My 03' has a 90K and a catless TBE, and a monster TD-04 recentely swapped (under 1000 miles) and I am getting a white smoke coming out of my exhasut once it heats up. It smells like coolant and I've had a coolant leak from somewhere by the turbo for a while that I cant seem to find. When coolant is being burned and coming out of the exhaust, what do I need to look at to try and fix this problem? Also, is there any damage being done by driving the car while this is happening? thank you.

 

a whole lot of smoke? that turbo has under 1000 miles on it tho?

I used to get it if I let the car warm up then just as I go to rev it it would puff white smoke for a second, then it was good. that was 50k and 4 years ago on the OEM TD04, is been fine ever since.

 

It was a lot, but it only happened that one time. i drove the car a lot today and it seemed to not make smoke or smell like coolant was being burned. The coolant leak was really bad earlier and I'm thinking that has a lot to do with my smoke. There is a line that looks unplugged that coolant is coming out of that looks like it should go to the bottom of the turbo so this weekend I'm going to try hooking it up again.

 

If you just did a swap, you probably just got some coolant in the exhaust system and it got burned off.

Fix that leak, though.

 

if it starts back up be concerned...
if it does continue, a leakdown test would be good. If it doesn't indicate a blown headgasket, I would then guess it to be the coolant seal on the turbo. I had my stocker td04 seal go bad at about 24k miles.
-Micah

 

Well I think I finally found my leak. It's the top banjo bolt on right behind the compressor that has a rubber line running to the coolant reservoir. Until I can get the right tools (I'm at school with minimum tools) I'm going to keep up the habit of checking and adding coolant every time I go to start it. Thanks for hte help.

 

well today i found out that my water pump is leaking...mastro quoted like 640 bux to replace it. =( that and replacing the timing belt because im at like 81k so im close to the 100k service. So it seems a lot of wrx owners experience these coolant problems. I would do it myself, but i dont have all the tools to do it myself. that sucks.

 

what tools don't you have? (trying to think of any specialty tools required)

 

I only have basic hand tools (crescent wrench, channel locks, etc.) but this weekend while I'm at home I'm going to grab all of the common Subaru socket and box wrench sizes. I also live in an apartment complex and it is not allowed to work on a car there.


Now that I replaced the top silicon black line from the tank to the turbo, it's leaking from what looks like under the throttle body. Are there any coolant lines down there? I haven't had the smoke out of the exhaust since that one time, though.

 

yeah, there is actually coolant that runs through the throttlebody and also your heater core hoses are back there...
pretty easy fix once you pull the tmic

bypassing the coolant lines to the TB also will free up a few ponies