I've recently purchased a 2002 Passat TDi Estate and am noticing a lot (and I do mean a lot) of blue/white smoke from the exhaust intermittently for the first 10 - 15 minutes of using the car. After this time the smoke goes away and it's fine. I'm not sure if this is temperature related and only doing it until the car gets up to normal temp or if oil is seeping into somewhere overnight or while parked up during the day and then taking 10 mins or so to burn off when I start using the car. It does seem worse when I go round corners and over speed bumps but I'm not sure which scenario that would indicate.

2 theories that have been suggested to me so far are worn valve stem seals (which I would have thought would cause it to smoke all the time) or a problem with the engine mixture set-up when cold but I can't find anyone to give me a definate cause or a price to fix.

It's not really a big issue, as the car runs fine and there is no power loss etc but it is embarrassing when people stop me from time to time to tell me that smoke is pouring out of the exhaust.

Any ideas or suggestions gratefully received.

 

Are you going through alot of oil? Does the smoke smell like antifreeze? If not your air/fuel mixture is probably off.

 

I am going through quite a bit of oil compared to my last 1996 90bhp TDi (which used to use virtually none) but I know that the newer 130bhp engines do use more oil, so I'm not sure what is considered excessive for this model.

 

I'd check for a vacuum leak first.

 

right,,most situations like this is caused by vacuum leaks..it happened to me before with my old car parts..