my volvo xc90 2.5t is making a white smoke ? is it the terbo thats not ok or what can i do ?

Asked by Amunime Jul 06, 2013 at 09:38 AM about the 2005 Volvo XC90 2.5T Turbo AWD

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

an its even realizing oil at the exhous ?

5 Answers

9,665

White smoke issues: 1. Turbo Failures: Your turbocharger could be failing. If the seals in the turbocharger go bad, the turbo may cause puffs of white smoke from the exhaust when coming to an idle or begin to smoke terribly when idling for long periods of time. 2. Head Gasket Leaking: The head gasket may be leaking into the combustion chamber(s) overnight which leads to white smoke coming from the exhaust (really steam) during cold start. Once the engine is warm this smoke will disappear because it is actually burning the coolant from within the combustion chamber. Head gasket failure between two cylinders is usually the problem. You can often determine if this is the problem by removing the spark plugs to see if any of the piston tops are silver which is an indication that the coolant being burned is cleaning the carbon from the piston top. 3. Valve guide/Seal Issues: Valve guide failure can cause the engine to smoke during startup. This usually indicates a problem with either the work guides or valve stem seals which allows oil to leak past them once the engine is turned off. Rebuilding or replacing the cylinder head is the only cure.

10 people found this helpful.
415

White smoke, water vapor, so its probably hwad gasket. Blue smoke, then it could the valve seals or turbo going.

5 people found this helpful.
9,665

That is true if you don't have a water cooled turbo like the XC90 does. And seeing as the viscosity of coolant is a lot lower than that of engine oil, it will start to leak coolant into the exhaust stream much sooner than oil.

7 people found this helpful.
50

White smoke is almost always cooling system leaking into cylinder, and usually it is head gasket. If it smokes the moment you start it, cold, and same when at operating temperature, then you want to check for loss of water, if it is water as is usual case, you will see water level drop. Head gasket leaks can be checked with simple compression test if a check engine code doesn't come up. I have seen water leaks which do not impact engine performance, so it depends on where leak is and how bad it is, doesn't take much water to leak into cylinder to smoke a lot.

5 people found this helpful.

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