Purchased this 2006 S80 for my kids in October. The car recently became due for an oil change but ran great. Took it in for an oil change yesterday. On the way home smoke started coming from the tailpipe. Got out and checked under the hood. No smoke coming from under the hood, checked the dipstick, it had clean oil on it. Luckily I was less than a mile from home. Got it home and let it run in. The driveway to see if the smoke (only smoke) would go away. The thought was that maybe the previous owner used standard oil instead of synthetic oil. And it was smoking because of the new synthetic oil. Checked the oil again (on a level surface) and the dipstick was bone dry. Added more oil and called it a night. Today I went to start the car, after making sure there was oil on the dipstick. There was oil but just a bit on the tip. So I slowly added enough to safely start the engine. After staring it right up, along with smoke, oil is litterally pouring out of the tailpipe! It is definitely oil (smells, feels and looks like oil). None of the other fluids are low, the "no oil pressure, stop safely" light flickers on occasionaly, otherwise no idiot lights and the gauges read normally. The car starts, runs and drove normally. When the oil level drops back down there is the obvious engine noise.
Has anyone EVER seen this?
Oil coming from tailpipe!

 

what engine do you have (other than the obvious "one that eats oil")?

 

Forgot to include it the engine is a 2.5 L with Turbo, 5 cyl, 153CI, 2WD with 144K miles.

 

Id say that is a turbo problem. Whats the compression?

 

I'd narrow it down to 3 things 1) turbo inner seals 2) head gasket/cracked head 3) PCV oil trap (although I can't imaging it letting that much oil get sucked into the intake).

When you check compression, check plug color / oil etc. If the plugs are tan, then the turbo becomes the prime suspect..

 

Thank you, I havent had the compression checked yet. Is this something I can do myself?

 

Thank you, that gives me somethings to start with I will check the plugs this weekend!

 

you should be able to find a RobertDIY vid on Youtube for how to check compression. You can rent a compression gauge from a big box auto parts store like Autozone. it screws into the spark plug hole. the general approach is, with the engine warm, remove all the spark plugs and fix the gauge to #1 give it a few cranks (ie 5 to 10 seconds). then move the gauge to the next cylinder and repeat. On the turbos the target compression should be in the 155 to 160 range with no more than 10% diff between cylinders. If you see something low, you can opt for a "wet" test by removing the gauge, dropping in a few tablespoons of oil (enough to wet the cylinder walls), then install the gauge and crank watching to see if the gauge climbs back up to a target reading. If wet and dry differ, it points to pistons/rings. if it stays the same, it points to valves or a head gasket leak.

 

I'm not sure about running the compression test due to the amout of oil pouring out of the exhaust. I dont want to run it dry. I did pull all the spark plugs. They all had the usual, expected color except for the 3rd (middle) plug which had quite a bit of oil on the insulator. Does this help any in determining the cause?]

 

Not sure what you mean by "amount of oil pouring out of the exhaust". When you do a compression check, you pull out all the spark plugs then turn the engine over 5 or so times - like 10 seconds. That's barely long enough to raise the oil pressure but long enough to get a reading. That won't suck any oil into the cylinders to speak of. There's two types of compression test - a dry test where you crank over without doing anything to the engine (best done with a warm engine but if its not running or cold you will still get a reading - but likely lower than actual by a small margin). The difference between wet and dry indicates the health of the piston rings and can help determine if you have leaky/burnt valve. Goal here is to be able to triage possible sources of oil getting into the exhaust. You can check for a bad PCV by looking at the intake/throttle body for oil etc, a bad head gasket or cracked head will likely mix oil and water so look for oil sludge in your coolant or froth/foaming in the oil. bad or broken rings will produce blue smoke and leave wetness on the plug etc. Finally a bad turbo would push oil into the exhaust but the spark plug/piston/rings would all test out fine. If you have oil on the outside of the plug, then that can happen from a clogged PCV system pushing oil onto the top of the cam cover out of the fill cap or the vent tube that comes from the PCV system back into the head.

 

Ok, the "warmed engine" part is what I was concerned about. If it doesnt have to be warm, and it only has to be cranked a few secs. I just didnt want to finish trashing the car for this test. I will go ahead and do the compression test. Thank you for your help.

 

The only time that I have seen this amount of oil coming from the tailpipe was when I worked on SAAB's and the turbo oil seals went and pressurised oil was dumped into the engine.
Best guess is with the engine running normally I would think that a turbo oil seal on the exhaust side of the turbo is where the oil is coming from. Could be the intake side of things but with the amount of oil coming out of the tail pipe the plugs should sow a good bit of oil on them and a wack load of engine burnt oil smoke should be coming out of the tail pipe.

Worth pulling the intake piping off of the engine to check for pooling oil in low spots. As well as pulling the exhaust from the turbo to check for the vast amount of oil that it likely there.

 

yep. my recommendation of a compression test was to quickly rule out a head gasket or broken ring, to inspect the intake for oil possibly from the PCV (both easy enough to do - no parts involved) and then move on to checking out the turbo.

 

Got alot done today being that the weather was unseasonably warm. Its starting to look like its the exhaust side of the turbo. There is oil in the bottom of the intake and the exhaust. The exterior of turbo is also pretty covered in oil. Everything else looks pretty normal. The turbo seems to have ALOT of play in the turbine. I havent gotten it out yet, but hopefully a new, rebuilt, or rebuild kit will solve the problem.
​​​ There was some oil on the threads of the spark plu from cylinder 3 but it looks like it may have been run down from the filler cap.
Well see what happens! Shipping looks like any parts will take a month to arrive. But at least it should be warmer!

 

good deal. my gut sense was the turbo seal was really the primary culprit given the volume of oil. You may also have a PCV issue or need a new gasket for the oil filler cap but that's secondary to sorting out the turbo seal issue. There should be some vids on Youtube for how to rebuild your own turbos to see if you are up for it - kits can be found on eBay/Amazon etc as the Mitsubishi TD04 turbos are pretty common.

 

after so many services still burning oil 2 liters on 900 km
still want to check oil pressure next week

 

Sorry forgot to update everyone! It was the seals on the turbo! Pulled the old on put in a new one...Cars still going strong! Thanks for all your help!

 

I've never seen anything like that and I never want to. That is a picture worth keeping. I hope the car runs on for many more years. Great car for the 'kids' so start on.