Excessive smoke under hood

Recently, my 2000 Jetta TDI started smoking excessively under the hood...especially at start up when the engine is cold. The exhaust fumes are pretty strong inside the cab. What are some of the likely causes of this? Clogged exhaust??? I see some oil accumulation around the EGR valve.

Any under hood smoking is excessive. In other words abnormal. You have a leak. Maybe a cracked or rusted out down pipe.

I suggest you remove the engine cover and look for the source, especially at startup when the engine is cold.

do you still have your egr cooler? (you would if you have't done an egr delete) it could be one of those pipes, or as KLXD said the down pipe. have you noticed any loss of power? if not then it's probably not the egr cooler pipes.

Get a leaf blower, stick it in the tailpipe and spray soapy water (mostly soap) over the entire length of the exhaust and on the hot side of the turbo and egr cooler.
Chances are your egr has a leak and or is rusted out. Hopefully your not running low on coolant.
It's a 20 year old exhaust so it's probably all rusted out on the top of the pipe and probably around the downpipe as it gets the brunt of the heat to it.
If you find it's just a leak in a few places, you can patch it cheaply with a wrap epoxy. Otherwise it would be a good time to upgrade replace the downpipe and whatever else is going bad.

GlowBugTDI said:

do you still have your egr cooler? (you would if you have't done an egr delete) it could be one of those pipes, or as KLXD said the down pipe. have you noticed any loss of power? if not then it's probably not the egr cooler pipes.

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yes, I still have it. I haven't noticed any loss of power. thanks

ok, if it's a small leak in the egr cooler piping you may not see loss of power i suppose. or maybe just a little.