A bit of a long post but I hope someone can enlighten me on my situation. I've done a search but seem to be running out of ideas.
I’ve got a RB20 with 185,000km’s on the engine and there is a large amount of blue smoke coming from my exhaust when my car is on boost. It started two weeks ago and has been so bad I have been unable to drive the car.
It started after I changed my oil and oil filter. After filling the car with new oil I let it sit for an hour or so and came back to check the level and for leaks. I noticed I over filled it and there was oil leaking from the exhaust side of the turbo. I let some of the oil out so it was at the correct level. Upon start up a large amount of white smoke came from the exhaust which turned to blue after a minute or so. I figured this was just the oil that leaked into my exhaust when I overfilled it. I let the engine warm up and let some of the excess oil burn off. I took it for a slow drive around the block and the blue smoke seemed to stop. I then took it for another drive, a bit harder this time and could see a heap of blue smoke coming out of the exhaust when on boost, so much so that the street behind me was a filled with smoke. It felt as though there was a loss of power and there was a very strong smell of burnt oil throughout the car.
I thought it was going to be my turbo seals so I bought a second hand turbo off here and put it on. The old turbo had a fair bit of shaft play and sounded like it was on the way out. The new turbo had very little shaft play and seemed to be in better all round condition. I took it for a drive and the loss of power and smoke was no better than the first turbo.
Since then I have done a compression test and I got 140,130,120,125,125,125 across the cylinders from 1 to 6 which to me seems ok as there is not a large drop in any of the cylinders. I also took out the PCV valve to make sure it was not blocked, it wasn’t but gave it a clean out anyway. When I took the turbo off there was a thin film of oil in the intercooler piping but nothing out of the usual. Spark plugs 1 & 2 had oil on them and there was also some oil in the spark plug wells. My oil catch can indicates that there is a fair amount of oil going in there.
Any ideas on what my problem could be? Did I buy a dodgy second hand turbo or will I require a rebuild?
Anything else I should check out?
Thanks for your help.