I have an EFR 6258. Starting a year after I had it, and several months after I had a massive oil overheat issue where I left the car in gear while on a tow dolley, then drug the engine to it's death, I started getting HEAVY amounts of white smoke after start up. If I just let the car idle, the heavy smoke never seemed to go away. If I immediate drove the car from cold the smoke was still there, but was 1% of what it was during idle. After driving the car to 'warm' it would still smoke, but again, just barely. The worst part about it, was just the smell. Acrid burn smell that originally thought was because I didn't have a cat, but one cat later and it was still there. This led me down the path of thinking there was something wrong with the turbo, as the gentleman I bought my current engine off of said on the previous car it never smoked even a little. I believed him because even after the installed and dyno tuning, it took another several months before the smoke started.

Anyhow, I bought a used 6258 (thanks Greg Peters) off of FB marketplace, and just started to pull the old one. I should mention, the performance of the system never seemed effected at all. I just did a full track day and other than the officials seeming to think my engine was about to explode, no issues, no over heating, no 'loss' of oil (via dipsitck). When I pull the turbo out, I noticed the downpipe was covered in a white residue and you'll see in the pictures below so was the hot side impeller. I've inspected teh turbo as best I could and compared it to the one I bought and there are two things of note. The first, is the collar below the impeller. On the smoking one, it was initially gritty and hard(ish) to twist, but after twisting it for a while, what is behind that collar seemed to work itself out and while not as smooth as the one from GP, it is fairly close to normal. The second was when I removed the oil feed AN adapter from the smokey one, I got a nice wiff of the same nasty burning smell that comes from the car. It almost smells like burnt hair or popcorn.

Other things that may be of interest:

1. Up until this last track day, it had always had a turbo blanket on the hot side. I was tired of replacing them since they always seem to fall apart and now I just have a heat shield around it.
2. The oil temp when I pulled my first motor to its death was 300+ as my gauges top out at 300 and when the incident happened, I turned the key forward to see what the gauges were. Again, this happened with this turbo, but it was MONTHS after getting everything back working with a new motor that the smoking started.
3. No performance lost whatsoever
4. Shalft/impeller spins freely, no wiggle I can tell.

I'd love some advice / ideas from anyone here to see if they think this is/was at all my problem (i'm still waiting on an adapter before I can install the new to me one). And if so, can this turbo be refurbished, hopefully cheaply so I can either resell it or keep it as a spare.

 

300*c, that's cooking. 300*f, not so much. I'd be looking at that turbo blanket, and the temperature transfer across the hot side into the cold side, especially when/if it is shut down hot.

 

The white is oil ash.

 

Quick thread update, I was able to get swapped into a used 6258 with my housings and the smoking seems to be gone. I was hoping someone who knows the techy side of these turbos might be able to help with what is going on. That white stuff is definitely oil burned. Opening the port for the oil feed smelled terrible. On a side note, anyone wanna buy a iffy 6258 super core?

 

I wonder how many "Iffy" 6258's are sitting in boxes? Due to the fact its cheaper to buy one than rebuild the darn thing................I have 2.............

 

This one runs fine, I suppose, but smells like burnt ****. It'll be my emergency backup I guess. I got black flagged at sebring for the crazy amount of smoke it puts off while heating up. They assumed I was leaking oil all over the track. If I knew how the thing worked, perhaps I could figure out why it is doing it. Best AI can come up with is "seals" are bad and weeping more oil past them than they should and it's simply burning up along the way to the exhaust. Fresh (to me) turbo in and I'm finally out of **** burn + smoke I've been dealing with for 3 months or so.

 

Don't put the turbo blanket on this one. If heat is a problem, there are other ways of dealing with it.

 

Blankets and IAT retard settings kill turbos. Ask me how I know. Don't use either one.

 

Yea at this point I just have a corrigated aluminum heat shield. The blankets get so nasty anyways, whats the point. After I made this, I temp tested everything around with a heat gun and could tell zero difference.

 

The blankets keep the heat in. That's a big hint. Don't replace the close-fitting blankets with aluminium doing the same - keeping the heat contained. Sure the turbo gets hot, and things nearby get hot as a result. To control the heat, you need to get rid of it - the first thing is to make sure lots of air is entering, and then exiting the engine bay. Heat shields do the rest for components that need more. As my build thread shows, I put a lot of effort into ducting, and heat shields on the bonnet to protect my new and expensive paint, and the heater hoses have heat wrap. Bonnet vents are still coming, but nothing has melted or otherwise suffered heat damage (yet?).

So all the stuff in the cooling thread, including bonnet vents.