Can I first publicly thank Geoff of this parish for his help over the phone re my black smoke problems.
I was on my way to France and Spain last month after have replaced the turbo with a new Borg Warner one which had a seized actuator. As it had covered over 190,000 miles I thought a new one the best option, the bearings on the old one must be quite worn!
All was fine until I crossed the Severn Bridge on my way to Newhaven when there was a loud whooshing noise.
I first thought that the heater fan had gone into max mode but no it wasn't that!
Taking my foot off the accelerator the noise went, and if I accelerated it came back!
I stopped at the first services on the M4 convinced a turbo hose had popped off, I'd renewed the big one from the intercooler to the throttle body with a silicone one. No, that was still on and on tickover there was no rushing air noise.
I decided to keep going with as little throttle as possible, which kept the whooshing noise to a minimum, in fact I could cruise without any noise, so I reckoned it was OK to continue.
Fuel consumption was reasonably good with a fully laden, and I mean fully laden car!
I made it to France but on the hills on the A20 in the Limousine I could see tons of black smoke pouring out of the exhausts! Performance wasn't that good either.
A phone call to Geoff and I started on my voyage of discovering where the leak was.
I have a 2 post hoist out here in France and it makes life so much easier.
I wish I had room for one in Cardiff!
I decided to remove the inner wheel arch liners, not a difficult job and does give you much easier access.
I exposed the turbo and checked the new silicone hose from the metal pipe to the turbo as well as changing the intercooler to that pipe with a silicone hose. So much easier on a 2 post lift!
I then checked the crossover pipe in case that had gone at the bellows.
Nothing I could see, so I asked a mate to sit in the car whilst on the 2 post and rev the engine whilst I was underneath feeling crossover pipes etc.
This proved that the crossover pipe was OK as the noise came from the turbo area.
Geoff suggested I make/borrow a smoke test machine.
A few hours later with the help of YouTube videos I had a smoke tester!
I persuaded a mate to send me some smoke pellets out from the UK as they don't seem to have them in France, I even found a wood burning stove installer who had heard of them but never used them preferring to use wet leaves!
Well my smoke tester came up trumps and showed smoke right where the short blue hose connects to the turbo. The jubilee clips seemed tight but the one on the turbo didn't seem to sit straight.
So I undid both clips and swivelled the hose round and as I did this expecting to see a split (Unlikely) the hose suddenly sat further on the turbo boss. I twisted it right round but there were no splits so I put the jubilee clips back on and everything looked much better.
Smoke test and NO smoke out of anywhere!
When the new turbo was put on I can only think that the mechanic thought is was fully on.
A word of advice here, I needed to replace the top suspension arms because the rubber bushes were well worn as well as the flexible brake pipe to the caliper.
Removing the top arm is easy, my bolts weren't seized, and gives you a great deal more access to the turbo as the heat shields all come out easily. Just be careful to put a bungy cord around the upright to stop it flopping out and pulling the drive shaft out of the CV joint when you brake the knuckle taper!
Again thanks to Geoff for all his advice, smoke shows all sorts of ills!
I took his advice and remade the various earth leads I could see which I hope will pay dividends later in its life!
I now have a nice taught front end and best of all no whooshing noises and no correlation DTC error!
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