Replacing PVC, noticed lots of oil in/around turbo

[Daves98V70]

Hello all,the weather's finally nice enough here in NY to do my PVC replacement and a few other minor things to the car. This is a 98 V70 GLT I bought at around 145K miles, and to my knowledge the PVC service has never been done on this car. The car has maybe 155K now, the last thousand or so it's started burning oil - a little bit at idle initially, then periodic clouds of blue smoke (which would sometimes last until I got half a mile or a mile down the road). I also noticed blue smoke out the exhaust after lifting off the throttle after moderate acceleration. Anyway, I'm just starting to do the PVC system, and when I took off the air pipe leading from the turbo outlet to the intercooler, I saw this:

Oil in air pipe small.jpg (104.82 KiB) Viewed 445 times

I was a little alarmed by the amount of oil I saw in there. Now, that certainly explains the blue smoke following me around all the time, but it seems excessive; could this be indicative of a badly clogged PCV, or is it possible I've got a problem with either the turbo or one of the turbo's oil lines?

Any thoughts would be appreciated - as I said, I'm doing the PCV anyway, I'd just like to prepare myself for the possibility of something more severe.

Thanks in advance,

Dave in NY

[Ozark Lee]

A badly clogged PCV will cause the excessive oil and even cause the car to smoke. If it remains after you service the PCV then you likely have a bad oil seal on the turbo. The seals tend to be a bigger problem on the hot side of the turbo rather than on the charge air side but either side can fail.

A rebuild kit for the turbo, from Mitsubishi, runs around $70.00. Other than dealing with a couple of real huge snap rings, the turbo is fairly easy to rebuild.

...Lee

[Daves98V70]

Thanks for the quick reply, I'll get the PCV up to snuff and then deal with the turbo if it needs it. I was hoping to transplant a 16T into it anyway, but some family crises will put that project off indefinitely. I'll post after the PCV is done so anyone else can see the progress.

Thanks again,

Dave