Oil out of the exhaust, probably not turbo

I recently bought a 99 beetle in non running condition. I finally got it running and it's dumping oil out the exhaust. There is a small hole in the bottom of the cat and it's pouring out of there.
The story I was told about the car was the turbo blew and the mechanic replaced it but the owner never came back to pick the car up. The turbo on it looks brand new and I think it's an OEM turbo from VW based on the markings.
I had the car up on jack stands and had it running for all of 2 minutes. The next day there was somewhere around 1/2 to 1 cup of oil on the floor. It's definitely coming out of the cat. I'm planning to replace the turbo with a used one I have and see what happens. The day before I was driving the car in the parking lot for about 20 minutes to take some of the rust off the rotors from sitting.
The car smokes piles of gray smoke until everything gets hot then I can't see the smoke in my rear view mirror.
If it's not the turbo, what's the next most likely thing given that the previous turbo blew up?

I'd be leery of running the car without at least pulling the intake pipes and precooler to see if there's oil and shrapnel in there.
Don't know what the other guy did when he replaced the turbo.
Had a similar instance on my sons car, his turbo snapped in half and dumped a whole bunch of oil into the exhaust.
Once I cleaned everything up it took a good 20 minutes of some aggressive driving to burn out the oil in the cat and muffler.......made a hell of a smoke screen too.

Steve is right.

Clean the piping and intercooler out and then drive it for a while let it burn that oil out of there.

the exhaust can hold a tremendous amount of oil... you can just about darken the skies and obscure all visibility when burning the remnants out ... new turbo is probably fine

I can back these guys up. Recently replaced the turbo on my 05. Blew oil out the exhaust all over my neighborhood roads and 5 miles down country roads before it blew out/burned off.

If you're suspect of the turbo, run it for a couple miles, then check the oil level. If it hasn't significantly dropped, you're probably just burning and blowing residual out the pipes.

And DEFINITELY clean the intake side, VERY well, especially the intercooler. It will accumulate a TON of oil and could be very disastrous if not taken care of.

There are instruction threads here about cleaning the intercooler w/o removing it; generally speaking 2 large cans of carburetor cleaner and a few gallons of water, some soapy, some rinse-y.

I was told that the intake piping had already been cleaned out and I have driven the car hard for 20 minutes in a large parking lot. It's not revving properly though so maybe it's not building a lot of boost. I'll look into it.
Since it did stop blowing oil after the 20 minutes I assumed I had cleared out all the oil. I guess I'll keep an eye on the level and will likely pop off the intercooler and have a look in there. Some days I really wonder why I ever bought this car...

burn_your_money said:

Some days I really wonder why I ever bought this car...

Click to expand...

When you get it figured out you will start to enjoy it.

Do you have VCDS to diagnose the car?
Any scanned that can monitor and log the boost, air flow & such?

Maybe there's a lot more damage than you have been told about. Have you done a compression check?

Cheers,

PH

Yes I do have VCDS but I just moved and can't find the cable right now. I'm just focused on getting it through the safety inspection so I can drive it and then start messing with it. I just got my reverse light switch which I think was the last thing needed for the safety. I do have a compression gauge and am planning on checking that. It's been on my to do list for a while.

Took me an hour of spirited driving to blow all the oil out of my exhaust when I had my runaway... and I mean "spirited" as in had to get the EGTs up there to burn it all off.

You may just need to keep at it a bit.

Well I was finishing up the work for the safety and had a bit of extra time so I decided to check the intercooler. There was at least 1 cup of oil in it and I saw some metal. So I decided to pull it out and wash it. Then with the intercooler hoses disconnected I started the engine and watched for oil coming out the hose from the turbo. It was a steady drip. I held the throttle at 2500 RPM and watched a steady stream of oil coming out of the turbo hose. I shut it down and then happened to look at the tailpipe. There was at least a liter of oil under the car back there. I cleaned that up and then popped off the hose for the air inlet on the turbo and sure enough, my brand spicken new turbo has a snapped shaft. I've ordered the gaskets and will hopefully have one of my spare turbos on it soon. I'm planning to check compression first though just in case this thing is headed to the scrap heap.

that's crazy! ... maybe debris from the previous failure locked the compressor and snapped the shaft

I would check that your oil return line coming from the turbo is not plugged....just incase.

I would say check the return line hole into the block is also clear. Long shot.
Is it possible it's a China turbo / reman, not VW new?
Would explain early failure.

It's a new return line but I'll definitely be inspecting everything. I notice that the feed line was spliced with a chunk of rubber hose. I'll be replacing the whole line with a braided one.

Here is the oil that came out of the exhaust last night while troubleshooting


And here is the oil running out of the turbo cold side at 2000 RPM

Here's what the turbo looked like



"New" turbo goes on tomorrow. Any thoughts as to what caused the failure?

I checked my compression. 500,500,470,470 so that seems fine. I just got all my gaskets so hopefully I can get this thing running. If it wasn't for e-tests I'd just delete the turbo.

Replace the intercooler.

You'll never get all the shavings out.

All turbos have at least a small amount of surge; if there is junk of any kind in the intercooler under full boost the pieces may be in the IC and under less than full boost the pieces may travel back to the turbo and throw it out of balance. That is why the suggestion to just replace the IC is not a "far off" idea.

Well the car is running again. It actually is quick enough to push me back into my seat a bit so that's nice. I did consider replacing the IC and I still might. Certain 1.8T ones are an upgrade right?

I still have to do the timing belt on it before I can really drive it.