ok, i drove to work today and my car was fine. i go to leave and start driving and smoke starts pouring out from under the hood and from the exhaust. i pull over and see that there is oil dripping from the downpipe where i have a small hole and it appears to be leaking somewhere around the turbo also. i also noticed some coming out of another leak in my manfold (i have a lot of exhaust leaks). my question is: if i have bad seals on my turbo, would it put enough oil into the motor to make that much oil go through unburned, or could it be my head gasket? i can't pinpoint where exactly the oil is coming from, since it was night time and like 3 degrees and i had a flashlight that kept shorting out. the smoking is very bad from the exhaust. please help me, i need to fix this fast. thanks.

 

ok, i braved the cold and went to have another look. i pulled the plugs and they are a little white and smell like burnt oil. there may or may not be oil leaking out of the turbo, but there is definite leakage from the hole in the downpipe. anything else i should look for, things to try, thoughts or ideas? please let me know, thanks.

 

sounds like a bunch of different things.....none of them good. plan on a rebuild soon. turbo is probably toast and maybe an oil ring. if you need a motor assembled let me know a shop here south of pittsburgh is really good and pretty reasonable on price

 

how can i tell if it is a ring(s)? also is it likely that it would just crap out on me all of a sudden? i drove to work and everything was fine, then when i started the car after work i noticed excessive smoke. thanks.

 

ok, i bought a compression tester so when i have time i will test that...what are symptoms of broken ring lands? i'm thinkin maybe my PCV system wasn't working right the way i had it hooked up. i am hoping it's just rings though so i can reuse my pistons...

 

if you have stock pistons don't even bother reusing them. buy a beater and park the turbo car till you have time and money to rebuild it the right way. a lot of smoke oil consumption and sometimes a loopy idle

 

yeah, i'm leaning towards a beater to drive until spring. i'll probably tear into the motor anyway to see what the problem is, though.

 

ok, took off the turbo and manfold today and turns out that the turbo is the problem as far as oil in the exhaust. there was none upstream of the turbo in the manifold, only in the turbo and downpipe. i found another problem though: there is an oily antifreeze mix in my intake pipe coming from the pcv system. any thoughts on this?

 

Yea. I've been a regular on this board for a month or so now. Pretty interesting stuff and lots of useful info. I've actually seen a quote that said, don't be afraid to buy a used Honda motor, they don't die unless you kill them. I think that's what the quote was. Well, sorry to say, it sounds like you killed it. Get other opinions though. And by the way, good luck figuring out your problem. Sorry i was not much help.

 

Sounds like a headgasket. Anytime there is oil and coolant mixed, check the headgasket first.

Do you have results of the compression test yet? That would better help determine the health of your internals.