300 tdi Disco blue smoke

HI , I have introduced myself in the intro section but will again .

I am in sunny Scotland and have just come back to Land Rover ownership after a couple of years .

I have a 300 tdi xs auto 1996 which I got cheap as it has a couple of issues ..

EGR is sorted , Valve gaps and caps are sorted , oil changed , fuel sedimenter cleaned out , filters changed , all pipes checked and changed where needed and intercooler cleaned , crankcase breather cleaned .

Starts great idles and revs at rest beautiful , almost no smoke at all

but when you drive it especially if you put your foot down you get blue to grey smoke and when you shut off you get shed loads .... see video below

I thought it was the turbo oil seals and it is spitting oil into the exhaust side of the turbo ???

I figure if it was the valve stem seals it would be at idle or when revved at rest ( an I can rev it hard and nothing )...

so Changed the turbo yesterday and no change ..

while you're driving and if tou boot it it seems fine bun on the overun there are plumes of blue to grey smoke , there is a little at idle and if you rev it hard at idle it clears until you let it idle again , then a small blip on the pedal and you'll get more smoke although not as bad as if you've just been driving .

The car runs great and pulls really well , you'd never know there was a problem

As far as I can tell the oil is ok but then only owned this car for 3 days , I felt the turbo as soon as I saw the car and it had to much end float .

Managed to get a complete 300 tdi engine with turbo for £50 yesterday off a mate (head gasket had gone ).

The turbo was good so we put that on yesterday ..

The old turbo whined a lot and when we took it off I found the thin rubber pipe for waste gate control had split so changed that .

EGR has been completly removed now and the new turbo is pretty quiet .

The car flies , changes when it should , revs right through and pulls really hard ...

heres a vid

Discovery 300 tdi smoking - YouTube

I was hoping it was the turbo but I am erring back towards the head , valve stem seals , cracked head etc .

Hoping its not piston rings

Sounds like the pumps been "turned up" a bit - thats probably the cause of the smoke...

I should have added its an EDC pump so it shouldn't be turned up and the smoke as in the vid would be black wouldnt it if it was over fueling , also there is next to nothing when you're accelrating

Black is not enough air being burnt
White is over fuelling or water

I wonder how warm the engine was when you took the video?

It needs to be run, driven not ticking over, for about 20 minutes, if it's anything like mine, before it gets warm and another 10 to 20 minutes for everything else to be properly warm. Have a look at it then.

It looks like an engine that's cold to me, and maybe under-fuelled, but with perhaps a touch of sloppy piston rings!

Have these bits been done by you? "EGR is sorted , Valve gaps and caps are sorted , oil changed , fuel sedimenter cleaned out , filters changed , all pipes checked and changed where needed and intercooler cleaned , crankcase breather cleaned" 'cos I'd be thinking of cleaning the whole air intake out, including air filter and the intake trumpet, in case it's full of leaves etc .. I'd also check the valve clearances again, whip the rocker cover off and give it a once over .. have a look particularly if the valve caps are actually new and the rocker faces aren't too worn.

Give it another oil change .. it seems that that list of things that are sorted are looking to cure this problem!!

As your pump is EDC and can't be tweaked the same as a normal pump - i would check the timing is correct using flywheel and pump locking pins - lock the flywheel first and then try to lock the pump

All the bits that have been sorted have been done by me , I will check the timing next ,

I also removed intercooler all of the intake pipes and the inlet manifold and cleaned it all out thoroughly ..

On the Video the engine was up to temp it had been running for a while and the guage was at half way ...

Oh and the valve caps are brand new fitted yesterday as 2 were worn right through

I checked , and rechecked the valve gaps ..

Like I said apart from the smoke it runs lovelly , pulls really well and wold do 90-95 on the motorway I reckon

Looking more like internals then, piston rings/valves etc .. Have you had it on a long run? Might be worth taking it for a decent run, get it properly warm, mix of motorway, laning, up, downhill, whatever, foot flat occasionally etc and see if it doesn't clear. Mate had one smoking similar, basically coked up inside, needed 'clearing out' ... Gave it a good hard blast for a couple of hours and all OK!! He was a particularly light footed driver though, never went above about 2.5 k revs ...

mine does exactly the same things as yours. i'll get a vid up tomorrow off it. mine dtill has the ve pump thou, i've also got pressure coming up through the inlet tract, and did have alot of crank case pressure but that seems to have but disappeard. does yours miss abit until the turbo comes on boost.

runs great , no missing lots of power, I dont want to pull the head off yet as I have another block and may just swap , Rather than doing piston rings if it goes that way ,

so I'll check timing next and then do the valve seals

just waiting on my vid to finish uploading then i'll post it on this thread for you

here you go pal not sure why it's in the format it is
20130119 095319 - YouTube

Yours does sound rough though , maybe a broken or badly seated valve or knackered valve stem seals ..

I will be doing the valve stem seals as soon as the they arrive , as I'm not taking the head off it is only going to cost a couple of quid and an hour out of my day

mines had a replacement head and new head set including new seals lol. one of the seats was alittle pitted but thought i'd got it when i lapped all the valves. however around a month ago i got a metalic knock from the top end lasted about 20 seconds then went. checked my tappet clearance had 5 that were alittle lose but talking very small amounts had 5 that were 0.21mm all reset back to 0.20mm once its up to operating temp the smoke is less, and the miss has gone. You alot more through my exhaust as its one of those cheap paddocks straight through sport exhaust straight through center with silenced rear box. The bore seem alittle larger than standard aswell. replaced the turbo aswell as the compressor wheel was shot

Much the same as me but I would think your smoking and the noise from your head cant be just a coincidence ...

I would definatley thing that it warrants further investigation ...

Head off inspected and back on is what ?? 2 hours max and not a lot of pennies

yeah pal. this is head number 3 lol. first one had been skimmed to death. couple that with fitting a 2 notch hg rather than a 3 notch(3 notch was full of crap lol) so number 4 valve kissed number 2 piston. second head turned out to be a bannana(i always carry a straight edge now) this one is/was a good one. I stripped it all down cleaned everything up. checked the spring rates which were within specs. all the caps where in good condition. Freed up all the adjustment screws for the tappet adjustment. Even checked my push rods to make sure they were straight. removed the cam rollers and brass sliders for the push rods, cleaned them up and made sure that the slots were free from crap. intercooler was flushed, and all the pipe work cleaned aswell.also fitted an erling headgasket. Checked piston protrusion past the block on all four and meassured 0.95mm. the only thing i can think of now is that some crap from the compressor wheel on the turbo has got lodged under a valve seat as i've induction roar underload sound beefy buy not very healthy. plus i'm down to around 15mpg. may aswell have a v8 lol

Sounds like you went to town on it but as you know sometimes it doesnt matter with a Land rover , they just like to test us and they certainly dont like you having dry spanners

i'll agree with that. my last disco was a git. new engine, clutch this that and the other. get it nearly right then some old duck writes it off for us lol

So did you check the timing was correct??
Did that sort your smoke issue??