My car has developed a smokey exhaust, which is getting worse with time, so now the car is out of commission while I figure out what's going on. Either there is some kinda engine failure in the making at work, or my turbo is starting to fail an leak oil into the exhaust.

I have a TR-01 Compression Tester from Twister Rotor. I attempted to do a compression test but ran into a snag. My current battery is an undersized motorcycle sized battery. I don't know if it is capable to give enough juice to crank out accurate numbers for a compression test.

Does anyone know how to mathematically account for the battery? A long while back, I took the car to Mazda for a compression test with the stock battery, but the battery was aging and had been thrashed pretty good, and Mazda noted that the battery was underperforming and added a certain amount of PSI to my results to compensate. Does anyone know how to compensate like that?

My numbers are around 80 PSI compression @ 175 RPM. I believe a typical compression test has about a 250 RPM crank.

 

Are the numbers more or less balanced? You are really spinning it too slow. If they are, chances are you are ok. If one or more chambers is out of balance with the rest of them, then you have a problem. Why not just get a good new battery? You are going to ruin that motorcycle battery using it for a compression test.

 

Yeah, the numbers were pretty balanced for both rotors.

I was worried about ruining the battery as well, so I only tested 1 rotor at a time, and let it charge back up with a Battery Tender in between.

I was thinking the same thing myself, if the numbers were balanced, chances are its ok. The turbo is the more likely culprit in my mind. Guess I'll just unbolt that and have it looked at.

Thanks.

 

Just an update:

My turbo was the culprit. Have a new one built from Garrett Parts with water coooling, no more smoke from TurboRepair.com. Rebuilder said the old turbo was garbage and also showed signs of oil starvation, which raises the question of why did Esmeril bolt that small of a restrictor to the the turbo. He drilled out the restrictor to an appropriate size.