Hi all,

Sitting in a long line up (about 1.5 hours)...smelled burning oil....assumed it was the Chrysler in front of me.. ;-) .

Finally get through the lineup and as I accelerate away...huge plumes of blue smoke come from the tail pipe...

Clears up after about 1 minute of driving..(accelerating hard didn't increase the amount of smoke) and it didn't do it again...?

Car is a 97 855R with 104K miles. It uses about 1.5 quarts every 3k miles...synthetic Mobil 15-50...

Recently replaced plugs and they were very clean...

Other times..when I occasionally floor the car it will spew black/brown smoke for a bit and then clear up...only does this once in a while...after I clean it out...no problems...

So....can I assume the seals on the turbo are going? (or gone?)...since the plugs are generally clean.?

(more questions)....

One thing I did notice that it has done since we have owned it..(72K miles)...on start up in the morning it spits...black carbon out of the tail pipe..and the pipe is very sooty looking...seems also to burn off a lot of water too (definitely white smoke...)..and the coolant level doesn't drop so I don't suspect any probs there...Do Volvo's in general generate lots of moisture?

Thanks in advance for you help...

Tom
midlman@seanet.com
97 855R 104K