Oh no - I must have fried my valve seals!

[wild man]

I'm not too happy about it. But I keep telling myself not to get upset. It's something I can deal with. I remember having to do them on the 77 924. Symptoms are, in a word: SMOKE, lots of it! Starts in when the car is idling, after it has warmed up. Not there when cold idle, or when going down the road. But pretty embarrassing at stop lights.

I think I fried them, with all of the time I spent fast-cranking it with a dry top end (because I just changed the camshaft), trying to obtain oil pressure before I actually started the car. Gotta deal with it soon though. I'm having problems coping, while I'm sitting in the running-but-not-moving car, when I look in the mirrors and see the cloud start billowing up, blocking all view behind me.

EDIT: I just got back from trying to order them, but it looks like PP only carries the black OEM brand. I'm looking for the brown Vitton seals. Anyone know here I can find them?

[Jrboulder]

Make sure the AOS seals are not the problem. I'm not sure about the 951, but on
My na I pulled the intake boot off and there was oil all over!

[wild man]

AOS seals are fresh - less than like 20 miles on them. Intake is 100% clean. But that is also fresh. Was upgraded to 3" pipe, to support the K27/8, which is also fresh. There is 141K on the clock, and there was plenty of oil in the intake before those things were freshened.

[Jrboulder]

Oh no!
That's a bummer...

[zedsn]

There is a chance that your seals might be fine. I too thought that my seals were toast but it turned out to be unburnt fuel from my autothority MAF not operating correctly. I pulled the MAF and put the stock AFM back on and the smoke dissapeared. I had smoke at idle and under hard acceleration.

[wild man]

With the thickness of the smoke, there's no way it can be fuel. Hoping is is not a turbo seal, but at this point, I'm pretty sure the valve (guide) seals are toast. Seems to exhibit the classic symptoms, from my experience, anyways.

[Rasta Monsta]

FWIW, it seems unlikely that you could cook seals (which had at least a bit of assembly lube on them from the machine shop) just by running the starter on a cold motor. Also, your idle symptoms don't match. . .when mine were toast (like, mostly in the pan), it smoked bad cold and stopped once the motor was warmed up a little.

Might check your turbo drain for cloggage.

[wild man]

Well, there was NO assembly lube on them. The head wasn't even off. I only pulled the cam box off to swap in a late camshaft, and only the camshaft and lifters had assembly lube on them. Current symptoms are the same as they were on the 924, when I replaced the valve seals (which fixed it), only the smoke density is higher now.

[Rasta Monsta]

Oops. Ah well, good luck then (I would still make sure your turbo is draining properly before pulling the cam box).

Any chance your oil pressure is too high (OPRV)?

[wild man]

Oil pressure runs between 4 and 5 bar in cold weather.

Can I just undo the banjo bolt at the pan, to check for oil return blockage?

[Rasta Monsta]

Sounds like a good idea to me. . .pull DME and have an assistant crank the motor while you check for flow.

[wild man]

Wasn't good idea, afterall. When I saw how low it dumps into the pan, I realized that most of the oil in the pan would spill out if i loosened it.

Any idea what the next easiest way is to check it?

[Rasta Monsta]

Drain the oil, remove the drain tube, and make sure it's good and clean?

[guru944]

wild man;

If its the turbo, look for oil residue on the intercooler inlet feed pipe and compressor housing. and compressor blades. Classic when you accelerate and oil pressure builds up, carbon seal fails.
Hope this reply was helpful.
Later...

[wild man]

It seems to be OK when accelerating, or just going down the road at a steady speed. The smoke only rears it's ugly head when I come to a stop, and start idling. It seems like the more heated up the engine is, the sooner the smoke starts to come out of the tail pipe. But some times it doesn't start in for maybe 20-30 seconds after starting to idle. Other times it only takes like 5-10, before the cloud starts rising. But now I have noticed what seems to be a light amount of smoke whenever it is idling, before the billowing starts.

Everything on the compressor side looks fairly clean. But the same cannot be said for the exhaust side. When I was under the car today, I noticed some oil seepage, emanating from the 3-bolt flange of the exhaust piping, behind the turbocharger.

Could it be the head gasket?

Or (hopefully not) something with the turbine?

If the turbo oil return line is blocked, would that cause it to dump out of the turbine side?

[wild man]

At this point, I'm starting to lean more towards thinking that it's the turbo that's creating the smoke. I removed the compressor-to-IC pipe this morning to fix a coolant outlet neck leak, and a few drops of oil did come out of it.

Would that be my sign, that the turbocharger needs to come out again? (not going to happen until winter is over)

Would 141K on the clock be my sign that the valve seals should be done anyways?

EDIT: I need to wait a few days before I check the oil return pipe or do any other engine work. My fingers are getting too dry from constantly having grease on them.

[HondaDustR]

How do the plugs look? Warm it up and idle it so that it gets good and smokey. Shut it off, let it cool down, and pull the plugs. If the plugs are dry, then it's got to be the turbo leaking into the exhaust side. If they are wet and there's oil in the intake, then it's possibly leaking out the intake side of the turbo, or maybe passing oil through the AOS, but if it was passing through the AOS, it would probably get worse at higher speeds/loads. I would think it's very unlikely to burn out valve stem seals at cranking speeds since they probably had enough oil on the parts to keep them lubed, but I guess anything's possible.

I had replaced my stem seals at 156K right before I killed the motor and they probably could have gone longer.

[Rasta Monsta]

Keep in mind the oil seal on the hotside can also fail, dumping oil straight into the downpipe.