dbrians

Never seen this before. My 09 C4S has 28k miles. Changed the oil last week - piece of cake on the .2 cars - and made sure the oil level was nearly full w/o being over-filled. I've never seen any blue smoke from my car - ever. Ran an errand, parked the car for 60 mins, started it up again and, wow, tons of blue smoke. Enough to think 'my car's on fire'. Still in the parking lot, pulled over and shut 'er down. Got out to walk around to the back - blue smoke still dribbling out the tailpipes. Restarted the car, got some more blue smoke for 15 seconds, then no more smoking so I drove home.

Guys, what's going on? Of course I've heard of prev generations blowing blue smoke at start-up, but I've never seen smoke then yesterday enough to think 'I'm on fire' or 'My motor just exploded'. Your thoughts?

mdrums

How many quarts of oil did use actually use?

dbrians

I added 7.5 liters

kyrocks

My GT3 does this all the time, but my '09 C4S never does it. Must be related to oil change and temporary.

GSIRM3

My 2012 GTS did this today for the first time at about 1,600 miles. I never saw it on my two previous 997.1 3.8 cars. I guess I won't worry about it unless it continues, since many people report this as happening. By the way, mine still has the factory oil in it, and it is not overfilled.

petee1997

This not uncommon. I am on my 6th new Porsche and most of them have made a big cloud of smoke occasionally. I remember asking the dealership about it and was told it is normal.

alexb76

I believe you over-filled. Next time, fill ONLY upto one line before full... drive it for a while, monitor the oil level and if it goes down, add more oil.

Mike in CA

This may seem like a silly question but did you remove the filter while the drain plug was out of the sump? If you pull the drain plug, drain the oil, then replace the plug before loosening or removing the filter housing, a significant amount of oil will remain trapped in the top of the engine due to vacuum. At which point adding a full 7.5 liters could overfill it. Just a thought......

CodeRed

Is it true that the boxer engine just blows off oil that is stuck in head thus causing the blue smoke syndrome?

Mike in CA

I've owned 3 911's and a Boxster S. I've never noticed the blue smoke syndrome; for sure nothing like what the OP described.

CodeRed

It happens on my GTS

dbrians

OP here. Responding to oil change sequence - yes, I had both the drain plug and the oil filter housing out at the same time. Here's a curiosity - it happened again though not as much blue smoke as the first time. I had driven 10 mins to a park where I run - and I parked in the exact same spot on the side of the road. The shoulder is sloped enough for the R wheels to be 8-10" lower than the L wheels. And there it sat for an hour until I restarted and saw the smoke. I park in this exact spot every time - and the smoke happened twice out of 6 times. Any reason why parking on a side hill would have anything to do with blowing blue smoke upon start-up?

BHMav8r

Happened to my 964 - and nothing to do with an oil change or top off.

Scared the hell out of me at first, thought something had broken somewhere between the compression chamber and the case/heads.

Copious light blue/white smoke for about 3 minutes slowly fading to normal. Hasnt happened since - no unusual oil useage. WTF?

ralt12

I pulled a friend's '94 Speedster out of long-term storage and you would not have believed the amount of smoke that came out of it when we finally put a new battery in it. But it did clear up, and the dealer told us that it wasn't unusual, so we went ahead and ran it until the smoke stopped (checking oil during the process...). A one-time event for the car.

vexed

First, I don't think you overfilled it. When I do an oil change I pour about 7.5 ltrs back in and top off from there. As far as parking on an incline I do think it has something to do with it but I don't have a good technical explanation. My former parking stall at my office was sloped such that the drivers side of the car was lower than the passengers side. I would on occasion get blue smoke on start up at the end of the day after the car had sat for 10+ hours. I assumed oil was pooling on the lower side but that was my half baked guess.