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When it rains it pours... car is poorly!

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Having a good time here, white smoke coming out of the exhaust, oil smells like fuel, coolant disappearing, turbo seals pretty much gone. Awesome.

This has only started since fitting the 555's and having it mapped.

I'm going to get it checked out by a pro tomorrow, hopefully to confirm it isn't head gasket related... I've already done a dry compression test and the results weren't great but 140 psi across the board is ok, so I've read anyway.

I'm guessing the turbo seals will be to blame for the coolant disappearing and majority of white smoke.

It's definitely overfueling as the one month old spark plugs are now black, so what could be at fault there? And why would the oil be smelling like fuel..? Leaking or stuck injectors?

I might be deluding myself into thinking it won't be the head gasket but any advice from experience would be appreciated! :)
 
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Does the expansion tank make a bubbling noise after the engine is shut off? Any mayo anywhere?

The car will over fuel very slightly as jez tends to make the map slighbtly rich from what I've seen. I'll send him a message on facebook with your symptoms regarding the plugs if you like and get his opinion on it?
 
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Head gasket isn't the end of the world mate as long as you know someone who is capible of doing it :)
 
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Yeah if you would Chris that would be good, thanks. And no mayo at all, no bubbling noises. I ran the car up to temp after filling the coolant in the rad and overflow bottle and no bubbles, I was watching it like a hawk and there was a very thin oily residue just visible on top of the water in the rad though.

And I don't know anyone who can do a head gasket, might have a crack at doing it myself if it does need doing, would be a good learning opportunity and good excuse to uprate it and fit arp studs.

Taking it to a local motorsport place tomorrow to get leakdown test, compression test, boost leak test, coolant pressure test and all that sort of stuff done.
 
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Just get them to hold a sniffer (mot exhaust gas reader) over the rad opening with cap off. Any reading over 0 means hg is leaking.
My mhg went on my s14 and after driving itd gurgle up through expansion bottle and I would see that its wet by the overflow as hg failure would pressurise coolant system pushing coolant out of expansion bottle.
I had no smoke or mayo when hg went.

If turbo wasn't 100% would it cause over fueling?
 
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Yeah I'm going to ask for a bunch of tests tomorrow to cover everything.

The coolant's been disappearing out of the overflow tank, and eventually the rad, not filling it up, I haven't seen any bubbling and the coolant is still clear apart from the very slight oily residue I could see in the rad cap.

I need to do an injector leak test, see if one or more is still injecting fuel with the rail off, and have a look in the spark plug holes for any fluids. I would have done one today but was a bit miffed to find the oil stinking of petrol so knocked it on the head for the day.

I'm hoping it's just the turbo seals gone and the coolant's been escaping that way. Cannot be bothered with having to deal with a HG change, and I'm about to upgrade to a 2871r anyway so I wouldn't say the timing is bad for the turbo to die.
 
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Just a shot, have you checked to see your water pump is not leaking, they do fail on SR's. I would have put most of your problems on a stuffed turbo. Oil smelling like fuel happens if you run higher boost, fuel will compress and pass your rings and mix with your oil...I can smell it in mine running 20psi of boost
 
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Good and bad:

Good - We had the cam cover off and can't smell any fuel inside so they don't think I have a fuel / oil issue, and just said it could be the way the oil smells. They showed me a bottle of oil with petrol mixed and it smelt much worse. The top end looks totally healthy and in good shape.

Bad - Even though the compression is still good, 140psi across the board, they think that the HG is leaking water in somewhere around cylinder 1, there was a load of crusty yellow / orange residue in the spark plug hole, the plug seal wasn't great with this crap in there so they think it's being pushed up past the plug, although the top of the piston looked clean. The turbo seals aren't totally shot but there is enough play to warrant a replacement. So in closing, head gasket job, probably replace piston rings, and new turbo. :wack:


AusS15, it's a new water pump on there, sealed with RTV, and no visible signs of leakage. I spent a good hour looking around for signs of coolant leaks and couldn't see a thing.
 
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have a watch of this, its a great simple way of testing to see if your head gasket is leaking, the guys a typical american but seams to know his stuff

 
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