Intermittent blueish/white smoke and no power

FordFanaticTony · February 5, 2015

Been chasing this one for a while guys. Customer is complaining of intermittent smoke and whistling noise from exhaust. Found no codes on this one. Road tested 15 miles and nothing. Foreman drove it out and came back smoking with bluish white smoke. Smelled like burning oil.

I checked relative compression=passed. I found the map sensor clogged with carbon so I replaced it just in case. Crankcase is not overfull. Coolant is full. Seperated down pipe from turbo and found no oil or fluids in exhaust. Intercooler is clean. All short fuel trims check out and power balance with my frp desired at the highest pressure is great. Road tested again and it acted up finally=I couldn't accelerate pass 20mph on the freeway and had maybe 10 pounds of boost at most.

Got off the freeway to head back to the shop and while waiting at the stop some bluish/white smoke came out. Got back on the freeway to head back and again no power and only accelerating to maybe 40mph all of a sudden the instrument cluster message came stating "cleaning exhaust filter" for maybe 2 seconds and all power came back. Could it be a dpf? I did perform a ramp up test and found no black smoke out of the dpf. Could it be a cat converter material turning inside like a basketball=seen that in a 6.0, throttle plate sticking? any help is strongly appreciated guys. Thank you.

lmorris · February 5, 2015

First thing I would try is a manual regeneration. Then go after DPF readings. Could just be a funky DPF sensor. Have a good look at the MAF sensor as well.

FordFanaticTony · February 5, 2015

Hey guys I saw an oil leak underneath the truck and looking with a mirror behind the turbo I found an oil leak between the high pressure and low pressure turbo where they meet in the exhaust. could the high pressure turbo be blowing oil through the seal causing the smoke and the crazy dfp strategy?

lmorris · February 5, 2015

You could disconnect the down pipe from the cat and look in there. Typically there would have to be a lot of oil going down that pipe to cause issues with the DPF. What are the regen_comp and regen_req pids reading? Also monitor DPF load and pressure while driving and post them too. If by chance the converter was the issue you would have higher than normal EPB readings. There is a post concerning DPF diagnosis and things to look at, check that out.

Matt Saunoras · February 6, 2015

Honestly the first thing I thought of when reading this was high pressure turbo. Yank the crossover and spin the compressor wheel, you can feel when the bearings are starting to coke up they will drag when side loaded a little bit. Also have a look at the banjo bolt where the oil feed enters the turbo. When it's getting hot they'll coke up too. When I see the oil drain o-ring hard as a rock and starting to leak I get suspicious too

FordFanaticTony · February 6, 2015

I pulled the turbo based on all the oil leaking from the wire mating gasket. And yup the high pressure turbo when spinning it has too much play. I will post how it turns out.