Smoke/exhaust coming through vents/hood from CP-E downpipe at idle

[Armyguy1104]

My CP-E came with the cat. Either way because I have an exhaust leak at the engine, smoke comes from under the hood as well as out the back. So before AND after the cat, there is smoke. Cat does nothing to eliminate the smoke.

I have the highflow cat as well, but that is just one, and way less restrictive. The stock exhaust had two cats plus mufflers that made the smoke less noticeable. You may want to check the bolts though, I went up there today and talked to the tech, he said he checked it for me and noticed the threading on one of them had been completely stripped from the install. He said they are only meant for one time use and when you remove them you have to put new ones in, not sure if that will help you.

 

[steefnap]

You might laugh at this one. I picked up the car after a full day of having it there. They basically told me that there was no fault found. They could not reproduce the smoke, and didn't see any sort of exhaust leak.

The technician's explanation was that usually when they ship components like the TBE (pipes, etc) they use some sort of coating to prevent it from rusting during transport/storage. This takes time to "burn off" apparently, so the smoke will go away in time. I asked for specifics on the nature of the coating and they could not give me any.

When I picked up my car, it had the exact same mileage on the odometer, so they didn't even do a road test. They just revved it on the hoist and didn't produce smoke. Would turbo really even kick in that much if there were no power going to the wheels?

Anyways, my internal air vents are still taking in exhaust/smoke when I use fresh air mode, so I will have to go back to recirc mode for cabin air.

It's good that I kept that appt. at the other dealership I deal with. So all in all, I am out a 1/2 hour of diagnostic charges ($60-ish... not under warranty) to get absolutely nothing fixed.

 

[steefnap]

I brought my car in to a second Mazda dealer yesterday. I explained the issues at hand, and I actually let the car run in their service bay for a minute to let it smoke up real nice.

Turns out... I NEED A NEW TURBO! It appears that the turbo was LEAKING OIL into the pipes. Imagine that! Anyways I had a good chuckle after I left the place. They are ordering in a turbo from the States and it should be here in a week or so. All under warranty too. They said that the smoke coming from under the hood should be fixed when they replace the turbo as well, so we will see. Maybe it is not an exhaust leak like I thought, but I'm not sure how else I would be taking in fumes into the passenger compartment if there wasn't one.

One point of contention however... after I picked up my car and drove it home, it felt like I lost a LOT of power! The butt-dyno tells me about 50-70 HP! It doesn't have the pull it did before. I asked the service guy what their tech did. He said all he did was pull off the TMIC and then put it back on. What could be resulting in such a huge loss of power? Some sort of vaccuum leak somewhere?

 

[Averia]

Unlike other cars I notice on fresh air mode the vent lets in a LOT of engine heat. I'm used to cars drawing pretty much ambient air temp in fresh air mode.

This would explain the smoke in the cabin as the fresh air intake to the vent seems to be drawn across the engine much more than "normal"

 

[steefnap]

New turbo installed. They fixed the boost problem that happened after them removed the TMIC to inspect the problem. I have my power back, no smoke, and it sounds great too. It has pull all over the power band, in any gear, and I love it.

Next on the way is lowering springs and shocks...

 

[Armyguy1104]

Turns out mine wasnt the turbo , but the engine. Couple of the cylinders were leaking oil, the dealership got the ok to replace the engine and should be done early next week.

 

[steefnap]

New engine?? Ouch... well at least it's all under warranty. I was surprised that I did not have to pay anything either. They did replace the gasket between the downpipe and the motor, which they could easily say was caused by the DP installation... but the service guy said "We'll do it under warranty this time, I won't tell Mazda that you have aftermarket parts." So that was cool.

 

[Armyguy1104]

Yea these guys are cool too, I had to get a bolt rethreaded because they stripped it on the DP installation. I guess the mazda rep didnt care about the DP or just used common sense know that it couldnt have cause internal engine damage like that.