Thread: white smoke & no pickup TD5

I'm pretty sure white smoke = unburnt diesel vapour. Could be injector washers?

White smoke is normally water

Had a similar problem with a 300tdi and I need to drain water out of the fuel filter.

There is a screw thread bung on the bottom which you undo and will let out water first then diesel. This will take five mins to do and the. Run it for a bit and see what it is like

Might be best that you don't drive it until you figure out what is going on
If it damages a piston it will get expensive

If it's "huge clouds" off white smoke I'd be looking at the turbo.
Mine did this not long ago as it pumped oil into the exhaust.

Drop the hoses from the air filter box end and have look inside the turbo.
Mine broke the shaft and you could see things weren't right.
Luckily I didn't have to clean the intercooler as I caught it before to much oil got into the system.
Also I had no bits of missing metal to worry about going through the system.


For the three lads check the earth point of your option B also, some folk have had the earth screw come loose.

thanks everyone for your responses to date...
In detail - yes, I thought white smoke was unburnt diesel, but I'm not sure why...
I can check the turbo tomorrow, I'll let you know what I find...
Its my daily driver, so not using it is hard, but I'll try...
I have to take the rocker cover off in the near future so I can check the injector seals then, but I'll wait to do that until I have the new seals so I can replace them as I go...

Any further suggestions?

Just my 2 pesos worth, Bob

White smoke occurs when raw diesel comes through the exhaust completely intact and unburned. Some causes of this include

• Faulty or damaged injectors
• Incorrect injection timing (could be a worn timing gear or damaged crankshaft keyway).
• Low cylinder compression (eg caused by leaking or broken valves, piston ring sticking, cylinder and/or ring wear, or cylinder glaze)

When white smoke occurs at cold start, and then disappears as the engine warms up, the most common causes are fouling deposits around piston rings and/or cylinder glazing. Use of our Flushing Oil Concentrate and FTC Decarbonizer address these respective problems.
Water entering combustion spaces will also create white smoke. Faulty head gaskets and cracked cylinder heads or blocks are a common cause of water entry, and are often to blame. Unfortunately, expensive mechanical repair is the only proper solution here.

Originally Posted by bob10

Just my 2 pesos worth, Bob

White smoke occurs when raw diesel comes through the exhaust completely intact and unburned. Some causes of this include

• Faulty or damaged injectors
• Incorrect injection timing (could be a worn timing gear or damaged crankshaft keyway).
• Low cylinder compression (eg caused by leaking or broken valves, piston ring sticking, cylinder and/or ring wear, or cylinder glaze)

When white smoke occurs at cold start, and then disappears as the engine warms up, the most common causes are fouling deposits around piston rings and/or cylinder glazing. Use of our Flushing Oil Concentrate and FTC Decarbonizer address these respective problems.
Water entering combustion spaces will also create white smoke. Faulty head gaskets and cracked cylinder heads or blocks are a common cause of water entry, and are often to blame. Unfortunately, expensive mechanical repair is the only proper solution here.

Can I suggest that if you are going to copy text from another website (in this case costeffectivemaintenance), you should indicate / acknowledge where it came from.

Check your oil level as well. Mine did what yours was doing when the head cracked filled the sump with diesel.