Smoke in the rearview..

[SeeJay]

Took the R3 out for a good,long 40-mile leg stretch this afternoon,and all was well until a couple of miles from home..downshifted to 2nd for a mini-island,and noticed 'commotion' in the mirror - a great gout of blue smoke,which took a few seconds to clear

No loss of power,no ominous mechanical noises,no CEL and the motor didn't seem to be struggling to stay running,but I pulled over and killed it anyway.

My first thought was oil burp,even though these are pretty much unlikely on the S2,and there was no sign in the engine bay of any oil being where it shouldn't.

Since I was so close to home,I gave it 10 minutes and fired her back up,which she did so immediately as normal,and still sounded the same as usual,so got it home and shut down again.

Went out a few minutes ago to see wether she'd fire up after standing for 3½ hours,and once again all seemed okay..no sign of any smoke and no unusual noises,and linked up Torque to check for any 'pending' codes - all clear.

I'm out all day tomorrow in the Swift,so Sunday will be the 'litmus' test on the 50-mile round trip to my local Thoresby Hall show

[kopite72]

Strange one that, did you have a look in the air box to see if there was any oil Chris? Any MAF contamination? You weren't covering hard prior to it happening?

All the usual questions I know but have to be asked I guess....

[warpc0il]

I suspect it was a minor oil burp, just not enough to cause any critical contamination to the MAF.

While R3 have a slightly revised engine breather layout they're not immune to burps, especially if the oil level is a touch high and you drop a cog and go for it.

The most common scenarios are overtakes and joining the motorway up a fairly short slip road.

Sometimes the smoke appears during the acceleration but often it's just as you lift off after.

It would be worth inspecting and planning to clean the MAF anyway, as just diesel smoke from the traffic ahead can reduce performance over time/miles, let alone burpage.
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=36391

[BigPete]

The revived set up means in goes straight into the lower intake, so you won't see any in the airbox

[New Duke]

Does that mean the excess oil goes directly into the engine, burns up and makes smoke. But otherwise no big deal?

[casey]

Yep, that's the idea. I had the revised breather setup installed for free by Mazda on my 2004 car as there was a TSB issued about it, waaaaay back.

Oddly enough, it was designed to reduce the appearnace of "Milky substance on oil level gauge"!

MILKY SUBSTANCE ON OIL LEVEL GAUGE (DIPSTICK).pdf

[warpc0il]

There's a difference between the later S1 arrangement, as also retrofitted under that Service Bulletin, and the R3 plumbing.

The SB said it was to reduced condensate but the main reason was because dealer monkeys were using pumped oil to refill/top-up the engines and the cold oil under pressure was backing up in the filler neck and running into the breather.

Mazda had previously issued a service instruction warning about this and telling dealers to fill more slowly - which the dealers ignored.

Sent from my SM-G800F using Tapatalk

[SeeJay]

So,pulled the Simota off this morning,and not a trace of oil,so if it was a burp,then the revised system evidently did it's job by dumping the regurgitated oil back into the LIM

The round trip to Thoresby went without a hitch,and the car is running as well as ever,so this 'burp' was a first for me

[Dr. FrankenRex]

As above, oil burps can happen in the R3 and it is still best to keep oil level between 1/4 and 3/4 on the dipstick (in my experience at least) to minimise. As also specified above, oil doesn't seem to make its way in to the air filter on mine