Well here is the deal. i pulled my intercooler tube the other day.( the tube that is before the cooler itself) and i noticed engine oil in the tube. not alot but some around the fittings etc etc. however i have always known that my psd has used oil for a while. what are the chances that a turbo would cause this? if not what do you think would? injectors?

also how bad would it be to replace the gaskets and o rings in the turbo? are they pretty much nuts and bolts or do you have to worry about tolerances on parts fitting and specific torque settings. thanks in advance

p.s truck usually uses about 2-3 quarts in 5k miles and truck exhaust doesnt smell like all the other psd's. this makes me think it is burning oil somewhere

 

more likely the oil is coming from your ccv tube... it vents crankcase gases directly into you intake before the turbo... these gases have oilly vapor in them, and the vapor usually condenses on those boost tubes...

 

the oil you see is because of the crank case venting into the intake. check my gallery "mods on my truck" and you can see my simple CCV mod. what it does, is take the mist coming from the crank case, and puts it in the intake. it goes through the turbo (which cant be good), it leaves alot of engine oil on the intercooler and related boots/pipes. i just took my turbo out this week. it was alot easier than i thought. however, the turbo doesnt have oil going through it near the intake, so it would be near impossible for the turbo to be sucking oil and putting it through the intercooler.

if your turbo (mainly turbo pedestal) was leaking, there would be an oil trail down the back of the engine, down the side of the transmission, and it would drip off the "weep hole" on the bell housing of the transmission. when i had my turbo out, i went ahead and replaced the lower pedestal o rings, even though all i needed to do was the upper (where the pedestal meets the actual turbo. whenever you remove the turbo, you MUST replace the o-rings. once they are crushed (turbo tightened on them) you must take them out and put new ones in. i learned the hard way, by removing the turbo and not re-doing the o-rings. oil everywhere on startup.

but, i do not think that your turbo is leaking, because you noted it on the intercooler side. and, that is the CCV. the fact that it uses oil is because of hte vaccuum in the intake, pulling the crank case fumes out, rather than when it is vented out to the atmosphere, where it has no vaccuum pulling it out. the CCV was one of the first things i did to my rig. good luck.

 

so what is the ccv mod? i looked in the pics but i didnt see anything or just didnt know what i was looking at

 

all you do is unplug the little hose that connects from the drivers side valve cover to the round coupler that is between the two intake boots that connect your air box and your intake of your turbo... then you have to cap the place where it connected to to seal up the intake... then you connect a long hose to the short one that is still connected to your valve cover and run that long hose out under your truck somewhere... make sure it goes way out by the back of your truck, those fume stink... i hooked mine back up stock till i get a chance next summer to redo this mod... when i do i am going to connect that pipe to the exhaust pipe so those fumes get mixed in with and pumped out with the exhaust...

 

i also have pics of how i tied mine into the exhaust.

 

I removed my intercooler and boost tubes because I was concerned that a 120K mile truck would have 2-3 quarts of oil in the intercooler.

There was no oil at all in the intercooler. Only the boost tube boots had signs of CCvapor. The seals in the cartridge of the turbo can and will go bad. Kits can be purchased to replace the cartidge. Oil will get by the main shaft in the cartridge and enter the turbine (hot) side of the turbo where it will be burned. If it is not a bad breach, you will not notice bluesmoking that much or at all. I would say you would miss a quart over 5K. 2-3 quarts on the other hand is suspect. Do you get any oil spots on the ground? Even little ones?

 

Using 2-3 quarts in 5k miles is not at all unusual. If it were mine, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Agreed. If your engine didn't comsume any oil at all there would be cause for concern. All engines use a little oil in thier normal operations. Mine is in perfect health and it used nearly two quarts in my last vacation trip of 5000 miles.