Burning oil Turbo bad??

[moe44688]

Hey guys, my 86 TI log motor is burning oil. I suspect the turbo, but before I spend the money to rebuild and swap in a new and of course bigger turbo, I want to make sure it actually is the turbo and not something else.

Long story short, car has been burning a little bit of oil for a while. I assumed the problem was coming from the head, so I swapped in a ported 782 head with all new seals etc etc. After the swap, motor was still burning oil. And it doesn't constantly burn oil, it will start after a minute from a cold start and usually stops by the time I get a mile down the road, but will randomly start to burn oil again at red lights/stops.

I checked all my plugs and they looked clean, I'll post pics. Also, my head is brand new. Did a compression test and compression is about 130 in all 4 cylinders.
After I checking the plugs, I decided that the oil is not burning in the cylinders. So I figured it could be the PCV or the turbo.
I read in a thread that to check if the PCV is clogged, I can put clean rag where the PCV goes on VC and run the car to see if it stops smoking. Didn't help at all. tried using a PCV from a TII car I had laying around just in case still burning oil

Motor also has some blow by.

[rampant150]

Try this:
Take the car out and warm it up, not scorching hot as you are going to be pulling plugs once it cools a bit. Burning oil smokes so pull out all of your plugs and check for smoke coming out of the holes. If only one hole is smoking, rotate the engine by hand and see if the smoke switches holes. If so it is pointing right at your turbo as the culprit.

[pauly_no_van]

I had a BADLY smoking motor after a head and turbo replacement.
Spark plugs were bone dry, and the turbo was known good.
It turned out that the new head had 2 exhaust valve stem seals that were completely up and off the guides.
I missed that putting head on motor.... :O
I think in your case its the turbo.

[cordes]

Will it burn oil when the motor is cold? If not I would suspect the turbo. They can come and go burning oil like that for a while before they finally let loose in my experience.

[turbovanman²]

When you had the head off, were the pistons evenly coated with carbon or clean at 12 and 6 oclock?

You can still have good compression and bad oil rings.