Another Puff of smoke at Startup thread

Hi,
03 Jetta, 201K miles, timing belt done at 190K. Runs great. Starts up without any hesitation same as when I bought it at 80K. I'm in CA so glow plugs are not really in the picture. It has a mild tune on it from Alligator from several years ago.

I'm getting a puff of grey smoke at startup when cold. I've heard that some smoke is normal, but this is a noticable puff. Not a cloud that the car disappears in, not a wisp. Looks like about 3 people exhaling a good strong puff of pipe smoke all at once.

There's no residual smoke that I can detect, and no smoke on hard acceleration that I can tell. Doesn't use oil between 10K changes. Mobil1 oil in general, but I'm agnostic about oil.

What causes this? What to do to minimize it?
I read about people here using diesel purge. Also here's a thread on subbing in Marvel's Mystery Oil on a Mercedes site. (http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/diesel-discussion/183684-what-does-diesel-purge-do.html)


Thanks,

John

I am in the middle of solving this same issue on our 2000 jetta tdi. I am suspecting that the two stroke oil is causing it. As our beetle tdi does not smoke and we do not use two stroke in it. The cars both have injection quantity and timing dead on and have no codes with vcds.

Pretty much normal for an ALH. It's a diesel. If you are getting no smoke and not much "haze" during acceleration you have no reason for concern.
Static injection timing that is not advanced enough (even though "in spec") can be a cause, and that's easy to check and change.