Fatt Vette

I fired up the twins today, and got lots and lots of white smoke out of the tail pipes. Since the turbos are freshly rebuilt I thought maybe the oil seals needed to break in, so I let it run a while. When I looked under the car there were four big puddles of oil on the ground. I am feeding each turbo with a -3AN braided line, the outlets are 1/2 inch hose run into an accumulator tank. The oil in the tank is pumped up to the valve cover by a Tilton Engineering differential pump, and it was moving oil while the engine was running.

Any thoughts, am I feeding it to much oil?

Bruce

My 02
The white smoke I don't think it relating to your turbo can it?? The white smoke is indication that your valve seal are leaking. So to go back to the basic. Were your car running fine prior the turbo install???

Bruce

Fatt Vette

True, but the car was running fine, it used very little oil.

Here is a little more info, the cold side is not plumbed in yet so the oil is not being burned in the combustion chamber, but in the exhaust.

compulsivehp

The white smoke is probibly the turbos. It should be smoking sitting still should be ok driving but really bad when you down shift and come to a stop. If the turbos were used and werent rebuilt by an expreience rebuilder they might not know to machine out the oil seal surface area and replace with larger oil seals. I had this problem already in the past. I had my turbo rebuilt by a local guy who said he could do it. The problem was that he didnt check or even knew to check the tolerences where the shaft rides and see if it warp out the surfaces. I ended up sending the turbo off to get rebuilt. The said teh seal was the wrong size and the surfce was egg shaped. I had them machine it out and put a large seal in it. After that i ran it up to 15psi and over 300rwp without a problem even a cross country trip.

ANTI VENOM

I don't know much about turbo cars, but white smoke out of the exhaust is usually an indication of water in the cylinder. If your turbos are water cooled, then that could be a problem. Other than that, I would guess head gasket or block. Hopefully others will chime in and either confirm my guess or tell me that I'm full of crap. Hope it works out.....

compulsivehp

I appoligize for jumping in so quick. I you know for a fact that all internal compnents of you engine or good then from exprience it is the turbos. I have had years of experence building 4 MKIII Supra turbos and am about to help a buddy rebuild a 400+ one this summer. But if a turbo is not rebuilt correctly it will be a pain. Wrong size seal and the oil leaks out the exhaust side and you do not have to be presurized to do so. If you are running too thin of an oil it will do that same thing. You said that you didnt have the intake plumbed yet but that would not make a difference be if you wee gettign extensive oil on the intake side it would mean the same thing. The seal are the incorrect size or shape.

Fatt Vette

I am going to go with the assumption that the seals are leaking. The engine was absolutely fine before I installed the turbos. The intake side has not been pressurized and the center sections do not have water run to them yet.

Compulsive, in your experience should I be using a restrictor in the oil feed lines? They are currently -3AN, is that still too big?

Thanks,

compulsivehp

[/QUOTE]Compulsive, in your experience should I be using a restrictor in the oil feed lines? They are currently -3AN, is that still too big?

Thanks,[/QUOTE]

I have admit that i do not know AN sizes and weither nor not your gettign too much oil. I do know that if you do not have adequate oil return then it will casue the oil to back up and force the oil out the seals. But i belive if you oil feed is at the stock PSi it should ne no trouble for any performance turbo with a correct gravity fed oil return line.

BigC4

Do you have a restrictor in the oil feed line going to the turbos? Too much oil pressure to the turbo can force oil past the seals and cause it to smoke. Some where I have a book that states what the maximum oil pressure to a turbo should be.

ar91c4

hey matt,
your oil lines are deffinaly feeding to much oil to the turbos and its not pumping out fast enough.remember when we spoke the other day I was telling you about the twin stang, well the same problem occured on it. first it had to much oil and it smoked like crazy then we put in too small of a nitrous jet in and locked the turbos up from to little of oil...

Fatt Vette

Al,
I meant to ask you the other day what size the jets were, do you remember by chance?

Thanks,

BigC4

I got a book here that states that the turbos need a minimum of 5 psi at idle and a maximum overall of 25 psi.

The book also states that an inline restrictor ranging from .055" - .065" in size should reduce the pressure by 30 psi.

Thank you

Fatt Vette

Great!!

Thanks for the Info!!

ex-gold87

My twin set-up used to smoke bad when I first cranked it up cold. My oil pressure gauge only went to 80 so it was pegged for a few minutes. Took about 10 minutes to burn the oil off in the downpipes.

Big C4 is right, you are simply pumping the oil past the bearings. You can take an aluminum Earls fitting and silver solder the inside, then drill it out.

Need to talk to a turbo builder who can tell you what size to restrict the oil flow to.


Twinturbovette.net

89vettrr

Just curious, but I'm kinda wondering like "anti-venom" why burning oil would appear white ?
I had a turbo 911 for a few years and never saw white smoke, other than condensation, when cold ? I've always thought oil burned blue, water white, too rich black etc.
Is the oil going past the seals in the turbo percolating into steam ?
Just curious

BigC4

Maybe oil burned with fuel in the engine cylinders comes out blue, but when burned directly in the exhaust manifolds or headers turns thick white.

But I agree that I always heard that blue = oil, white steam = water, black = rich, and pistons valves or rods = boat anchor.

Thank you

mn_vette

I've been where you are at. Except with a single. You said that there were 4 puddles of oil under the car. Here's my guess as to what's going on. Your Tilton pump doesn't do the job. What size lines do you have going to and from it? My tilton pump really didn't like moving oil at normal temps. 10w30 was a problem. I could bearly get it to move stuff though a 6an line with a filter and cooler.

I ended up having to put a restrictor in the feed line and it ended up locking up the turbo because there wasn't enough oil when I spun it up.

That 1-2 gpm is for warmed up thin fluid, almost water-like. If you want to keep that flow with normal oil at startup temps you're going to need a bigger pump! I would probably go 10an in and out just to be safe.

Baldturbofreak

ask bruce to crawl under his car and get the part number off his pump. It's a shur-flo 3 diaphram for hydrocarbons. Works sweet

BigC4

Are these pumps electric?

mn_vette

Most definately!

Actually if you want I can sell you my extra tilton pump and you can run dual pumps if you want to try that, but I think you're probably better off using the same kind as Bruce has.