I notice that there is some (small, but noticable) smoke coming from my exhaust constantly at idle. Also can see smoke in the rearview when accelerating from a stop - quite a bit after it shifts into second and the turbo kicks in. It doesn't cause a blackout by any means, but you can definitely see it - especially at night in the headlights of the car behind me.

Is this normal or is that too much smoke? Car gets about 31MPG at 70MPH on trips. That doesn't lead me to believe that it is putting too much fuel in...

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'87 300D 183K
'06 E320 CDI 10K

A little smoke is normal, gobbs of smoke is bad...

I see very little/no smoke at idle.

I have also noticed that I really don't see much if any at wide open throttle, and in my case I think I'm underfueling. I've tweaked the ALDA a little and response has improved, I'm now seeing just a little smoke under WOT conditions. I may tweak just a little more and see what the result is.

Black smoke = unburnt fuel, so either there is too much fuel, it's coming at the wrong time, or it is insufficiently atomised and does not completely burn. At least that's my understanding of it.

Kevin

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'85 300SD