Blue smoke on start up
 

I got in my 2000 Boxster (52,000 miles) today and when I started it up it blew out some Blue smoke. It was enough to definately grab your attention. I have only owned the car for 2 months. I have never seen smoke come out the exhaust at any time before. I posted on this forum before because when I first got the car it threw a CEL on me and the readout was p1128 and 91130, rich fuel limit. I reset the light and it came back again. I then did a reboot by disconnecting the battery. I have been driving now for 3 weeks and it has not come back on.

I understand that the Boxster engine is know to blow blue smoke at startup, so this may be nothing to worry about.

My question is, if the CEL is reset, i assume that it will go off again if it detects a problem as before? Would there be another reason for the Blue Smoke?

With all the problems I read about on this forum, you can't help but worry about anything that happens ouside the norm.

I did take a 50 mile spin after the smoke and the car ran very well.

Thanks for any input.

Blue smoke=burned oil

If it's a puff at start up, most likely, you only ran the car for a very short time the last time it was started.

If it's more than just a puff, the next most common culprit is the AOS. You can check this by unscrewing your oil cap while the car is running. If it's really hard to get off, there's more vacuum in the crank case than there should be and the AOS needs replacement.

there's a difference between "more than a puff" and an AOS failure. blue is certainly right - it's burning off oil. but is that because there was oil left over from the last run or the AOS is failing?

if it looks like something that you'd see from a james bond car, then certainly i'd suspect an AOS failure.

just "resetting" the CEL does not fix the problem it was having. do the oil cap test, that's a good way to check.

I had this issue a few days ago. The car would smoke for about 5 seconds every time I started it. The longer it sat without being started, then more smoke came out.

I did the oil cap test and determined it was the AOS.

I replaced the AOS yesterday. It wasn't fun but it feels good to have done it myself. Plus, I probably saved myself $400 if not more.

This is the car's way of telling you to drive it faster and harder.

MY 04 does the Puff the Magic Dragon bit after my wife putts around town doing the
errand trips. It does no such thing after my "spirited" driving. If it does so after said
driving, then I would suspect a soon to be failing AOS.

Happy Boxstering! :)

Report on Comments
 

Thanks for all the comments.

I did run the car for only a about 10 seconds (pulled it in the garage after pushing it back).

Hopefully that is all it is. I will keep an eye on things and if the AOS needs to be done then so be it.

I'll keep all informed.

From what I can tell from my own experience and what I've gathered from other comments, this almost always is the source of the infamous puff at start-up.

Mine's exactly the same... the car must be started up from cold, ran for just a short while (moving out of driveway to wash car). If it sits there at least overnight (even if combined with another short drive back up the driveway)... the next start will be a smokey one.

I'd replaced my 10 yr old aos as part of preventive mantenance and it makes no difference to the abovementioned "recipe" for a smokey start.

After every long drive, the car starts up from cold without the smokey start....

My car is totally predictable when it comes to smokey cold starts. The amount of smoke is quite alarming (and embarrassing...) - one large puff, enough to fill my driveway with blue smoke. My neighbours have long stopped running over to warn me about the smoke... ha ha..

I;ve always wondered... since everyone attributes this smokey start issue to the design of the horizontal cylinders.... why doesn't this this problem occur on the subaru wrx boxer engine or the alfa boxer engines ?? I never had a "smoking" problem with those engines. And I was using thinner engine oils with those engines (am on 5/50w now on the boxster).

My WRX doesn't seem to do it either. It's probably a combination of the H engine and the oiling system that work together to cause this. Other H engines don't dump as much oil into the cylinder at start-up.