H. Miller

I just bought a used 98 C4S (993). Upon cold start I notice some blue smoke coming from exhaust. It doesn't smell abnormal (like oil burning) and it goes away after about 15-20 seconds.
My Porsche dealer says it's normal. Anyone experience this or have any ideas if something might be wrong?
Thanks.

Viken

It is normal. It is the little bit of oil that makes its way into the combustion chambers overnight and burns upon ignition. Nothing to worry about.

johnsopa

I purchased my '98 C2S (January 98 delivery) in August 2000 with just under two thousand miles on the odometer.

Occassionally, I would have the same blue smoke on startup. The engine simply wasn't broken in yet.

Best advice I received was to drive the car the way it was meant to be driven -- let the oil warm up and use the RPM band, throttle, etc.

Also, Steve of Rennsport suggested doing 12 full-throttle runs from 2k to redline in as high a gear as possible - each separated by a cooling down period. I did this at the track in 4th gear. This procedure removes the glazing in the cylinders that was due to *****-foot driving by the previous owner and helps seat the rings better.

With 12k mileage, I now have no oil smoke and much better oil consumption (1k miles per quart vs. 500k miles per quart at the beginning).

Hope this helps!

John

Robert Henriksen

I used to have huge clouds of blue smoke! Not every time, but especially if I was parked w. a tail wind, it was pretty wild sometimes. That was when the car had ~25,000 miles, mostly from previous owner. Once I started tracking the car, oil consumption went WAY down, and I haven't noticed any startup clouds in a year or more.

Ray Calvo

Have 58K on my '95; gets about 6K miles/qt. Still puffs occasionallly on initial start, esp. if haven't been driven for awhile.

David T.

I thought it was just me :-)

I have also noticed that on my used 27K car oil consumption went down after several track events!

Jim Sullivan

It's that Mobil One they insist on putting in Porsches when new. I was burning a quart every 800 miles until about 8,000 miles on my 97C2S(and smoking on startup). After 8K, the car doesn't burn a drop, nor does it smoke on startup.

More than one mechanic suggested that Mobil One was not the way to go for seating rings, etc. Of course, Porsche gets a TON of free advertising from Mobil.. they've got a big TV campaign going right now which sites P cars.

Tom T.

Same goes here. When I bought my late model 1995 with 27K miles, it used one quart per 1,000 miles. Now with a whole bunch of track time, I use less than half of that now. This tells me that the two previous owners babied the car, and that my engine is finally browen in at 38K miles.

Tom

Anir

Same here. Unlike Jim, my car still does it occasionally at 9,500 miles. Like Ray, I notice it most if the car has sat for a couple of days.

Jim Dingman

It must be my old car, they have all done the same. A little seems the norm.

However, I ran into a series of bad Mahle oil filters with defective check values. My car really bellowed blue smoke for about 10 minutes until warm, I was ready to replace the turbos and whatever, until it was pointed out that there are some defective oil filters out there.

Good luck

Jim