Blue-ish smoke on start-up. HDI 110.

[MrYesNo]

Hello everyone. First of all, please excuse my ignorance - this is my first post on a car forum, and my knowledge of cars is patchy.
I recently bought a 406 HDI with 216,000 miles for £495. Someone crashed into my old Mitsubishi and I needed a new car immediately. Despite the high miles, the car runs beautifully, seems to have been properly looked after, and had 12months MOT with no advisories - but no history, just a single MOT certificate which also showed that the car had done only 4000 miles in the last 5 years. Two weeks later, I realised the clutch was slipping, so replaced that and the fly-wheel for £600. Perhaps a false economy buying such a car in the first place?

Anyway, when I start the car after it's been sitting overnight. I get a lot of blue-ish smoke out of the exhaust for about 20-seconds. If I rev the engine up to around 2000rpm, the smoke is gone in about 5 seconds. But it is quite a big cloud of smoke that comes out. The bottom of the intercooler is covered in oil.

I've checked for engine fault-codes using my phone and a bluetooth OBD2 adaptor, and it says there's a fault with the glow-plugs.

So I'm wondering: is the blue smoke just due to faulty glow-plugs? Or are the oil seals knackered on the turbo? The car's oil-level hasn't gone down since I bought the car 3 months ago.

If the turbo is knackered, is it worth replacing it on such a high-mileage car? As I said, it runs beautifully and seems on the surface to be in good nick. The OBD2 thing tells me I'm getting 15 psi boost from the turbo, and the car pulls very well, feels almost like new and does great MPG.

One other thing... when I open the oil-filler cap, there's a fair amount of air chugging out of there when the engine is idling (blow-by?). But even when the blue smoke is pouring out of the exhaust, all I get is clean air coming from the oil-filler cap -no smoke, and almost no air at all if I rev the engine. So does this indicate that the piston-rings are worn? If the engine is worn, I'm inclined not to spend money on a new turbo, if indeed the car needs it.

Does the car need a new turbo? How much does a new turbo normally cost including fitting anyway? Is it worth spending money on such a high mileage car? Was I an idiot to spend £600 on a new clutch and flywheel? Should I ditch my lovely 406?

Sorry for so many questions. I'd be grateful for any thoughts on this. Thanks!!!!

[trufflehunt]

Immediate not particularly technical thought.

Live with it for now, to at least get some value out of that £600 clutch.
And mull over whether you really like it enough to spend any more on it.
At £495, by normal calculations, you're well in to banger territory.

Definition of sucessfully runing a cheap car is that you're not constantly
underneath the bonnet, and it isn't bleeding you dry.

MIne cost, 18 months ago, almost exactly what you paid. It's had a lot more than
that put into it since then.

(Blue smoke in the morning, valve stem oil seals. You can run it forever like that).

[Doggy]

The reported glowplug fault is very common on HDi's and most owners just ignore it - if it starts every time and idles reasonably after starting you're not going to gain anything from work on the glowplugs. My well be a false alarm anyway.

So long as you've no significant oil consumption, I wouldn't worry about it.

Oily intercoolers are all too common, a few have proven to be leaky, but messy ones that run OK are pretty typical.

[jasper5]

As Doggy said, i wouldn't worry about a bit of oil smoke at 216,000 miles, it's to be expected really.

You could invest £40 in a set of glow plugs just to eliminate them from the situation if you were so inclined.