luthepa1

Hey valf, thanks for the private msg. I have sent a pic of the BT dongle I am using which works fine. You have stirred my interest up again in this project. Last thing I was doing was determining the comms protocal and doing strace dumps of the serial comms to see what the initi command was that NDSII was using. I should share one of my directories with you with a whole heap of info I have collected. Some might be useful and some maybe not. I believe our cars use KWP2000. Also here is a cool project someone did using Kodi (XBMC) on a raspberry PI in his car. cool stuff http://nikrooz.co.uk/raspberry-pi-car-puter/

and keep in mind that I dont see or smell any smoke until the car is up to operating temp. If the engine is cold and I reapply throttle after a long deceleration (e.g. 5-10sec) there is nothing. Same cant be said for when the engine is all warmed up.

Cheers guys! Well maybe I should try getting the turbo seals replaced if its a relatively cheap thing to do (compared to pulling head off engine). Process of elimination. Yes I was just speaking to my Bro of putting a catch can on the PVC but I need to find something smaller than all these 400mL+ catch cans you see on ebay. There's just not enough room in these M35's. Any recommendations?

Thought I might stir this post up again. Its been almost a year and same situation but I thought that might be interesting in it self. I have installed catch can between crank and air intake before turbo but I am not seeing it fill at all. Intake piping before FMIC looks reasonably clean, nothing like when I did have a leaky turbo. And the dump pipe is also reasonably clean was the feedback from the pics I originally posted a while back. Oil consumption is about the same at 800mL every 2500kms, no matter the thickness (e.g have used 10w60, 10w40). Scotty: Just over a year ago on post #30 you mentioned concerns of turbo with bush core and lack of oil flow. But considering a year has gone by and car and turbo still perform well would you still suspect faulty turbo? I posted link to the dump pics again for a FYI. Although while I find the intake piping clean enough inside what are the thoughts of pic 14 out of 14 in the link of elbow from turbo to FMIC? Externally it gets oily/dirty all the time. The hose clamps are tight. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/na59gf9f8ccalpb/AAC9Ckkn-CbWZd0EeEan4_iDa?dl=0

Ok I got some pics of the dump pipe now. See the link below. Let me know what you think? https://www.dropbox.com/sh/na59gf9f8ccalpb/6JNvNV2xWW

I now have the ability to jack the car up on stands and work from home now. I'll try to have a look at the dump pipe for oil build up. Is it enough to look at it when cold? Or should I go for a hard drive then check (so super hot)? After this might look into leak-down test. And still interested in getting catch cans.

Hey Scott. I thought one might have been missed but Craig said that all 3 were drilled out now. Currently running 10w60 castrol edge performance. Was running motul chrono v300 10w40 for a year. The 10w60 has reduced the amount of visible smoke frequency. I say it only happens when driving @80km or more but really its when the engine reaches max vacuum then i apply gas again. I have a cheapy boost gauge with max vacuum reading down to -15psi. At idle its around -9 to -10psi (-7 to -8 in drive and stationary). But i noticed when I do that "zippy" driving in back streets using only 1st and 2nd gear the car reaches -15psi easy when its all phsyc'd up. This is when smoke become visual looking in rearview mirror. Like you say I know the catch can wont fix the issue but at least maybe I can get a indication of how much blowby gas there might be. I just need to start doing things to troubleshoot. PCV seemed to work fine but I replaced with brand new genuine nissan PCV about 6 months ago. Made no difference.

Hey Guys, Maybe a bit of a silly question but I want to install a oil catch can but not 100% sure on the how. Is it as simple as just putting inline? And I am thinking I want a oil catch can for the PCV hose drivers side and also on the intake passenger side. Do I need to use 2 catch cans or can I rig up one catch can for use on both side? And I want to keep it legal. I want to do this as a bit of troubleshooting procedure more than anything. My car runs absolutely fine except I still see some smoke for a few seconds when reapplying throttle after a 10sec backoff decelleration @ 80kms or more. Or if the engine is warmed up and idling in park I rev it high, then the revs drop back down to idle and some smoke clears, but recently I tried this rev test on a hot 33*C days after 45mins of driving with aircon on and nothing! No smoke. So the issue seems intermittent. This issue only started after an accident where the wife snagged the exhaust and ripped it clean off which was only 1 month after a turbo upgrade/replacement as the original stock turbo blew up. https://www.dropbox.com/s/1lvc2hgifqkuajy/Stag%20Smoke%20Blow%20Short.mp4 Paul.

Really. Its frustrating as I have had the turbo rebuilt twice.

Well time to bring this post back to life again. The final 2 out of 3 banjo have been drilled out larger but my problem still continues. I have travel 1500km and lost at least 700mL oil. I'm practically on the low mark of dip stick now. Note: if I remember correctly the 1st of 3 banjo was returned to original size in last turbo rebuild. So now I wonder if my turbo is really the issue. Now thinking engine (valve stem seals). I mean... Can a turbo be in a state where it keeps consuming oil but drive fine? My car runs good. No issues and no error codes from ECM or TCM. car drives awesome but on a downhill deceleration above 80km it will blow smoke in reapplying throttle briefly. Or if I lock trans in manual and keep revs greater than 3500rpm it will blow smoke when reapply throttle. How much to repair valve stem seals? If ripping the head off should I get lower end rebuilt? How much that set me back? Get a new engine if that's even possible to find? $? Just trying to review my options here. I have got to point I thinking of getting rid of it. Cheers.

Really. So all my probs could still be to do with oil restriction. I know when Craig fitted the rebuilt turbo he fitted a 2.5mm sized banjo but i was under the assumption there was only 1 restrictor not 3. Got some home work to do then. Need to figure out where these restrictors are as not familiar with this area of engine. Only starting to get familiar with top end now that I got workable conditions at my new house. I am a bit concern at the moment because on my drive home just now I hear the normal high pitched air guzzling sounds but then after 3000rpm i hear an additional noise that kind of sounding like a quite maybe siren noise. That I dont want to hear. Or could be just a healthy noise. I just associate siren noises to not be good noise. But more driving prob needed to confirm this noise really is there all the time.

Hey Guys, Im back! Been just over 4 months now since last post but in short I still have this issue of my car blowing smoke. Pretty much the same situation as written in my first post #1. To sum it up 1) Coasting downhill with no throttle applied >= 80km/h, achieving max vacuum then apply any amount of throttle will present smoke that clears in 3 - 10sec. 2) Zippy driving - when driving though residential back streets with lots of start stopping I will lock it in to manual mode using only 1st and 2nd gears to get quick response time from this lethargic gear box. Not speeding just keeping motion. I watched the RPM and noticed I am always in the 3000 to 5000rpm range. This style of driving almost guarantees smoke on back off. Since last post in April the turbo has been taken off and rebuilt. I noticed before rebuild that oil was building up in the intake piping and FMIC. I am happy to say after turbo rebuild just over a month ago now that the intake piping has stayed spotless! Just like it was after kero cleaning. However on rebuild invoice it was written that turbo was heavily contaminated and if my root cause was not fixed I will void warranty. I've also noticed since the rebuilt turbo was fitted the smoke blowing is not as bad but seems to slowing be increasing again. Also since rebuilt turbo I have replaced the PCV valve even though I am certain the original is fine. I have cleaned the K&N filter with recharge kit as it was filthy. And this weekend I have replaced the spark plugs which the originals look like crap. See pic here which prob sums it up. The other thing I noticed which is alarming is that my oil is on the empty mark of dip stick!!!! Thats a loss of 800mL minimum since rebuild. With overfill more like 1L oil consumption! And I have only done approx 893Kms in that time. That's bad. I also found this good read from this turbo repair guy in Melbourne. Very interesting read. What I took from it was that turbos are not reliability issue module but rather an easy victim. http://www.procharge.com.au/turbotorque/6-blog/blog/117-the-turbo-blues One interesting troubleshooting step was gear box on an RB being the cause. Can anyone elaborate on how this could be? My gear box has not been its absolute best for some time. Generally its ok but sometimes it has a bit of a shudder because its trying to stay in 5th gear in 60km/h zone at 1700 rpm or even less. So it starts to drop to 4th then decide no 5th is the gear to be in. Sometimes I will knock it into manual mode to prevent 5th gear. This does not happen often. Usually only after a motorway drive like 100km/h then coming back to residential speeds. Then lastly tonight I plugged laptop into ECU to check for faults and found a few. P1320 - I removed ignition fuse for injectors as I did a compression test during spark plug change. Not concerned here. P0235 - I have the boost solenoid disconnected as I don't use it so to keep turbo boost down to a max of 17psi. After fitting new legalis exhaust and the stage 1 hi-flow sierra turbo it was hitting 21psi and one day the engine retarded hard. Then I saw this from gear box TCM module P1772 - Low Coast Brake Solenoid Valve I'm worried a bit hear but I keep wondering how and if the gearbox could have any kind of impact on my smoke blowing situation although I know its probably wishful thinking. First thing tomorrow I will double check the trans fluid level but believe it was ok last time I checked. Is there more than one place to check? Oh last thing. On cold start to initial warm up there will be no smoke issues. Its only when the car is fully and complete warmed up. And compression test results. First numbers are from 4 months ago and second numbers is yesterday results. Nothing really changed here. Front of Engine 2) 120psi / half oil 1) 125psi / no oil 4) 120psi / no oil 3) 140psi / tinniest bit of oil 6) 130psi / lots of oil 5) 125psi / no oil Front of Engine 2) 120psi / no oil 1) 130psi / no oil 4) 125psi / no oil 3) 140psi / no oil 6) 120psi / tiny bit of oil 5) 135psi / no oil Link to pics of spark plugs. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aotyfpjhiuuqcwu/IV3aRbmyMC Ok I'll stop yapping now. Could probably go on forever. My car issues all start the week before Xmas last year and still going. I am tired. Paul.

Does any one know if our Stagea's are J1850 PWM or J1850 VPW protocol??? I successfully connected with my android phone using J1850VPW and got RPM reading (using a cheapo ELM327 bluetooth adapter) but I was under the impression that our ECU's were PWM (pulse width modulation). I did not test any further after RPM feedback so it might be that while I connected under VPW I might have limited sensor readings. I am getting to the point of frustration that I am maybe going to look into writing my own android app. But having time with work and personal life could be the limiting factor for me. Our car ECU's are OBDII compliant (at least at the physical level) however there are at least 5 different protocols of OBDII and they can have different initialisation and handshake commands. I am just trying to source any and all info on our car ECU to scope out the level of difficulty of writing my own app.

So I removed the PCV hose from plenum but no joy. Car still blows smoke. Traffic was worse today and my usual downhill roll into Sydney tunnel was absolute crawl and so did not blow smoke there today. Seems I need that magic number of -13psi for a handful of seconds or I need to boost hard to make turbo work and then there will be smoke.

So you mean with the house still connected to plenum plug that hose and the PVC would be disconnected from that end of hose (atmosphere). So basically plugging the plenum? Because I tried taking PVC house off at plenum and car will stall which makes sense add there is air intake bypassing AFM. Sorry if my question seems a little stupid. Just want to be sure ;-)

So this morning on drive to work I managed to keep completely off boost (Max 0psi) which is hard and I did not see any smoke except for little bit on the usual down hill part before entering Sydney tunnel. So it does seam like turbo. What i never thought to pick up on is the smoke occurs when car is at Max vacuum which in this case is -13psi. At stand still when engine warned up it is -10 to -9psi. On cold start it's -8 since new exhaust. So if turbo is the issue then does low vacuum make sense? Is it because the seals can't cope? I'm just trying to make sense of it.

It was a sierra stage 1 turbo hi flowed. As for the other 2 questions I would have to ask Craig. So I should probably stop driving my car until I can get turbo repaired, right?

Ok so went for a drive and things seems worse - or more replicable now. First thing I noticed was that the turbo makes this kind of metallic scratching noise I would describe it as and was something I noticed since day 1 of this new turbo. A thicker oil (10w40) that I now run seemed to quiten it down until now. When you accelerate you will start to hear the turbo make its spooling noise which sounds ok but then when it starts making positive boost or gets to about 2600rpm it starts to make a slightly more metallic sound. The next thing I noticed was smoke. More of it today. Seem to be able to replicate it 100% when decelerating downhill. Key point there is downhill and deceleration. On one occasion I had to stop on a downhill at traffic lights. When they went green and I drove off I did not see smoke. So seems you need to have some speed with equation. But also I noticed in the residential zone I lock it down into 2nd gear and give it some stick and then there is smoke too! Also another strange thing I noticed today was when I accelerate to see how the boost goes, it would drop back gears like usual, hit 17psi like usual but then seemed to want to kick down another gear (or felt like that was what it was doing) and dropped to 14psi but then building up again. That seemed strange as usually my car will hold 17psi through whole rev range and whole acceleration. Something funny going on there (fuel pump/injectors?). So I am really thinking now my turbo is failing. Is what I just describe back that theory up? NOTE: On cold start there is no smoke until the engine comes up to operating temp. Just runs rich.

Ok so I took the FMIC and piping off today and kero cleaned. There was oil but I not sure if its out of the norm. Below is link to some pics I took. The intake side was relatively clean but with some oil traces around the blue hose join. The output side did not seem to bad either except it did have a little pool of oil sitting inside. You will know from the pics. After washing I poured the used kero back into bottles which looked like coke a cola in the end. Looks worse than it is I think. But again I will let some experienced people provide feedback for your thoughts. The black original piping from the turbo to the HDi elbow bend did not look to have fresh, wet oil. I have not gone for a drive yet but will report back when I do if still seeing smoke. I was also playing a little more with the PCV valve and wanted to verify if these things seem correct. I tried removing the PCV hose from the plenium and in 10sec roughly the car stalls. Then trying to blow into the hose attached to the PCV it was occluded (car off). https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f30el295h2nr1bm/6BRNtMjIen

Yes I agree I think some oil dripped in especially for the cylinder that got 140psi. So that said then I can assume the ringlands are good? Have not got round to cleaning the FMIC yet. Work been pushing me to the grind (11hrs days not including travel - leave not personal time). Plus trying to figure out how and where to flush. Can I do the flush in a big pan/drop bucket? How much cleaning fluid would I need? I got the HDi cooler.

So I managed to get round to performing compression test yesterday. In doing so I discover at least 1 issue which is the rocker cover gasket needs replacing as I found oil in some of the spark plug chambers. Sparky closest to turbo on passenger side had so much I could not see the spark plug until syringing it out. Middle passenger was dry and front passenger had oil to half cover sparky. On drivers side all dry except the middle one which had a tiny bit of oil but I could still see all sparky down to the hex part of body. Interestingly though this drivers middle cylinder had the highest compression. Note: The compression test tool I had was one where I had to hold it against the spark plug port while someone else cranks the engine over as opposed to having a screw in type. So perhaps allow for some variance I am thinking. I pulled 2 10A fuses during the test that I believe would disable the fuel pump and IGN (The left most top & bottom of fuse box). Not sure what the optimal psi should be for each cylinder? Front of Engine 2) 120psi / half oil 1) 125psi / no oil 4) 120psi / no oil 3) 140psi / tinniest bit of oil 6) 130psi / lots of oil 5) 125psi / no oil What you think? Visually looking as best I could front top side I can not see any oil leaks externally anywhere. The turbo looks dry. I also took a look at PCV again. Clean and free moving inside. Rattles slightly but not side to side shaking. Blow in one end occludes the other end free and open. Other thing I did notice was where the original black tubing from turbo joins the first elbow pipe to FMIC entry in front of passenger wheel looks a little damp at hose clamp. So suspect the oil inside here. Below is link to some shared pics and vids of my finding (plus some other pics of not interest probably). https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dhrb64qrxsuuit5/DHN4tPsDGU

Cheers guys! Now I got a plan of attack!

Ah! that's a very interesting bit of info! I say that because the other day I was driving with all windows up (usually down as aircon condensor got a hole and no gas) and I swear I could smell it inside the car. Then I saw the smoke in review mirror.

Pics of intake pipe. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i462ttikrnickzz/X-QIlYaDTz

I just took the PCV out to have a look. It seemed fine but then I wouldn't know what a rooted one would be like. It has a quite rattle shaking it except side to side not really. It looked very clean and I could see the internal parts move freely turning upside and so forth. Put in Motul 300v Chrono 10w40 in it. Craig and I just dump the whole bottle in so 500mL overfill but that be long burnt off by now. Well on a cold start I let it sit and idle for a few minutes for engine to warm up. But I never see or smell anything when I drive off. Also when I am in bumper to bumper peak traffic I dont notice anything either. Its only after engine or turbo have mid to full range use I'd say. And the most replaceable scenario is the drive to customer for work in mornings where I its bumper to bumper traffic until join motor way, then up to half throttle half boost (~14psi) and drive for 3-5kms I think then the downhill roll, then apply 500rpm throttle and then the puff of smoke. After yesterday I was a little pissed so too it for thrash last night. Did not see any smoke but could smell something strong when pull up at lights. Then just now after removing PCV to clean, when for quick boost. Again I can smell something but not see anything in review mirror. So today car more like it has been. Dont know what was up with yesterday. Got some pics though of intake pipe before throttle body. What you think guys?