing that is long enough to reach your container on the ground. I just leave this tubing in place and use it to inspect fuel for water content and to verify fuel pump is working properly if there are other problems.

There is also an ‘air test’ you can perform by putting air pressure into the HPO lines to the heads. A good test the heads hold pressure and a bad test would allow pressure to bleed off and you’ll typically hear the air gurgling under the valve covers.

Another issue could be internal injector problems. Things like a broken nozzle spring can allow an injector to over fuel and cause smoke.

You can invest in a very powerful scan tool that does nearly everything a dealer can do for under $30. Look in the stickies at the top of this forum for information about FORscan Lite. This $6 app for android devices combined with the $20ish BAFX OBD2 BT Dongle is a great tool that provides us more options to help you diagnose your problems.

Im grateful I don’t have to live in a place where I receive a ‘friendly warning’ in ADDITION to the fact my old truck isn’t running right.... Imagine if there was a fine for when your electric car burned a hole in the earth and contaminated the atmosphere with ridiculous amounts of deadly toxins??

 

That compressor wheel in itself my not be horrible but that consistent step on the blades is an indication that it has been hitting the housing. That could only happen if there was slop in the shaft or something was loose. It is possible that the compressor wheel was installed after a bearing replacement though since you have no shaft play right now. I'd go with rebuild the turbo unless you want to upgrade it with a different one.

 

I repeat myself and say that compressor wheel IS horrible.

Housing doesn't look chewed in pics but wheel has eaten something or very badly dusted.

 

I can show you a pile of ‘horrible’ compressor wheels. That wheel is definitely ‘dusted’ and I would expect a broken Or improperly put together air box or a ‘cleanable’ filter that has been wrecked.

But, the wear we see here is not from hitting the housing. When that happens, we see a step on the outer diameter of the blades. These appear to have wear in a place that cannot touch the housing. Also, the wear is consistent. A wheel that has ingested something often has missing pieces. Even then, I’ve seen CARNAGE that still worked just fine.

Im not saying we shouldn’t recommend a new wheel and a rebuild, but it’s unlikely what we see is directly causing the OP’s problem.

Extreme ‘dusting’ would cause low compression eventually and the symptoms typically include hard starting, heavy smoke when cold and excessive oil consumption. I’ve replaced several engines that had these problems.

 

if the oil cap is not being blown off when placed upside down on fill neck, you are ok

diesels will burn oil, so if compression is good then your smoke is most likely the turbo seal on exhaust side

 

What I'm seeing as well is poor air filtration, plus way too much housing to compressor wheel clearance. There's a lot of oil coming out of your crankcase vent and that may be feeding a lot of oil mist, but I think your turbo bearings are shot and dumping oil into the exhaust housing. Especially if it smokes more after idling a few minutes.

 

I had an old Passat with a marginal turbo that I bought from a customer one time for that reason. I could put 3000 miles on a long trip and it would use a half quart of oil, but in heavy traffic with extended idle times it would start to smoke out the tailpipe, then clear up as soon as we started moving again. I would have to add more oil between changes during the times I used the car for commuting than when I took it out of town. And I'm confident that it wasn't leaking through the valve stem seals, they were all new right after I bought the car. Had the cylinder head off the car for clearing the air injection passage so it wouldn't keep turning on the check engine light and had the whole thing rebuilt.

 

You only mentioned testing for movement in up/down and sideways. How is the in/out play? I’m gonna guess that’s your culprit.

Dad had ZERO drivability issues and no smoke. But during a completely random check of his turbo I found WAY excessive in-out play. The turbo was so bad that it had eaten part of the wheel, large groove in the backing plate, and one of the seal rings was GONE. We rebuilt but had to get A LOT of new replacement parts.

If the in/out is bad then be sure to check your backing plate after disassembly.

 

Hi
thank you all for you replies. To make this a little bit more digestible let me brake it down in little history:
1. I got this truck last October, at the time, the truck did start, I acknowledge that the truck has mistreated and neglected in many ways but I saw lots of potential because of the prices and willing to fix. So I know that back in October the truck didn’t start because it was out of oil… there has a huge leak from back seal and the IPR was missing the magnet/connector and the cooper washer,
placed in a new motorcraft IPR. So they fixed the back seal( had engine pulled out)and used motorcraft silicone on oil pan and back cranck seal.. also during time in the shop the shop identified 4 injectors were gone so got this replaced as well, the mechanic said the other 4 were still in usable condition, but performing “ low”. He also noticed the blow by( it does levítate the oil cap) and blue smoke and suspected of stuck/damaged rings. But it was back on track in working conditions. Mechanic said to run the hell out of it to see it had just sticking piston rings and eventually unstick, and if not….. take it back for piston rings and God knows what else when opening the engine( the bill was quite high by then so is asked him to hold). So rune it rough and see how it reacted..the truck had being seated with out moving at least 6 to 7 months when I bought it, the guy didn’t have $$ to fix it. I knew that up front by I just mentalized and wanted 7.3 powerstoke with ZF6 4x4 crew cab. So I had now. With still unknown problems.
but willing to fix it

2.- The truck has rough idle but works
very nice at cruise speeds. After 2 or 3 trips blue smoke started comming out. A poured Archoil 9100 to oil and Hot shots diésel extreme…. This actually helped with blow by….. initially was puf puf puf puf, every time lifting the oil cap….. after 200 to 300 miles of driving mainly highway, is very responsive and now it is. 1,2,3,4,5,6 puf. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 puff( lifts oil cap) so blow by has being getting better but still there..I also added a Napa 6637 air filter

3.- got pulled last week by state trooper, fortunately I know him since he was in diapers and his dad and I grew up together…. That is why only got a warning because it was a straight forward ticket…..

4.- Thinking all over of what has happened and the story behind it and before pulling the engine and rebuild, I wanted to start form the easiest and cheapest way up, so the turbo is the next step, and the pictures you see is what I found, CCV will get the mod today and already waiting for a riffraff rebuild kit with the billet wheel. And see if helps with the blue smoke plus the CCV mode. I am also waiting BAFC OBDII scanner and already downloaded FORScan lite.

i am willing to rebuild the engine if necessary but on the other hand want to eliminate any other potential problems and cheaper that might help me funnel problems until the truck is able to survive another 300k miles

 

smokes when under spool

 

second picture is where you can see the oil it has when I was pulling things apart, the other pictures with the Wheel exposed I had already passed a cloth through it. So I my . 2 cent opinion it had more that what should be normal, when I pulled my CCV some oil dropped out of it.

 

I have no issues starting the truck, I am not saying it’s fantastic but sometimes at the first key on it will turn on( I don’t cranck it more than 5 seconds), but for sure on the second> 5 seconds it will turn on.

Indo think so is a dusted turbo, when I got it I did not even had a fu…..Ing air filter..