Blue Smoke

My '04 Passat GLS TDI, (18,500 miles,) has started to emit blue smoke when accelerating, even very slowly, after stopping at a traffic light.

The smoke has the strong smell of burning tires.

Possible contributing factors are a weather change here, (with a warming trend,) and this also happened after a fillup of D2 from a truck stop...as opposed to the BP Premium I normally burn.

Everything else is constant: 5% B100 and a shot of Standayne Performance Formula.

Any thoughts?

check oil.

Ours smoked as well, though more gray. It was related to our lousy fuel up here.

To help out in the winter I started using additive (Racor) and the smoke stopped. Leave off using it and it starts up again, so I just keep using it (all sorts of good stuff in it, and concentrated, 1 oz treats 20 gallons).

You mentioned it smells like tires? Does it have a smell to burning oil? If so it could be perhaps overfilled.

I found the problem. It was a plugged ProVent PVC Filter drain line.

I had recently put it on and the cold weather turned the oil in the drain tube to sludge, so the system was backing up.

I have since removed the filter and the problem went away.

(I had this filter on my '04 Jetta TDI for 3 years and never had this as a problem. Perhaps the mounting locations made the difference as on the Jetta it was closer to the engine adding the necessary warmth.)

One of the problems you will find with the Pro Vent is (at least if kept outside) that you are creating water vapor as well as oil vapor.

The water lodges in the filter, and then freezes. Each time it does that, it moves up the filter another notch.

End result is the whole thing freezes up.

Same with drains, they have to be slopped to get it where its supposed to go.

Cold enough under the hood, it freezes up. Upshot is that while its a great idea, it needs to be solidly engineered to work. Warm climate no issue, maybe if in a garage at night, not an issue )or a lot less. Kept outside, no way to win.

Even in my garage it plugged up with this black gue so thick it would only slowly move after I had the unit out of the car.

I remember your earlier post in which you said this would happen on the Passat in cold weather, so knowing that I even placed an copper elbow on the base of the drain line to be sure there would be no kink in the plastic drain line and it still happened.