a lot of people on the facebook owners club mention a small puff on startup and say its not an issue if it goes away quickly.
Thanks for the feedback mate. Although this « issue » seems very common I cannot find any real answer to it.I find it all depends on how long the car has sat for. If mine is overnight i do get a small puff. if its for a few hours i dont. I could say mine smells like petrol but it could also be burnt oil + fuel. Im going to do an oil change in the next few hundred miles and will be switching from 5w30 to 5w40. No idea if this will make a difference (likely not) but its unofficially adivised on higher mileage cupras.
Once again I’m not 100% sure and I also have smoke when parking on a plane so..odd that you mention parked on a plane as my car is parked on a slight downward slope. I often wonder if this has any affect at all...... I have light / medium suction on the oil cap ( i can easily remove it) at idle and the car stutters slightly if i remove it or the dipstick. I take this to be normal behaviour. I doubt it is rings in my case as the smoke is only on startup. Same for turbo seals.
My oil usage is also low so must only be small amounts of oil burning on startup. I would be very surprised if at 63k miles the oil stems are going bad especially as the car has had good servicing history from new.
I had noticed idle is very slightly lumpy on startup but i think this is also an EA888 trait and nothing to worry about unless its very noticeable in which case cam magnets are a likely culprit.
I will monitor mine and see if after a few hundred miles it is still there. i will also check after the oil change.
To see if this is happening you can remove the coil pack and look down the spark plug well. See if you can see any oil another the spark plugs. You could also remove any that look suspect. That will be where the oil is leaking in. Also of people have this issue, they just deal with it and i believe that is VW's attitude on the matter. If its not causing misfires etc and only a little bit of oil it wont get done under any kind of warranty.Hello,
After few startups in different conditions it seems that the white and slightly blue smoke (it is definitely oil) will only occur when starting in a not cold start => meaning that the oil/engine is not completely cold. After a night sitting, and with the morning cold start I do not have any smoke.
This could mean the valve stem seals are used and can let some oil pass into chambers when oil is thinner (not totally cold) when I start the car.
Some questions for you :
1) does it means oil is not dripping into chambers if not starting the car when oil is hot ?
2) do I have to replace the seals as soon as I can or do I wait till this go worse and use thicker oil ?
Yes I did check spark plugs when I noticed the first smokes but they were clean.To see if this is happening you can remove the coil pack and look down the spark plug well. See if you can see any oil another the spark plugs. You could also remove any that look suspect. That will be where the oil is leaking in. Also of people have this issue, they just deal with it and i believe that is VW's attitude on the matter. If its not causing misfires etc and only a little bit of oil it wont get done under any kind of warranty.
So your saying it doesnt smoke atall on cold start or after being sat, its once its warm you get a bit of smoke?Yes I did check spark plugs when I noticed the first smokes but they were clean.
I will try to do it again soon while engine still warm.
This is still a sign of some seals wear.. and it will probably go worse in time no ?
And it can lead to carbon building inside the cylinder right ?
But yes for now it is only a bit of oil and plugs are not fooled at all..
No no smoke when the car is totally cold at least less likely since I started really monitoring it :So your saying it doesnt smoke atall on cold start or after being sat, its once its warm you get a bit of smoke?
Hi,If you are able to de-pressurise the high pressure fuel rail, soon after switch9sing the engine off, that check if that stopped the puff of smoke, that would definitely allow you to dismiss any injector weeping fuel into a cylinder while the engine was not running.
Thanks for the tip, I will look into it when I have the time. I also planned tomorrow to go into cylinders with an endoscope cam maybe an hour after turning off the car so if an injector is leaking I might see fuel dripping from it, and if it’s a valve seal issue maybe I will see oil dripping from the seats..I was suggesting that, only to completely dismiss duff/leaking injector(s).
Maybe back 1988 I bought a new Ford Orion Ghia Injection, ie an XR3 with a boot and a stiffer body shell. It worked well, but, it could not be started "as per the owner's handbook" easily/quickly when warm or up to 8>10 hours after it had previously been used. Okay as it was a cable operated throttle, it would always start easily if the throttle was opened slightly, so I pressed the Ford dealership to make it work as per the owner's handbook, as my previous one, a 1984 version worked perfectly. They and Ford would not at first work out why I could not live with this issue, but I pointed out it was their published owner's handbook that "fixed" the "how to start the engine", so 2 visits later involving a complete rebuild of the metering head (Bosch K Jetronic) did next to nothing, so I bought a new single injector, checked its performance ie leakage and spray pattern at work using Freon and N2, then swopped it for the injector in the cylinder that "smelt of petrol" after a few hours - problem solved. Why Ford could not be bothered finding out the root cause when I even told them that if I released the fuel system pressure, there was never an issue and that the issue seemed to be with cylinder 2, I'll never know, but the less that they did, the harder I pushed - that was my last Ford that I ever purchased, for that and other reasons.
Anyway, there will be a few points where you can easily, if you have the technical ability, to safely crack the high pressure fuel rail supply to drop down its pressure.
Obviously, removing all the spark plugs after maybe 2 hours, and sniffing them, will give you an idea which if any of the injectors are weeping.