Well, this smokey stink machine has developed a new kind of smoke. It smokes blue oil smoke when power is applied after decelerating down a hill in gear. Like a fairly significant cloud. I've tried a restricter in the turbo oil feed, but this did nothing. It does use a little oil, however its pretty livable, but the smoke pisses me off enough that I'll have to address it.
It acts like valve stem seals, but they only have 20k miles on them, and diesels never pull a vacuum, so I don't know if bad seals would manifest like this. The smoke is blue and smells just like burning oil.
I will probably end up planning another engine pull where I will add the 11mm injection pump, and carefully check over the internals. It still runs like a champ, and starts instantly with no drama.
It is possible that I have ring issues related to the engines past waste veggie oil use. I never pulled the pistons out of the bores, so I will likely have to do that just to take a look. At that point, I'll replace rings. Once a piston comes out of its bore, I think new rings should be installed and bores honed.
I wouldn't be surprised to find coked up oil control rings, but you would think I would have seen this right away, not 30k miles later after running only pump fuel and good oil.
I will check valve guides and seals and check for any head cracks or headgasket leaks.
In the meantime, I'm taking it on a 1000 mile trip this weekend. Starting a massive house project, so I'm not sure when this will happen. I'll probably just keep driving it and monitor. I hate to throw money at something when I can't really find the issue.
In the meantime, a really good quality TDI to toyota truck trans adapter finally hit the market yesterday, so I am loosely planning my next swap. Put the ALH from my jetta wagon into a clean 2wd, extended cab, early 90's toyota pickup. I will drive the jetta at least another year, maybe two until the body starts to rust through, but may try to acquire a truck and shotgun it across the county next year.