[philgiasson]

2002 Saab 9-3 SE, my first Saab, and its not going well. 127,000 miles. Bought the car knowing it had overheated once because of a blown coolant line. After I bought it I realized it was a small coolant line that went to the intake manifold? so I put a gallon of coolant in it and drove it home... no issues no smoke no cel... nothing. She ran beautiful.
I pulled the head and replaced the head gasket and did a meticulous job. There were a few broken vacuum lines which i replaced with silicon... and the pcv hose was blown in half... replaced it as well. On first fire she ran beautiful, no smoke, no cel.. perfect. However after about 50 miles she started smoking bad... I shut it off to find it was blowing oil out the intake at the manifold and running onto my converter causing clouds of smoke... I am a mechanic, thought my turbo might be leaking oil so I asked a trusted 20+ year mechanics advice who confirmed turbo must be leaking. I pulled the turbo - td04hl... as many of us have. There was no play but i tore it down and used a saab rebuild kit and did it proper. Installed it, and now i have smoke coming out the exhaust... white in color not sweet smelling so its not coolant. Ive driven it about 100 miles... im getting 19.8mpg. Coolant level is stable. Oil level is also stable. No more bad leak at intake / manifold connection... but any time i step on it and give it good boost she blows smoke out the muffler hard... Can anyone help me???? I cant find PVC / Oil catch diagram or vacuum diagrams anywhere... Am i missing a check valve? or is one of mine bad? This car would be great if i could just get it to work... im in sooo many hours and a lot of $$$ I need some good advice from some saab peeps!!! Thank you!

 

[philgiasson]

addition...

I replaced any rubber item under the hood basically... coolant lines included...

The CEL came on today and threw the following codes:
p0302
p1302
p0101
p1260

Im running mobile 1 0-40 synthetic, 92+ octane fuel always...

 

[ForeignIcation]

Not doubting your work: but when you took the turbo off for repair did you THOROUGHLY clean all oil/coolant lines to turbo??? If not those will EASILY re-clog/burst the turbo's internals. I've seen it done atleast 3 times someone did a great job with the rebuild forgot cleaning tactics. Had to rebuild again

 

[philgiasson]

Oil and coolant lines....

I did clean all the lines well.... Accept the output drain from the turbo to the oil pan... Could that have been clogged? If so how do I clean it properly...

So probably needs another turbo rebuild?

 

[jakejm79]

Auto???

 

[pokeyjoe]

A couple things I can think of off hand:

- The cat is just full of crap. Given time, it will burn off. That would be nice, eh?

- The oil pickup in the pan is plugged up with crap. On these cars, when this happens, the turbo is the first thing to fail. Hope thats not it (new turbo and all). Many people on this forum recommend dropping the pan on any new acquisition to check it out.

- If the cold side of the old turbo was leaking oil, you may have filled the intercooler with oil. I kinda doubt that this is the problem, but its easy enough to pull off a hose to check. There will always be some oil (PCV system), but there shouldn't be a lot.

- PCV check valve failure. If this happens, you are pressurizing the crankcase every time you go into boost.

Good luck.

 

[philgiasson]

Thank you for the input... n a update

I will pull the oil pan off in the morning and repost later tomorrow... I drove about 50 miles today without smoke... although some oil is still dripping from the intake pipe at the manifold. I never gave it any hard boost, but it seems to be running ok. Maybe cat was full... Also I took the intercooler pipe and cleaned it with brake clean and shop vac... not much came out... looks normal with a little coating of oil. Turbo seems to boost fine... will update tomorrow. Thanks so much for your input!;ol;