smoke...not again, surley !!!!

longy67

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hi guys, some of you may remember a couple of months ago my car was pummeling out white smoke ....cut a long story short...the turbo went boom...

i thought it had gone again this week but i don't think it is the problem ...

over this week it has happened twice ... On dab down to overtake , the biggest puff of white smoke emits and the car goes eratic through the gears...high gear and over reving and low gear as in idle mode ...after a few seconds it seems to be ok once it went eratic ...
In normal driving conditions it's fine and changes gears ok ...no sign of smoke and will excellerate ok, but since the episodes i dare not attempt it ...

to be honest guys i seem to be loosing all faith in merc/benz , only had the car 18 months and have had more problems with this model than any other car combined ... ( bought second hand from evans halshaw ) and you never know why the previous person got rid.....
Any advise on the possible cause , would be more than welcome ...has anyone else suffered this problem ..

thx
andy.
 

mxs

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White smoke = Water

Blue/Black smoke = Oil
 

Alex Crow

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If this car has a DPF fitted, you may suspect that you have a problem there, with oil contamination from the turbo failure.

Do you ever get an 'oil level too high' warning?
 
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longy67

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If this car has a DPF fitted, you may suspect that you have a problem there, with oil contamination from the turbo failure.

Do you ever get an 'oil level too high' warning?

alex , yeah i do get that warning , but only if i go on motorways and it lights up after about 20 mins of traveling ...then goes off...
in normal driving it never comes on ...( normal i mean city driving )
when i had the turbo changed, the garage told me that he had cleaned the pdf , thinking that it was that causing the problem in the first place,... before he replaced the turbo ....

does the oil light warning, point to a specific fault, alex ....
 
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Alex Crow

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The oil level warning is often seen on these specific cars (w203 with 646 engine and DPF) when the DPF is regenerating frequently (the oil becomes diluted by diesel during regen).
This could be pointing to a DPF beyond its realistic service limit.

I have seen one, after turbo replacement, leave a smoke cloud that Dick Dastardly would have been proud of. This obviously due to oil in the DPF being burned off. It is possible in this case that the recent smoke you saw was oil contamination being burned off during a regen.
 
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longy67

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The oil level warning is often seen on these specific cars (w203 with 646 engine and DPF) when the DPF is regenerating frequently (the oil becomes diluted by diesel during regen).
This could be pointing to a DPF beyond its realistic service limit.

I have seen one, after turbo replacement, leave a smoke cloud that Dick Dastardly would have been proud of. This obviously due to oil in the DPF being burned off. It is possible in this case that the recent smoke you saw was oil contamination being burned off during a regen.

great info and fully understand at what you are saying ...but, is it likely to do it only on dab down, ( twice in the space of 4 days ) and cause the revs to act erractic... if it regens then surley it would only do it periodically .. turbo was replaced october.
sorry for all the questions btw.
 
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RobWheatley

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Dont know if they use the same or similar system but the Citroen I had would puff white smoke during the DPF regen cycle
 

RobWheatley

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It depended on how it was driven, if it was mainly motoway/high speed A roads not very often, if it was mainly used in traffic or in town then every time you were over 50mph for 5 mins.
It was hard to know if it was regenerating unless you looked in the mirror and saw the puffs when on the throttle.

As far as the Mech saying he cleaned it out did he say how, some of the citroen owners did try to glean them with steam cleaners with mixed results, the only real way was to replace it when it was clogged.
The erratic bit might be (if it does it the same way) the engine overfueling, the engine management would add an "extra" squirt of fuel to raise the exhaust gas temperature, this would incinerate the soot in the DPF (and sometimes you could smell the DPF getting VERY hot)
 
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Steve@Avantgarde

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Did you clean out your intercooler properly too? The amount of times I have seen turbos replaced and no one cleans out the intercooler then the oil is sucked back into the turbo causing smoking and over revving....
 

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Good point from Steve there, so often the obvious is overlooked!

Worrying is the comment about erratic revs, this suggests to me that the car is running either on oil left behind in the intake system (as Steve), or on oil/diesel vapours from the PCV, caused by excessive regeneration.
Either way it is a worry, a runaway diesel engine is a terrifying thing to behold...
 
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