Its that time of the year again ...

bax

Torque Junkie
Points
157
Location
Mars
Car
Rexton 270xdi 2005
So it seems my car wishes to be a drama queen this month and along the list of issues a serious one popped out ..

Ive got heavy gray/white smoke coming out of the exhaust , like a cloud .. started two days ago on start up some white smoke came out and then it was gone , but this morning once i started the car it felt like the engine wanted to turn off again after it started and there was that big white cloud at the exhaust , i thought it was going to fade in a couple of seconds but nope .. kept blowing white smoke , even as i started driving things got even worse if i hit the gas ..

so lots of things came to mind , Turbo , injectors , Intake .. and finally i recalled that i added new Engine oil recently ..

i also scanned the Ecu and got the following error
P0275 5 Cyl balance mal

im thinking perhaps i added too much oil or perhaps the oil was flawed .. though it meets the MB 229.31 standard its the first time i use the Castrol Magnatec 10w40 on my car ..

Turbo is a year old so i find it hard to accuse it ..

Injectors on the other hand are 11 years old and never had any issues so perhaps its time ..

another thing worth mentioning is that after checking again it seems alot of engine oil is missing again and needs refilling even though it hasnt even been a week since i topped it

i havent noticed any serious drop in performance when it comes to acceleration and such , but my brother did mention that the engine sounds different as if theres some knocking sound ..

(The engine is a 2.7 liter turbocharged Diesel )
 
Sorry to hear about your problems here.

Are you experiencing coolant loss?

Not a fan of Magnatec myself, there are better oils out there for similar money IMO. Is it the correct grade for your engine?
 
ermm didnt notice any drop in coolant amount , engine oil however is running out at a high pace due to burning ...

as to the oil grade well its an issue , you see the experts on my car model said to use oils that meet the API CI4 standard which is supposed to be a high standard and ive looked everywhere in my country for such oil but i cant seem to find any that meet that standard ..

so i went to the service center for my car brand and looked at the oils they use and all the oils they use were of API CF grade which is pretty low compared to the CI4 .. so i checked the car manual and it seems the standard im supposed to meet is a MB 229.31 which the API CF grade ones meet ...
ive also been using CF grade oils for the past 7 years on my car only different brands such as ZIC XQ 5w40 and PAZ TOP 5W40 the Paz one is of higher grade when it comes to the MB standard but of similar API grade as the ZIC never had issues with any of those ., now Castrol is supposed to be a famous brand and of high quality , it shares the same oil grade as the PAZ one but only 2 days after adding 3 liters im getting White smoke and Check engine lights ..

ist possible that its due to that Magnatic trait of sticking to engine components ? perhaps my car enigne dosnt welcome such things ..

i plan on draining the engine oil and trying to use a different oil , ive been considering Liqui moly which is of an even higher grade on the MB standar (229.51) but is again CF grade for the API standard .. i looked everywhere and it seems there is no higher grade for diesels on the API standard here in my country ..

its worth mentioning that all the oil mentioned above work for both Petrol and diesel engines with API being SN/CF .. (SN being the highest standard for Petrols and CF the lowest for Diesels )
 
Sounds like it's burning the oil. This can happen if you overfill or if the turbo is overboosting, or if there are some damaged seals in places, or perhaps the EGR is blocked. I doubt if it's purely because you're using Magnatec.
 
Its possible that i overfilled because the engine was not cold when i top it so the reading on the scale probably wasnt accurate at the time , as for the turbo i did manage to find oil inside the turbo and a litte inside the air filter pipe ...
a friend said it could be a bad head gasket , i never replaced the head gasket so its possible that age affected it ..

Egr is deleted on my Car

My car has 251000Km so old age could be part of the issue here
 
I experimented a little on my car not long ago and i concluded that the tubro and the intake have no affect on the smoke at the rear ... i also noticed that i get mixed black and white smoke if i rev the engine from 1k to 4k at once while i get very little amounts of white smoke if i let it rev higher little by little ..

i also noticed leaks all over the rear lower part of the engine (such leaks werent there a week ago) my brother smelled diesel when he removed the engine oil cap so im starting to lean more towards the faulty injector case ..

Coolant was still on same level and there was no oil in it ... oh and i noticed black stains on the ground right under the exhaust tip , so the fuel air mixture is probably off due to something related to the issue ..

i need a way to cross out either the Injectors or the Head gasket
 
went to a mechanic and he brought up another possibility ... Valve seal , i looked them up and they were those small rubber like parts that werent expensive and i was happy .. then he told me that they had to take apart the engine and its components and theres a high chance for failure in the process and that it would be better to just get a new engine ...
so there i was stunned and confused ... first i thought it was a wrong Engine oil then i guessed it was a gasket somewhere , then i leaned more to the turbo , then i suspected the injectors and finally im told the engine needs replacing ... Boy that escalated in such a painful way
im gonna have to think real hard on where to go from here .. not the best week ive had in a while
 
ermm only engine swap i know of on a similar vehicle to mine is either a JZ1 or a JZ2 from a toyota supra ... however the supra was never introduced to the market in my country so its not exactly available ..


also such a swap will require that i disable the 4x4 option and since its going to be a petrol engine the drop in Fuel consumption is too massive and petrols have a very low torque compared to diesels ...

but if i could just put aside the compatibility and availability ... id want that V10 TDI engine on the Volkswagen Touareg R50 ... 350Ps with 850Nm , will probably get much more with a remap ahhh ..

now back to reality , if theres something i learned this week its that i cant handle the stress from trying to solve technical issues that require so much guessing and assuming .. ive heard regular issues are common for swapped engines or NA engines that had a turbo installed on them .. i have no problem with the regular maintenance every now and then but having to fix things all the time is just beyond me
 
Update !!

Switched back to ZIC XQ 5W40 and now second day , no smoke no vibrations , no issues ...

i still cant explain this .. Both Castrol Magnatec 5w40 and Zic XQ 5w40 // same grade , meets same standards .. both new (not expired or such) , Yet the castrol thats supposed to be a superior oil brand caused many issues and almost had me give up on my engine ... not even the mechanics or the distributes of Castrol could predict this ...

oh well all in all i guess it worked out in my favor , cant deny that i was a little excited about the challenge , hehe had me consider engine swapping aswell ... decent thoughts before going to bed :)

Bottom line , never overlook the small things , they could save you alot of time/money/effort
 
Result! Glad it's worked out for you. Personally I don't consider many of the Castrol products to be of high quality. They have a strong brand name but there are better quality fully synthetic oils out there for the same money. Fuchs is the brand I tend to use a lot now, as recommended by oil guy.
 
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