E85Forum.com

agrodrag · Joined: 06 May 2009 Posts: 11

I have a drew through turbo setup on my drag car and the car has started blowing blue smoke and the motor dose not seem happy, it will not idle on its own and takes a few seconds to clear to get some sort of a clean rev out of it. I am thinking it may be the carbon seal in the turbo and is letting oil into the fuel/air as it goes through the turbo, thinking maybe it has not liked the E85. And I am wondering if you can get carbon seals that are E85/alcohol tolerant. Crying or Very sad

hotrod · Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Posts: 872 Location: Colorado

You did not specify what type of turbo you have, but I know of dozens of high power imports running E85 at boost pressures from 20-35 psi, and none of them have had turbo seal issues due to E85.

The turbo seals do occasionally go bad, but that happens on gasoline engines also. In many cases it is due to wear on the shaft at the seal not incompatibility of the seal with the fuel.

Pull your intake hose down stream from the turbo and look for oil in the hose. If you find oil there it can be due to either a bad turbo seal or crank case pressure blowing oil mist out of the crank case into the intake through the crank case breather system if you still have that hooked up.

High boost engines have very significant blow by, and can pump a lot of oil into the intake tract through the breather system. Check that the PCV valve is closing under pressure and install a catch can in the breather line, to catch the oil mist before it gets blown into the intake system.

E85 produces higher average cylinder pressure than gasoline (one of the reasons it makes more power) and it also produces more exhaust gas volume, both of which can make blow by past the rings more difficult to control.

Do both a compression check and a leak down to make sure your rings are healthy. Boosted engines can run remarkably well with a broken ring but will pump a boat load of oil into the crank case breather system due to the high blow by volume.

I had one friend that noticed the car seemed just a bit flat, when he pulled the intercooler, about a quart of oil poured out on the ground!
He had a cracked ring land on one piston.

Good luck chasing down the problem.

Larry

nelson8708 · Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 67

Sounds like your talking about the seal on the turbine side. That seal that keeps oil out of the housing is nothing more than a piston ring seal. Since that clip is steel i wouldn't think running e85 has anything to do with it.

-Nelson
_________________
Boosted since 06-06-2006
Tuned on e85 as of 3-30-2009
KA24E-T sold 10-3-2009
KA24DE purchased 12-5-2009 (here we go again)
KA-T running on corn with water injection coming soon