White smoke from engine at idle- rear cam seal?

[TisMe]

Hey folks,

I told myself I wasn't going to dig into my car today, but I opened my laptop to 48 forum posts and so here I am.

I just made a near-painful order from IPD and 1A combined, some of these cheaper parts being my cam seals. I've had a pretty bad oil leak for a while, which I was putting off until I refurbished my PCV... though I wound up having to drop my pan, so that slowed everything down. With all that done, and cam research complete, I'll finally be doing my seals next week.

Just before I did my PCV, and oddly enough just after replacing my upstream O2 sensor, I started getting white smoke at idle from the passenger side middle-ish of my engine block. After diagnosing my cam seals, and potentially my oil return pipe as well (yay turbo), I've been assuming it was my exhaust cam seal that was causing this. It's a pretty bad oil leak (enough to have 2 separate kind gentleman point out my smoking hood at the same pitstop), so I assumed the blown seal was pumping out enough oil to immediately smoke, despite no throttle. Combined with my likely crusty oil return gasket, I thought I had this diagnosed.

With all that said, I lose about a quart every 200ish miles, so it's bad but also, ahem, still drivable.

Trying not to get too wordy here; from all the cam seal research I've done, no one has mentioned getting idle burnoff. I'm wondering if my hopeful thinking was actually wishful, because I happened to delve further into researching my misfire, and apparently a more common reference to idle smoke is old valve stem seals.

I know that at this point some people would ask if I'm burning coolant, but that system is tight and coolant doesn't drop even a millimeter. Does anyone think my cam seal diagnosis is wishful thinking, when the main culprit for block smoke is something more sinister? The cam seals DO need to be and will be done, but I can't answer that myself 'til next week, so I'm hoping for some thoughts here

Thanks!

[vtl]

How about capturing and posting a video?

I would bet on internal oil leak and warped exhaust manifold creating gaps near 1 and 5 cylinders. Or something dripping on the exhaust manifold, like compromised valve cover chemical gasket. Or blown valve steam seal.

[TisMe]

Coincidentally I was just snapping a photo of where it comes up from the hood. You can at least see it's from about where my exhaust seal is located, but almost further toward where the oil return pipe is located.

[vtl]

Remove the heat shield?

[vtl]

Does it smell burnt or is it more like an oil mist?

[TisMe]

Remove the heat shield?

Thanks, I'll start there to help pinpoint a visual leak. Still praying it's the leaky cam seal, but I won't get my hopes up.

Doesn't smell particularly burnt, my system was just desludged and there's a constant stream of fresh 5w30 being poured into the engine. It's not dense smoke, it's more of a mist like you say.

[vtl]

You probably see a crankcase mist leaking out. Not sure how leaky seal can create mist, this is usually a job for rotating crankshaft and bypass gasses. Check out air intake around turbo and PTC nipple.

[TisMe]

You probably see a crankcase mist leaking out. Not sure how leaky seal can create mist, this is usually a job for rotating crankshaft and bypass gasses. Check out air intake around turbo and PTC nipple.

Hmm, thanks again for that golden advice. It definitely appears to be coming from around the PTC nipple, this reminds me that I was looking into the PTC the other week before getting sidetracked by other maintenance. Just very difficult to really see what's going on in there without tearing things apart.

I'd like to dig into the diagnosis right now, but I'm running short on my available time this weekend. Part of why I said I wasn't digging into this today...

so it might make sense to give that a proper inspection when I have my engine mount removed while replacing my exhaust cam seal. That should really open up the area and give me a real idea of what's going on, and perhaps allowing me to service it at the same time. Woo!

[darylrobert]

With oil leaks first give the engine a very though cleaning (cold engine) and let dry. start car and look close in suspected area, if nothing seen take car for very short drive.

The rear cam seal is a very common source of leaks, you can usually see the seep trail down the block. Whether thats causing your leak onto the hot exhaust is another question.

I recently installed a junkyard motor that smoked just like your pic, it was because the seller sprayed WD-40 over the entire engine to make it look good in the photo's he sent me. It smoked really bad for about 20-30minutes and was almost convinced of a major problem, only a small amount of oil ont the exhaust can smoke really bad.

[jonesg]

agree, oil could be dripping onto the exh manifold or turbo, although oil smoke is bluish and steam is whiter.

Oil drain pipe from the turbo can dump a lot of oil under the car, mine did, it coated the whole underside back to the haldex and got on the exh system , smoked a lot.
I was losing a quart every week or less.