200 TDI Rebuild - Oil From Exhaust

Hi All,

I've just come to the end of a nut and bolt rebuild of my 200 tdi engine, which as a total amateur I've largely done by teaching myself via this forum and Youtube. On starting the engine for the first time on a stand outside the car, I started to get drips of black oil from the exhaust (see photos). The turbo is a refurbed one and the exhaust and valves etc have all been cleaned/overhauled etc. The oil was new and the turbo was primed as per the instructions. I've only run the engine for a few minutes on idle to leak check things, but it seems to run fine and there is no smoke. Has anyone any ideas what this could be? - have I got a fault turbo seal or something in the head thats wrong (valve oil seal etc)?. The oil below is what I got from approx 5-10 mins running on idle. It drips once every 10 secs. When I took off the exhaust manifold there was some evidence of oil at a few of the ports but its hard to see if this has come from the port or run back from the turbo. see photos. Any help or advice gratefully appreciated.

HI Larry well done on rebuild, I rebuilt mine and tested on ground as a Di and was lucky no oil leaks like that.
As you have the radiator on you can run it until warm safely , it might be oil in the engine you added when assembling hopefully
Another test would be to remove turbo and blank off supply and return holes and see if it comes out exhaust still
@Al2O3
has a lot of experience in turbo leaks on his 300tdi rebuild thread and might have a few ideas to help

Have you any photo's of how you honed the cylinder bores before re assembly?

I would say before you panic you need to run it harder and hotter, but do keep a co2 fire ext handy, and if it does try and runaway fire the ext into the engine air intake, not masses just enough to stop it running.
Tbh it will be quite hard to get the thing to operating temp as they typically take 5 miles under light load to get the stat to open.

LarryLandy93 said:

Hi All,

I've just come to the end of a nut and bolt rebuild of my 200 tdi engine, which as a total amateur I've largely done by teaching myself via this forum and Youtube. On starting the engine for the first time on a stand outside the car, I started to get drips of black oil from the exhaust (see photos). The turbo is a refurbed one and the exhaust and valves etc have all been cleaned/overhauled etc. The oil was new and the turbo was primed as per the instructions. I've only run the engine for a few minutes on idle to leak check things, but it seems to run fine and there is no smoke. Has anyone any ideas what this could be? - have I got a fault turbo seal or something in the head thats wrong (valve oil seal etc)?. The oil below is what I got from approx 5-10 mins running on idle. It drips once every 10 secs. When I took off the exhaust manifold there was some evidence of oil at a few of the ports but its hard to see if this has come from the port or run back from the turbo. see photos. Any help or advice gratefully appreciated.
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Are you sure you removed the the plugs from the turbo oil return pipe? If that pipes blocked it forces oil past the seals in the turbo... don't ask me how know..