Loss of power under acceleration or load (hills), sizzling noise, loads of blue smoke

[someaudiguy]

Recently started driving my mom's old A4 B7. Almost immediately, I noticed that I was having trouble getting to speed or doing anything that resulted in the engine going above about 3200 RPM. If I try to accelerate too fast or if I'm trying to make it up a hill (and simply maintain speed) occasionally I will hear what sounds like a bunch of sizzling noises (think water hitting a hot skillet), I'll lose almost all power, and the car leaves a trail of blue smoke. In order to be able to get moving again, I need to get off the gas for a few seconds, let the smoke stop, and then very slowly try to get back to what I was doing.

I'm aware standard oil consumption for a B7 can run as low as a quart for every ~1500 miles. For this car, even with incredibly non-spirited driving, it's been going about a quart every 300 miles or so.


I looked for leaks around the valve cover gasket, and didn't see anything. I also don't see any major quantities of oil spilling out anywhere (there is a little bit around the oil fill cap, but it's pretty much contained to being right around the cap - there's none on the side of the engine.) My best guess is oil is leaking /somewhere/ and hitting the exhaust manifold.

Is there anything that is particularly likely to be causing this (vc gasket? PCV? hopefully not the turbo?)? I can't find anything about oil leaks this major, accompanied by a complete loss of power anywhere on the web, unfortunately. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated , as I'm relatively new at working on this car. No check engine lights/warning/service lights anywhere.

[RakkCity]

You’ll need to pull codes with VCDS to be sure, not all codes will trigger a CEL. You’re burning oil, no doubt about it. If it were hitting the exhaust you’d have more serous issues like smoke pouring out of your engine bay, so its going into the combustion chamber or exhaust. Question is how?

Could be your valve cover/PCV system, thats where I’d start. Pull the plugs and see if they’re coated with oil/carbon. If plugs are clean and valve cover has no leaks/cracks then it might be the seals in the turbo. If plugs look corroded and oil caked but valve cover and PCV didn’t fix it then your piston rings are probably shot.


Sent from my iPhone using Audizine mobile app

[pezgoon]

^ what he said

Also, how many miles on the car? If alot maybe it could also be carbon buildup? It most definitely could be the turbo on the way out and when it starts boosting its dumping oil into the system, how much smoke out the back? Like a tiny bit or like James bond is escaping a villain type cloud?

When the turbo seal failed in my Saab it had similar symptoms but was James bonding the entire highway, not really sure how those cars stayed on the road lol

[someaudiguy]

^ what he said

Also, how many miles on the car? If alot maybe it could also be carbon buildup? It most definitely could be the turbo on the way out and when it starts boosting its dumping oil into the system, how much smoke out the back? Like a tiny bit or like James bond is escaping a villain type cloud?

When the turbo seal failed in my Saab it had similar symptoms but was James bonding the entire highway, not really sure how those cars stayed on the road lol

It's got about 82k miles on it. And it's definitely some James Bond style smoke coming out the back, lol. I've accidentally smoked people while trying to (slowly) accecelerate from traffic lights and it's quite a sight to see. I was really hoping it wouldn't be something as pricy as the turbo. Is there any decent way to check the turbo? Or does it simply come down to checking most of the other stuff first (pcv, valve cover), and narrowing it down to the turbo being the root cause?

[hemantpd1]

Check compression first...if okay then diagnose further. In my case VC had crack... Changing VC solved smoking and power loss problem in my case...

[KJack]

I had the same issue. In my case the valve cover was cracked on the underside. A new valve cover fixed it.