Smokey start up!

[madalaa]

I have experienced it on occasion especially if the car has not been parked on level surface .........

Thanks but our driveway is completely flat

....... I have also experienced on a flat driveway when I lived in London but not recently now I have a garage on the flat ......

 

[deMort]

My impression of this fault and smoking in general ..

The Boxer design of the engine .. its flat or Horizontal .. this does allow oil a chance to get into a cylinder where as a vertical engine and the oil drains downwards .

Smoke colour .. basic rule of thumb ..

White .. water based

Grey / blue .. oil based

Black or a very dark colour being over fueling or unburnt fuel .. a rich mixture .

A problem with either of these tends to be a more constant or more occurring problem ..

IE .. 1 min of smoking of any colour or indeed a constant smoking would indicate something is getting into the exhaust .. usually by means of the cylinders but a cracked head can in very rare circumstances allow water into the exhaust direct .. either way it needs to be something continually causing the issue .

Puff of smoke for 10 seconds or less is kinda normal at times based on temperature , how long its been standing .. how its previously been driven etc etc .

valve seals .. well the design with them being at 90 degrees would tend to make oil run away from the seals .. a vertical engine and yup oil can bypass them ..

Oil will sit in the inlet manifold as normal .. i've seen it many times on the Boxer engine .

Bore score will certainly allow more oil into a cylinder due to the design .. its horizontal .

AOS failure .. this tends to be a constant smoking but as the DFi engine has a different design then it's not very common to get one fail .. it does happen but most tend to be the restrictive type whereby it causes a vacuum noise and not smoking .

For me ..

The OP,s video and it looks like white smoke .. that indicates water .. due to the design i will add a bit of oil but on its own oil of a small quantity will give very little colour of normal oil usage .

My thinking is condensation .. a bit of oil and its normal .

For there to be an issue then the smoking needs to be more constant .. something whether it's oil or water needs to be replacing what's just been burnt to keep the smoking going .. that is an issue which i don't see here .

I spoke to the OP via email and suggested if he was worried then a bore scope test .. do it after a night standing and the mechanic will see not only any scoring but oil in any cylinder ..

It would also show any coolant .

In this case it's been 4K miles with no change or drop in levels .. it's also been into another garage who cleaned out oil in the inlet tract ..

Faults get worse as time goes by .

This is just my thoughts though .. i welcome anything to say im not correct as to be honest guys ..

I may do this for a living but i certainly don't know everything and im always open to learning things ..

Constructive criticism is always welcome as i can only ever post what i think .

Thank you for those of you who read this entire ramble

 

[glenwells]

another possibility

Hi

The Gen2 987 - is it the 2.9 or the 3.4. I read that only the 3.4 has the DFI engine.

I recently bought a 987.2 2.9L. All running fine re exhaust, oil, water etc.
I had a company called 'Celtic Tuning' do a level 1 ECU remap - nothing major.

After that I had your symptoms just the same, maybe a little less volume.

I was concerned and had a garage have a look and they spoke about AOS etc. I then mentioned the remap and they recommended putting the original ECU map back on to check if that might be something to do with it.

I did that and the smokey start ups stopped. After a couple of conversations with Celtic Tuning they did a version 2 of the ECU remap it is now installed and so far all ok (fingers crossed).

I also recall reading somewhere that Porsche did an alteration to some 987 car ECU's to reduce smoke on start up. Might be wrong DeMort can confirm.

Anyway my 2p worth - car not smoking - ECU remap car smoking - changed ECU it stopped?

Could you get your ECU checked? Is that a cheapish option?

Regards
Glen

 

[deMort]

Hi Glen

That's an interesting comment regarding your car , i'm not aware of a remap to stop smoking at least there was no TI i saw when at OPC for this but i am intrigued into why the car would smoke more after a remap on startup.

I could understand more black smoke with an over richened map but white .. hmm ..

As i often say .. if it's after market or non standard then i don't know but i do love to fault find ..

A cat in operation produces H2o , water as a by product .. as we now use TWC a three way cat then it needs a slightly richer mixture than the previous Two way cat or lean burn one .

Logically a remap will richen the car at certain rev ranges which to me would mean the cat has to work harder ..

More rich gas .. more water ends up in the silencer which would give more white smoke i guess ..

Id love for someone far more knowledgeable than me to step in here though

.. i could do with some teaching as remaps are outside of my comfort zone .