Oil additive for oil burning TDI

speedR

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2001
Location
Toronto, Ontario
Hey guys I've been getting some nasty blue smoke coming out my exhaust when accelerating it first gear. Not sure if the rings or valve guides are going on me but I'm thinking of adding a oil stabilizer. A member mentioned lucas. Any input? Thanks!
 

sootwagen

Veteran Member
Joined
May 25, 2003
Location
Nowhere
TDI
None
Is the car "using" oil? The oil could also be coming from the seals on the turbo. How many miles are on the car? A compression check could help nail down the source of the problem.
 

dieseldorf

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Oct 11, 2000
Location
MA
TDI
ex- 1996 wagon, ex-2000 Jetta
speedracer, how may miles on the car? what kind of car is it? Maintenance history good or bad?
 

speedR

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2001
Location
Toronto, Ontario
About 70K miles on the car. Maintenance has been spot on since new. It does consume oil but not much. About a quart every 4k miles or so.
 

Bob_Fout

Oil Wanker
Joined
Sep 5, 2004
Location
Indiana
TDI
2003 Jetta - Alaska Green (sold) / 2015 GTI 2.0T
About 70K miles on the car. Maintenance has been spot on since new. It does consume oil but not much. About a quart every 4k miles or so.
Uhhhh.... for an engine with just 70K miles, that sounds like high oil consumption. That means over 2 quarts between oil changes, almost half the oil capacity.
 

compu_85

Gadget Guy
Joined
Sep 29, 2003
Location
La Conner, WA
TDI
... None :S
My car will move from the top of the OK area on the dipstick to the bottom of the OK area on the dipstick over 10k.... TDIs should not have to have oil added between changes.

-J
 

WDM

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2005
Location
B.C.
TDI
Jetta Mk IV Wagon/2005/Reflex Silver
A quart every 4K..? Sweet Jesus...
 

03_01_TDI

Banned
Joined
Dec 10, 2003
Location
Denmark
TDI
Na
my first guess would be to check the intake manifold. next would be snow screen.

also try adding some power service to the fuel.

and of course a compression check would help narrow down the problem.
 

BKmetz

Administrator, Member #10
Staff member
Joined
Sep 25, 1997
Location
Illinois
TDI
2015 Passat, titanium beige, 6MT
Which TDI model do you own? A quart every 4K miles is slightly above normal for the A3/B4 models.

There can be other factors involved:

weight or type of oil: synthetic/non-synthetic, 10W-30, 5W-40 etc.

driving style: heavy foot/light foot?

oil leaks: CCV breather puck/crank seals/turbo seals/valve cover gasket etc.

As already mentioned,

plugged intake manifold: causes excessive smoke.

Plugged snow screen: same symptoms as a plugged intake manifold.

Excessively clogged injectors: will cause poor combustion and excessive smoke which will cause low compression which will cause excessive blowby which will cause excessive oil usage. (hows that for a run-on sentence
)

Check these areas over and get back to us.

IF these areas check out OK, then I would have a compression test or leak-down test done. This will tell you if it is valves, valve seats, valve guides, piston rings, and which cylinder has the problem.

DO NOT USE any oil additives until you know what is going on. Oil additives are only good if the damage is more than you are willing to spend to fix and you are only milking the car along until you are ready to dump it.

Here is some interesting information on Lucas oil additives from Bob the Oil Guy web site.

And one last bit to help complicate things: the oil usage problem and the smoking problem might be totally unrelated!

Good luck!
 

mkosem

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2003
Location
OH, US
TDI
2001 Golf TDi
My 01 had pretty hight oil consumption when I purchased it since the previous owner stuck with 10k changes on non-synth 15w40 kendall diesel oil. I ran a treatment of auto-rx( available from http://www.auto-rx.com/ ). This product is highly recommended by those in the know over at http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/ 's forums as well. It's a very solid product that cleans slowly, has worked well on 2 cars that I've owned.

--Matt
 

speedR

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2001
Location
Toronto, Ontario
Thanks for the replies guys. Everything above checks out ok. A compression check is in order. Hopefully sometime this week. I'll keep everyone posted!
 

whitedog

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 12, 2004
Location
Bend, Oregon
TDI
2004 Jetta that I fill by myself
Does anyone recall drivbiwires write up about the car that they basically brought back from the dead? I just remember hazy details. there was very low compression and things were checked, but nothing was done except to give the driver a lesson in how to drive it like s/he stole it. After some amount of time, they rechecked and compression had come back.

IF low compression is found, do anyone think that this would be a wise course of action?
 

Slave2school

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Mar 20, 2004
Location
Angus, Ontario
TDI
99.5 used to at least...
I guess it would depend why compression was bad. Driving the crap out of something with head/valve problems likely wouldn't help the situation.
 

BKmetz

Administrator, Member #10
Staff member
Joined
Sep 25, 1997
Location
Illinois
TDI
2015 Passat, titanium beige, 6MT
I was with DBW one time when we nursed an A4 back to life. The guy never revved the engine much over 2500RPM and his VNT was so sooted up it stuck closed. His engine was severly sooted up. The compression was so low the blowby blew the dipstick out of its tube. I know because I had the oil stains on my shirt to prove it.

It took DBW, Garrett, and me almost 30 minutes to unstick the VNT linkage. Once we got the VNT working again the car slowly came back to life. This took about a month.
 

whitedog

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 12, 2004
Location
Bend, Oregon
TDI
2004 Jetta that I fill by myself
OK. That is the one I was almost remembering. Did I at least have the driving part right?
 
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