Given that under a high RPM boosted run the car is moving forward at a high rate through the air the visual indication of oil smoke from the cab may be diluted and not noticed. Once slowed what could be noted out the tailpipe is the residual oil being baked off in the exhaust. Also when on boost the pressure in the compressor houseing is postive and pushes back upon the bearing oil seal. Upon throttle lift the BOV venting greatly reduces the pressure in the houseing the small accumulation of oil has less reistance to pass into the inlet tract were it eventually makes it's way as smoke out the tail pipe. Jus my 2.5c.

 

what I think we are suggesting...is the when you free rev, or WOT the car, there is oftentimes little or no smoke, IF this is a turbo seal issue. But after you let off, you have a situation of relatively hi oil pressure, and little to no load on the turbos.....and then they smoke.

From my experience, when turbo seals go bad, or are defective, they tend to smoke after free reving the car...or on decel..when the oil pressure is high..but turbo load is very low.

Might as well do quick compression check to rule out cylinder damage. Then I would check the lines...oil level...then pull the downpipes/testpipes off and examine the housing for oil.

That's all you really can do at this point.

 

No that's dead wrong Sharif - when a seal on the turbine side of the turbocharger (hot side of the turbo) fails or leaks the engine will exhaust blue smoke constantly, this has absolutely zero to do with the engines oil pressure.

Peter

 

under engine decel the exhaust pressure is very low yet the oil pressure if very high. This pressure differential can overload the oil seals and cause seapage and burning out the exhaust. Having too much oil pressure to the turbos does exactly what is described by those having issues with this kit.

and oil seal doesnt have to be BAD to allow oil past. i have seen several cases where custom turbo systems were providing too much pressure to the turbos, and once fixed with restriction orifaces there was no permenant damage done to the seals and the oil burning stopped.

i should add however, since your car was supercharged before thie APS kit, its very possible engine damage occured long ago. almost identical symptoms can occur from poor ring sealing.

in the end, everything is speculation. until that engine is compression AND leakdown tested, there is no room to point at the turbo kit.

 

Phunk that has zero to do with oil pressure, the turbo oil supply and exhaust gas paths are completely independant of each other, no offenece intended though that makes absolutely no sense.

I guess you intended to say too much oil volume and yes that could cause a potential problem.

Peter

 

No offense taken, just repeating information that was shared with me. I am not a turbocharger engineer... seems like it would make plenty of sense. Given that when optimum turbo oil supply is exceeded it begins by burning under heavy engine decel... sounded like it made plenty of sense to me.

 

I guess I'm throwing a monkey wrench in this whole thing but I am having the exact same problem. Brand new engine and whenever I come to a complete stop I'm getting white smoke, even if I haven't hit boost at all. Just driving around town in stop and go traffic it was happening, and this was only on deceleration and complete stops. Is it possibly something with the G35's? Even though I couldn't see it being that. Because it was raining pretty hard when I first got the car I didn't notice anything from the exhaust but I could smell it, now that I had time to drive around it is there without a doubt.

I had the problem with blow by before and it was much different than this, I could start the car up.. rev, and I'd get a huge puff of blue smoke and it was even worse at wide open throttle. And with that it only took about 10 miles for the oil to be completely dirty, for anyone familiar with what I've gone through that engine blew cause of oil consumption. I'm no expert by far but I checked the oil last night and its still clean after 200 miles.

 

There is also another scenario.
When the engine is operated at any RPM above idle, especially at RPM , the crankcase oil level should drop slightly as more of the oil volume is pumped into the in the upper block (ie valve covers). Upon returning to idle the oil in Transit drains back into the pan and raises the level again. If the Turbo drain volume is sensitive to the level of crank oil with respect to the pan fittings, you may see this "after the fact" smokling issue. Just a another theory.

I'm really hopeing that the Garret BBs are not being shipped with faulty seals, For my own selfish reasons, If I have to un -install mine for repair of such a flaw , needless to say I'll be Pissed espeically gine that I had to sell my first born for this build up.

Also Peter , if you hadn't seen my earlier comment, APS should conisder upgradeing the kits with a modified dipstick such that readings make sense, thus makeing a "complete" kit more so. Not this Low mean High etc etc BS.

 

My question is why haven't we seen 350Z's with the same problem? Its the exact same kit (I didnt even use the supplemental kit) Unless nobody has come forward.

 

I have witnessed two with similar issues and they were both Zs. One was simply oil level , the other was a kinked driver side return line.

 

Yeah, I know a few Z's with this problem. One of them with a built motor. I don't think it's anything to do with our motors. It's either theres too much oil flow to the turbos, the oil level is too high in our pans, or the return lines aren't short enough.

What sucks is that the damage is done to the muffler itself. Once this oil gets into the fibers of the muffler, it takes quite a while to burn off. I got all this information from ZNitro. Since oil's burning point is 400degrees F, this is why it takes a whlie to start smoking. It seems to get really bad after driving for a while.

Thanks for the input everyone, I can say that I feel more confident that my motor is OK. I will still have the leakdown/compression test done as soon as possible.

 

cool, it gives me peace of mind as well. Lets see some pictures narkotic!

 

With all due respect Peter, I believe you are mistaken in your comments. We can argue this to the cows come home....but this has been my experience, and Phunk also seems to agree.

And IMHO, this smoking thing has more to do with pressure, then with proper drainage. Most of the oil is in the upper oil pan...I've posted this before...and you also disagree witih me. With your APS oil pan, yes, you have 1 extra quart in the lower oil pan, but the vast majority of the oil is the upper pan.

Look at the OEM lower oil pan when you get a chance.....it will hold...maybe 1 qt or so at best. This car runs with 5qts of oil. Where do think the rest of the oil is??? Some is circulating in the engine, and the rest is in the upper pan!

And since the drains are running into the lower pan, its pretty likely that they are not draining into an empty cavity.


Charles, did you ever get you APS kit to stop smoking? What was the solution...I may have missed it.

 

Well I had about a quart removed today. Still smoking. So far i'm really tired of the car dying cause of the idle issue and the smoke. It's quite embarrasing, not to mention ruining my clothes. When I look into my muffler, I see droplets of oil on the tip sometimes. This leads me to believe there is a bad turbo seal. Hell I don't know anymore, but for 10+ grand this shouldn't be an issue.

 

narkotic: not sure if it makes you feel any better but its definatly not oil in your exhaust tips... its just condensation mixed with carbon. i dont imagine any oil making it thru the turbine and not instantly burning from the heat.

as for the idle... the APS kit shouldnt have any issues with idle, that is pretty new. what exactly are the idle problems you are having? I might be able to help you with that. How much vacuum does the car pull at idle, what rpm does it idle, what clutch/flywheel combo do you have, and is the engine low compression or does it have camshafts? with this info i may be able to help you in determining the fix.

 

ok i just read more of the thread... it doesnt sound like you have a built motor or cams. make sure the car is generating at least 20" of vacuum at idle, anything less would mean there is a leak. Make sure that the MAF sensor is not in backwards, not sure if the flange shape would allow for this or not.

it can take a couple hundred miles for the car to relearn how to go from engine decel to idle... its a function of the fly by wire, there is no idle valve in this motor... so the fly by wire system has to learn how to catch the engine on rapid decel to not let it fall too low. if there is nothing physically wrong such as intake leaks, etc... then do you maybe have a very light clutch and flywheel? if so the rapid engine decel can exceed the ecu's ability to catch it on its way down, and you would benefit from having the Nissan dealer use the CONSULT II to raise your idle by the max of i believe 250rpm.

 

Thank you Charles for the response... I was told that since the battery/throttle body has been disconnected for over two weeks that the car loses the idle, and needs to re-learn it. The motor is stock, with just a centerforce clutch that i've had for quite a while now (stock flywheel). I tried the re-learn process w/out the consult but no luck, thats quite a process! I was told from a few people that they experienced this and it just goes away after a while.. And to leave the a/c on to let it idle higher so that it can re-learn. Well i've had the car since Thursday night, and have put about 100 miles on it. How much more do I have to drive for it to auto-learn? It's such an annoyance... having to keep revving up (it's intermittant). I do notice if i let off the gas while driving fast it goes into absolute vacuum (738mmHg on my Greddy). When I had the vortech on, it would be in the 500 range vacuum. Not sure if this has anything to do w/ the turbos or the new Greddy RS blowoff valve. It makes a tiny whistle when i come to a stop.

1. should I just take it to the dealer and have them use the consult on it?
2. should I tighten the bov?
3. drive it off a cliff w/me in the car?

thanks man..

p.s. thanks for the tip on the residue in the muffler.

 

if you dont have cams or a very light flywheel, you shouldnt need the idle raised, however the car will definatly idle smoother if you do, i would probably recommend it... but not to band-aid a problem that may exist.

100 miles probably isnt enough, i have had cars take longer before they have a rock solid idle... however you have to uses the instrumentation you have to try and figure out if there is actually a problem here or if it is just the ECU having to learn. If the car cant even idle stable at all, I think there is something wrong... if it just dies on rapid engine decel, thats pretty normal after disconnecting the ECU.

 

when the car is idling, the APS kit shouldnt have any effect... nothing is "kicking in" if you will. The A/F will be stablized by the ECUs closed loop cycle with the O2 sensors... the APS base maps I highly doubt are touching the ignition timing in vacuum. there is no way to incorrectly wire the kit since its plug and play... if this is more than the car dieing on rapid engine decel, i think something was not done correctly during the installation... it could be a reversed MAF, intake leak (after MAF, and probably after the throttle body)... check to make sure the vacuum line that goes ALLLLLLL the way to the regulator has not been pinched... if it wasnt getting full vacuum its possible the excess fuel pressure could exceed the closed loop cycle's range of adjustment, but in this case the car would trip the Bank1/Bank2 rich check engine code... if the unichip had a pinched vacuum/boost reference hose its possible that its running on incorrect load ranges... there is a lot of room for just tiny little **** to go wrong on such a big install.

sorry im just throwing out complete randoms here... but without the car in front of me or tons of information i cant really do much other.

 

sorry to hear about his man!
do a leak down....i guess i'll spill the beans...i didn't want to say anything until i had my problem resolved...
i hope this is not the case with your car...but do a leak down before you unneccesarily rebuild your turbos...
valve stem seals- not likely (these go out gradually on a motor with lots of miles)


i don't want to get off topic here--so i just started a new thread with the story...
https://my350z.com/forum/forced-induction/126107-are-you-standing-up-ok-sit-down-for-this-one.html