Originally Posted by GRIESL

Did it blow a puff of smoke on dinodiesel? If so, what color?

My car has a brand spanking new head from Metric and a new timing chain. I run homemade b100 and have the exact same (seems like) idle smoke--not a whole bunch, but enough to notice if you're looking. Funny, last month I ran out completely of my brew and nobody except a hippy coop around here sells b100, so I filled up with dino 45 cetane, and the dang thing smoked less at idle. More under load, though. When at my Indy's a couple of months ago for state inspection, I asked him to observe the idle smoke, and he says the smoke at idle is definitely fuel smoke. I have a little oil consumption--1.5 quarts per 4k. My next step is to retard the timing to 26deg. I've heard the bio burns slower or something like that, which causes an incomplete burn, especially at low rpm. That could explain why the dino smoked less.

My advice to you would be to slow down a tad on diagnosing a problem and put some miles on the car and monitor oil consumption. Get someone else to drive the car and you follow it in a chase car. Tell the driver to demonstrate a few different situations like WOT, second or third gear redline, then a slow takeoff. Looking at the frequency of problems that cause smoke on this forum, I'd say turbo seals going bad is unlikely.

You would definitely smell burning oil. For comparison's sake, out on the road I would try to find the smokiest gasser and follow it for a while so I could get a feel for what burnt oil really smelled like. With all the other diesel aromas interfering with the exhaust, it's hard to pinpoint the oil smell. But find some redneck Ford Escort that's blowing heavy blue smoke and follow it around for a while. Oil has a bad acrid smell--of course it could have just been the people in the car! Hope noone here owns an Escort in Va!


Good luck!