ok, what did I break...

[240_Keyy]

Man, I just can't seem to win....

After having my car on the road for less than 25 miles I blow the turbo gasket. This was this past thursday.

I then noticed that I was having a bit of high RPM stuttering goping on where when I would do a pull in 4th or 5th gear the car would start to miss at about 5000 to 6000 RPM's. This was strange I though, so I asked around and was told that I should put in new spark plugs.

Today I put in new spark plugs and hooked everything all back up and take her for a cruise and everything is working fine and dandy until I did the 4th gear pull to see if I fixed my problem, there was no stuttering whatsoever and she was pulling like mad and then I let off the gas and start to coast down and I look in my rearview mirror and all I see is a huge grey cloud behind me. I whipped a u-turn and quickly drove the mile or so back to my house and when I park there is oil pouring out of my engine bay and the car is smoking like a mofo. I open the hood and there is oil everywhere, and I mean everywhere. It was dripping off of the hood and pooling up under the car and it was all over the turbo and just about everywhere you could possibly imagine. After looking around, I noticed that the dipstick was blown out of it's hole. And upon even further inspection I noticed that I had no coolant in my coolant overflow tank or any visible in the radiator...

What the hell? I have put less than 100 miles on the engine and am running stock boost with no special mods other than FMIC and full exhaust. I don't get it........

[MikeS14240sx]

so where did all the oil come from?

[nlzmo400r]

try checking ur oil pump, and also radiator sounds like it has a leak, check hte hoses on it as well

[240_Keyy]

oil came out of the dipstick. Turns out I must have overpressurized the crankcase or something. Also, I found out my dipstick is VERY loose, it has almost no resistance to make it pop off. I will try another dipstick and let ya'll know how it goes...

[nlzmo400r]

mm, i dont think a simple dipstick wil solve tihs problem, especially if u said there was no visible coolant in the radiator at all either, sounds more serious, as far as teh oil goes, yes, chances are u have some type of clog or something else is causng hte oil to be overpressurized, remember to watch that gauge in teh future

[SpeedRacer1]

If your oil pan is dented it could cause the oil pressure to skyrocket in certain areas. This could also stop oil from getting to other areas of the engine. These areas can sieze while pressure in other areas like the dipstick can increase dramatically. Just a thought.

Which gasket did you blow? Is there any oil in your intercooler piping? Do you think it could be a headgasket going?

[Cyberkreig]

bah, i cleared my own post! Sorry to hear your having so much trouble, but its good to know i'm not alone.

oil all over could just be from the dipsitck poping out.. but as a matter of safety i'd check those turbo lines. maybe invest in a breather/catch tank..

as for the empty radiator.. thats never good.. run a compression test, checkout the turbo lines.

[Nils]

yeah..

I also would like to know which turbo gasket you blew. Also what you did to replace it, did you remove the turbo assembly completely?

The strangest stuff can happen while doing hard pulls. About a year ago I was doing some hard 3 gear pulls in my old Supra. At about 120mph I hit a small bump in the road... the bump rocked the engine... the oil feed line to the turbo hit my strut tower brace and broke the fitting in two... oil started to pour all over the manifold and turbo... and caught on fire.. ouch! all this at over 100mph =(

shizz happens.

Your problem does sound serious, however, it could be a freak occurence like the story I just told. Eventhough it sounds bad.. my car didnt get any real damage to it because I shut it down immediatly and the fire only lasted for half a minute.

More than likely the smoke you saw was oil burning from hitting your manifold and turbo... you are VERY LUCKY it didnt catch on fire.

I always drive with a fire extinguisher in my car now =)

n

[240_Keyy]

ok here is an update. The oil DEFINITELY came out of the dipstick hole. I used a couple of twisty ties from some loaves of bread and other stuff that we had sitting around the house to hold it down and it isn't popping off any more. I have a catch tank (modified old PS resivoir) and at the time that this freak occurrence happened I had it capped off. Apparently a shiz load of pressure built up and since it couldn't pop the top off of the catch tank, it popped the dipstick off.

The turbo gasket that I blew was the one between the turbo and exhaust manifold (I knew I should have changed that) so that would not be causing me my problems. I really think this was just some freak accident. Today I drove 100+ miles to a car show in houston and did numerous high speed pulls and had no problems whatsoever with the cap off of my catch tank and the dipstick twisty tied down.

I *think* it is all good...

(and yes, I am INTENSELY lucky that it did not catch fire, that would have sucked...)

[Cyberkreig]

glad to hear you've got everythign squared

[SpeedRacer1]

How did you modify your PS resevoir to be a catch tank? The line cannot go from the bottom of one hole and just come out the other hole. If it is then it would be releasing the oil it just caught back into the intake. Also its not good if your catch tank is filling up alot in the first place.

[Samabra]

That sounds almost exactly what happened to me, except in my case a crap load of oil came out the rebreather part of the T on top of the crankcase. But that was cause I had really bad rings, etc etc. I would get a catch can (That's what I did) and your problem should be solved, cause you always want your crankcase to be ventilated. Chris

[240_Keyy]

Speed: I have the hose going into the big hole on the bottom of the tank. There is no oil in the tank, so far the only thing that has come out of there is air...

But I see your point, maybe I should do it the other way, like use the smaller hole and have the big one sealed. That way it would not be on the bottom.

[Nils]

cool =)

good news.

n

[ImportIntelligence]

Everytime I have seen this happen it is becuase of bad piston rings or a clogged PCV valve. Bad rings will build up pressure in the crankcase making that dipstick tube a nice vent for the oil and crankcase. A friend had this happen and his car caught fire becuase the oil got on the turbo manifold. Needless to say he had a fire extunguisher handy and put it out before anything bad happened.

[240_Keyy]

it was a clogged PCV valve. I had my catch can sealed so the crank had no venting whatsoever other than the convenient dipstick. But if my rings were fuxored, wouldn't the car smoke? I have no smoke out of the exhaust and it runs beee-u-t-ful!