Newer VW Gen3 engines with blue smoke?
- Thread starter John9721
- Start date
Maybe you should run VRP oil in you 1.5T, I had massive oil dilution with my turbo Hyundai,1.5 qts of fuel in under 3,000 miles. And my car always was dumped at 3,000 miles with high end oils Amsoil SS, Mobil1 Extended , Pennzoil Ultra, Mobil 1 Euro and 2 years of Mobil1 ESP 5w-30 and had that massive dilution. I unjammed my rings with Redline Performance Euro 5w30 ( high ester). I had 1/2 qt dilution in hot summer. I am down to zero dilution in summer and 1/4 qt ish in the worst part of Minnesota winter and short tripping. This winter and into next month I have ran 4 ) 3,000 OCI dumps with VRP to make sure I get all my ring land carbon. In the summer I will be running Motul 8300-Clean 5w 40 Gen 2 and HPL Engine Cleaner every other to keep my ring lids free of carbon.
Everyone saying that valve stem seals will burn oil, obviously aren’t considering the fact that a turbocharged engine will have positive pressure in the intake ports at virtually all times, except idle. There will be no vacuum pulling oil past the valve stem seals under load like a naturally aspirated engine except on deceleration.
I have a 2023 Tiguan with 40K KM (25K Miles) with this issue and it definitely only does it on startup. No oil consumption between oil changes, only a blue puff of oil smoke on startup after the car sits overnight, or for my 12 hr shift at work. This seems to be isolated to EA888 engines built in Mexico. Virtually no complaints of the issue on German made engines as far as I’ve been able to gather. It must be an assembly issue or a supplier issue isolated to the Mexico engine plant.
I have a 2023 Tiguan with 40K KM (25K Miles) with this issue and it definitely only does it on startup. No oil consumption between oil changes, only a blue puff of oil smoke on startup after the car sits overnight, or for my 12 hr shift at work. This seems to be isolated to EA888 engines built in Mexico. Virtually no complaints of the issue on German made engines as far as I’ve been able to gather. It must be an assembly issue or a supplier issue isolated to the Mexico engine plant.
My friend's Germany made Tiguan had that puff of smoke at startup as well.
Do you have a large enough and detailed dataset to make that claim?
I would disagree, based on anecdotal evidence I've heard from VW dealer techs. One of them says he's seen more Golf R valve stem seal jobs than any other model, the other one said the common thread at his shop is mostly cars that are on thinner oils, especially ones that stick to 10,000 mi OCIs.
I don't know the cause, whether it's a supplier change on 2019+ cars or just the move away from 5w40 around the same time-frame. My hunch is that VW cost-cutting, post-Covid manufacturing, and owners cost-cutting with extended service intervals are all combining factors.
The only pictures I have on hand from them are both from german-made 2019 Rs, coincidentally.
This would not be the first time VW had problems with those.
Also note that these are all exhaust seals (red/brown), not intake seals (which are generally blue/green on these motors).
Mine is doing it again recently...seemed fine all winter so perhaps temp related? I also rarely get it on a cold start in the morning...usually only happens after it is heat soaked for a few hours on a warm day. No measurable oil level change in between OCIs of about 5K.
My data directly contradicts this statement. Running a scangauge on my twin turbo F150 and the boost gauge on the macan (3.0 twin turbo) both show vaccuum on the intake most of the time. The truck runs at -9.5 psi at idle and -3 or so on the highway = vaccuum. The Macan only shows 0 psi as its lowest value (the transition from vaccuum to pressure) and it only goes over that on acceleration. Highway driving shows zero most of the time (the lowest it can show).
This is normal, it'll be in vacuum if it's not accelerating even if it's a turbo car. Vacuum doesn't causing the failures, heat and friction does. Vacuum just lets you test the seals. Long exhaust braking followed by throttle, if that blows smoke you've probably got a bad seal.
that's not true. most of the time a t-gdi is not boosting, and the throttle is part closed. For a diesel that would be correct
Thanks for the reply, appreciate the info.
Idle, just off of idle, or decel will be the occasions where there is a significant amount of vacuum in the intake manifold. I wouldn’t think the EA888 engine would pull very much vacuum even under light load. The turbos are small and are spooled at very low rpm. Even at low throttle openings, the intake charge is being pushed past the TB, not being pulled through it. But I guess you are correct, there may be slight vacuum under low load driving conditions, but there is never as much vacuum as an NA engine. This conversation makes me curious, I’m gonna log MAP pressure on my Tiguan and see how much vacuum occurs during the various loads/driving conditions the engine sees.
You are correct on a diesel though, with no throttle, there would be virtually no scenario where there is vacuum.
The point I was trying to illustrate is that you aren’t gonna see nearly as much manifold vacuum trying to pull oil past the seals in a turbo engine as you will in a naturally aspirated engine. I know the vacuum doesn’t make them fail, I was just saying that oil consumption due to bad valve stem seals on a turbo charged engine will be much less than a naturally aspirated engine. These small displacement engines with small turbos run positive manifold pressure in way more driving conditions than a larger engine or an engine with a larger turbo that needs 2.5-3K RPM to light.
Surprised nobody has mentioned turbo seals going bad.
Because that's not really a thing. The turbo "seals" are just gas control rings, if they're damaged the turbo is probably dead. Which happens, but at that point a bit of smoke isn't the concern.
The issues commonly mislabeled as "bad turbo seals" are bad oil drains or excess crankcase pressure (failing PCVs, aftermarket PCV deletes), at least in the EA888.3 world. Basically something else is forcing oil out of the bearing housing into the turbine housing.
VW's been revising the oil lines and PCVs pretty regularly, and bad PCVs are frequently mis-diagnosed as turbo seals or valve stem seals.
So it couldn't be a manufacturing defect which allows oil to weep into the exhaust
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