Smoke on cold start up

Supra5MGTE

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Nov 11, 2005
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Tampa, FL
Only in the mornings when it's stone cold will it puff 1 cloud of oil smoke. What could be causing this? Anyway the turbo is pushing oil into the engine? like... overnight the oil in the turbo leaks into the intake pipes? Hate to think it's valve seals on a '90 with 88K. My '94 with 140K doesn't EVER smoke. My '84 started smoking 18yrs and 200K later.
 

IJ.

Grumpy Old Man
Mar 30, 2005
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Pull the IC block one outlet pour some gas into it block the other outlet with your hand and shake a bit tip it out and repeat till the gas comes out clean.

Let dry then reinstall.
 
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Supra5MGTE

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Nov 11, 2005
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Sounds good. I did that to a IC i pulled for my mk2, but then later got a custom built Texas Turbo IC, so all that gas and washing went to Ebay. Thanks for reminding me about that trick though. I'll do it Sat.
 

americanjebus

Mr. Evergreen
Mar 30, 2005
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yea do wut they said but also dont just assume injector seals are gone, pull your plug wires and look inside your spark plug galley and look for oil. i was totally positive my valve stem seals were gone and i was gettin ready to pull valve covers to change and do my shims when i noticed my spark plug galley was totally flooded. the cold start smoke was from oil seeping through the threads into the cylinder overnight.
 

Supra5MGTE

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Nov 11, 2005
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well it does have oil in the galley. I noticed it when I did the plugs last week. So the valve covers could be leaking it into the galley and then overnight into the cylinder huh? so to fix it.... valve cover job right?
 

IJ.

Grumpy Old Man
Mar 30, 2005
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Can't see it myself if the plug is tight enough to seal combustion pressures it's tight enough to stop Oil entering.

My "guess" would be when you have oil water and crap in the valley on a cold start you have enough resistance in the plug that the "Zap" sneaks down the side of the plug to ground via the oil and water.

Once the motor has fired enough and the plugs warm up the resistance drops the plug heats up and the Zap goes to the Electrode where it's meant to be.

While all this is happening you have unburnt fuel and oil in the upper cylinder that has worked it's way down the guides after the last shutdown and by the rings on the non firing cylinders and you get a puff of smoke.
 

MKIIINA

Destroyer of Turbos
Mar 30, 2005
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IJ. said:
Can't see it myself if the plug is tight enough to seal combustion pressures it's tight enough to stop Oil entering.

My "guess" would be when you have oil water and crap in the valley on a cold start you have enough resistance in the plug that the "Zap" sneaks down the side of the plug to ground via the oil and water.

Once the motor has fired enough and the plugs warm up the resistance drops the plug heats up and the Zap goes to the Electrode where it's meant to be.

While all this is happening you have unburnt fuel and oil in the upper cylinder that has worked it's way down the guides after the last shutdown and by the rings on the non firing cylinders and you get a puff of smoke.

very interesting!!!! could explain a lot then. here i was thinking my slight ploblem could be just condensation but this sounds more plauable. +1
 

americanjebus

Mr. Evergreen
Mar 30, 2005
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IJ. said:
Can't see it myself if the plug is tight enough to seal combustion pressures it's tight enough to stop Oil entering.

My "guess" would be when you have oil water and crap in the valley on a cold start you have enough resistance in the plug that the "Zap" sneaks down the side of the plug to ground via the oil and water.

Once the motor has fired enough and the plugs warm up the resistance drops the plug heats up and the Zap goes to the Electrode where it's meant to be.

While all this is happening you have unburnt fuel and oil in the upper cylinder that has worked it's way down the guides after the last shutdown and by the rings on the non firing cylinders and you get a puff of smoke.

i didnt think the threads would allow much oil to dribble down but after completely soaking up all of the oil and just retightening hte valve cover bolts my clouds of smoke on start up disapeared to nothing. then again my spark plugs were OLD and forgotten and had become hand tight. pretty scary how something held in so loose could handle such hard driving.
 

Supra5MGTE

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Nov 11, 2005
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Tampa, FL
Well the plugs are tight. Did the NGK's myself last week. got them snug. Either way, I see blk RTV on the edges of the Valve cover gaskets. Which leads me to beleive the receipts I found for that job was done, but done like crap. They probly just used RTV alone or RTV and the old gaskets. Either way, make me feel better if I just did it right with Toyota gaskets.