Originally Posted by jdlong

Pat, A few things come to mind from what you've mentioned. I'm sure you've probably exhausted (no pun intended) all the possibilites, but thought I'd throw a few out. The smoking (oil) in your exhaust and using too much oil could be a slew of things. But, a lot of times you get smoke (burning oil) because the air intake (filter in our case) is clogged. This also could mean it's simply not getting enough air. Also, I noticed in all of your pictures you left one of the bungs open on the turbo-to-exhaust piece. Maybe you just hadn’t put your wideband in yet, but ANY leaks in any of the components of the system, including air, can cause problems. Exhaust side gives you more oil consumption, intake side gives you smoke.

Also, did you use a turbo timer for shutdown on your car? Startup isn't really a big deal in our case based on design. You still should let your car idle without revving for 30-60 seconds so there is good movement of WARM oil in the turbo. But, the main thing is getting all of that hot oil back out when you stop. Sludge on any component of the turbo could cause those issues. Check my ‘too much in a header’ post to read my thoughts about how to solve this if you like. (Which I’ll post after this post.)

The last thing I can mention is did the kit come with an oil restrictor? We received a ball bearing turbo which traditionally doesn’t need as much oil as a journal bearing. At full boost on our turbo we need around 40 or 45 psi of oil to the inlet of the housing. At max. operating of our engine it’s probably pushing close to double that. Overloading a ball bearing turbo will reduce performance and potentially cause the problems you’ve mentioned.