Look closely around the turbine wheel. If it's leaking oil from the shaft seal, you would see the oil concentrated in the area of the cover in my picture. If oil is passing from another place upstream, you may see more oil on the turbine wheel or housing and be harder to detect its source.
Are you getting any thick soot in the tail pipe? The oil passing through my exhaust system would leave a thicker soot build up in the tip. I could feel the stickiness and the soot would smear, if rubbed between my fingers.

 

Update:
Well I tore into the truck tonight... Not too happy with what I found. First thing I did was look at where the valve seals are located. oil does not pool up around the valve seals so I don't see how they could be slowly leaking into the cylinders when it sits. Makes me think that my assumptions may be wrong.
I performed the compression test and was happy with the results until I got to cylinder #5 I think.
2- 378 PSI 1- 378 PSI
4- 365 PSI 3- 360 PSI
6- 365 PSI 5- 320 PSI
8- 370 PSI 7- 360 PSI

I think this is how the cylinders should be numbered (correct me if I'm wrong) if you are looking at it from the drivers seat, therefore I think it is my #5 that is low. I put some oil down in the cylinder and checked again and the compression shot right up to 380. rings

This seems like a pretty big difference to me. I read somewhere that there should not be more that a 20% difference. If that is true then I am ok. because this is about 15% off from the best cylinder. But I also read someone saying that if there is more than a 20% difference than you are in trouble. Which one is true?

Although I am disappointed about the bad compression in #5 I don't think this is causing my oils consumption because I don't think the one cylinder could use that much oil. I did as many of you suggested and pulled off my exhaust from the turbo and there was no oil. just soot. The intake side of the turbo had the typical little puddle of oil but I think that is just from the blowby.

So I don't think its turbo as far as I can tell.
I don't think the bad compression in the one cylinder is causing my oil consumption.
That leaves valve stem seals even though I don't really see how they could cause the oil consumption either...

What do you all think? Im planning to go ahead and replace the valve stem seals tomorrow since I already have them. I rented the autozone valve spring compression tool and I think I can get all of the springs compressed with it except the drivers side beside the firewall. Maybe if I did some cutting on it and welded the nut farther down on the bolt I could squeeze it in..?? Otherwise Im just going to replace all of them but that one and hope that one wasn't the culprit haha..

thanks again for all the help. Give me your opinions please!
Marshall

 

Also I am correct to assume that because my compression went up when I added the oil that the problem is definitely my rings right? Next I assumed that this low compression on one cylinder wouldn't cause the oil consumption but now I am wondering... could it?
Thanks

 

Well I don't have time to tell the whole story now cause I am currently still working on my truck. But long story short there was a valve that may have gotten dropped into the cylinder.........
It's fixed now... I have only found one valve seal that was completely worn but we are still going. I will update everyone in depth later. What do y'all think about my compression and oil consumption?? One 320 piston causing it??

 

Following the general rule of thumb as you have called out that if the cylinders are within 20%, the compression results are OK is as much as anyone can say. #5 is 15% short of your best cylinders so on the surface, it should be Ok. I don't recall reading anywhere that a lower cylinder indicates oil consumption so I don't see a connection necessarily. Outside of valve seals, confirming the turbo is not sending oil through the intake would be where I would be looking as Mueckster has advised.

 

SRBF150, thanks! That's what I thinking but unfortunately I'm just not sure that it is good because I'm starting too think the compression is what is causing my oil consumption...

After doing the valve stem replacement I replaced my lower plenum boots and while I was doing that I started the truck up with nothing hooked up to the turbo and the CCV was also just going into the atmosphere. I put a piece of paper in front of the turbo outlet while a friend revved the engine a couple times and absolutely no oil came out of the turbo. There was also no oil residue into he exhaust where it leaves the turbo. There is also hardly any shaft play at all.. this convinces me that the turbo can be ruled out as the culprit.

When replacing the valve stem seals I decided to go ahead and retorque the injectors and to my surprise I almost had to turn every one of the hold down bolts a full rotation to get the to 10 foot lbs... I was shocked because I know I torqued them when I did the injector o rings but I'm guessing that since I used the hold down bolts to seat the injector that maybe they got in a small bind and they settled into place over time... I'm hoping this might have been the culprit for my oil consumption. Maybe there was oil leaking past the o rings because the injectors were not tight enough. However, I doubt it...

The valve stem seal job turned into a major ordeal when on the second d cylinder I started to do I thought the piston was at the top and we usually even put air into the cylinder for safe measure. For some reason I unplugged the air and when I pulled of the valve stem seal, "plunk" went the valve I to the cylinder... I about threw up. Luckily however it was the exhaust valve and my friend had the great idea of just removing the exhaust manifold and pushing it back through the guide from there.. it was a huge pain and was very hard to guide the valve back into the guide but it finally went back in. And we were able to continue the job. I had to remove the evaporator box for the a/c and shorten my AutoZone valve spring compressor tool but I was in the end able to replace all of the valve stem seals but the one on the driver's side closest to the firewall.there was just no way I could fit even my shortened tool to remove the spring.
Only one valve stem seal showed high signs of wear. There are ridges on the inside of the seal and so.e seemed slightly flattened on the round edge but on the one the ridges were completely worn smooth. I will try to post pictures once I figure out how to.

Like I said I then cleaned out the engine V and the plenum and replaced the boots. I started up the truck and let it idle for a while. My friend that was helping me also has a really awesome 7.3 that he takes the south America as a missionary and does all kinds of crazy off reading. Constantly snapping his huge leaf spring packs from the insane amount of cargo and flexing over rough terrain he does. He has welded in extra cross members, Dana 60 swapped the front end and a lot of other mods... anyway we compared his blowby to mine by plugging both of our ccv's and revving he engine with a ping pong ball on the oil filler tube. The blowby on mine wasn't too bad but it was definitely worse than his is...

It was dark outside so we put a light on the exhaust and revved it and my truck definitely had a good bit of eye burning oil smoke coming out especially when you revved it hard. It's harder to see in the day though. His truck also had some smoke but not near as much as mine. This is all leading me to believe that the "low" compression is causing my issue. However I also wondered if it is possible for there to just be a film of oil in the cylinders from all of the work we did that was still burning of causing the excessive smoke...?
I am going on a trip this weekend so I will know for sure then if the oil consumption has changed

Hope someone will take the time to read the book I just wrote... haha but I want to be thorough to let everyone know exactly what is going on.
Thanks everyone for the help!

 

This is my modified valve spring co.pressor that worked for all but 8 springs. Also had to do a little bending on the arms if you can tell.



Here is an upside down pic of the valve sitting on top of the cylinder but not yet into the guide... i took this photo to try to figure out the angle that it was going in<br/><br/>

 

In summary for this is you who don't want to read my thread what I would really like to know is it's there anyone out there who has a truck that has 320 psi or less in a cylinder that doesn't burn oil excessively or smoke??

 

Yes. I had a cylinder down to 270 psi at sea level without excessive oil consumption. Blow by was definitely excessive, however.

 

Well that's encouraging!! If that's the case the only thing that could be causing g my oil consumption is internal injector o rings ... but I still for so.e reason think it's rings but maybe not.

 

I responded without catching up... never mind.

 

Did you use an inch pound rated torque wrench when you torqued the hold down bolts this time or a foot pound rated torque wrench?

If it was an inch pound rated wrench then I would say that there is a very good possibility that your oil consumption is/was from loose injectors. The other issue that I see is if they were much below about 75-80 inch pounds which a full turn could indicate, then, the o-rings could be damaged and a re-torque may not solve your problem.

If they are damaged, you will still have oil consumption and the only way to fix that is to replace them with new Alliant o-rings:
Alliant Injector O-rings - Ford 7.3L Powerstroke (94-03)

 

That's an interesting thought... yes the first time I torqued them I used my dad's old military torque wrench that is in inch pounds. And this time I used a for pounds torque wrench. When I replaced the o rings originally I used alliant power from riff raff so I really hope that if they were too loose that that didn't ruin those o rings... I really don't like pulling the injectors. I've been putting a light to my exhaust at night and revving it and when I rev it there is a pretty good bit of whitish smoke(hats to tell the exact color at night) so either there is something going on with my injectors or there oil is stopping through the #5 cylinder rings...

 

OK... I finally read everything and I'm caught up. Loose injector bolts can cause:

• Knocking
• Horrendously smokey cold starts
• Oil loss (frequently black fuel filter, but not always)
• Low compression
• Misses
• Damaged cups

I adopted the habit of hot-torquing. I would run the engine for a long time with the covers off, then torque again.

 

Ya sorry for the long posts... when I post on here I tend to go on and on and can't stop writing...
Hot torquing is definitely the way to go... problem is I didn't know about that when I did the injector o rings....👎 I snugged them down and I'm hoping that everything will be ok... it is still smoking a little bit but you can only really see it at night when you put a light on the exhaust. I feel like this must be because of the compression though. If you squirt oil in the cylinder and the compression goes up is that 100% sign it's rings or could the oil have splashed up and sealed the injector leak?? I doubt it... I will add that even though I had a battery charger on my truck when I did the compression test it seemed to rotate very slow... but I watched a video on YouTube of a guy doing a compression test and his seemed to rotate slowly also.. why do they seem to rotate slower that it would when you start it? Could this be causing slightly lower compression numbers across the board? I hope it's not the injector problems above...