Hi everybody. My Neice ran her 2014 Encore completely out of oil with the oil light fully on for a few minutes to get home.
Refilled with oil - now the car runs real good on idle but smokes white oil smoke enough to make one think that there is a big fire in the neighborhood.
We replaced the turbocharger in order to eliminate that - it made no difference.
I removed the oil cap and there is a LOT of positive pressure.
Could it be that the pvc system is not working correctly? Should it stop smoking with the oil cap removed?
Should we suspect that it took the oil rings out?
It does have 140 psi compression per cylinder.
Any insight would be much appreciated.

Hi everybody. My Neice ran her 2014 Encore completely out of oil with the oil light fully on for a few minutes to get home.
Refilled with oil - now the car runs real good on idle but smokes white oil smoke enough to make one think that there is a big fire in the neighborhood.
We replaced the turbocharger in order to eliminate that - it made no difference.
I removed the oil cap and there is a LOT of positive pressure.
Could it be that the pvc system is not working correctly? Should it stop smoking with the oil cap removed?
Should we suspect that it took the oil rings out?
It does have 140 psi compression per cylinder.
Any insight would be much appreciated.

Merged duplicate threads.

Post #1 started this thread.

Post #2 was from another thread started a few minutes later.

Driving any distance with no oil pressure ruined stuff. We could diagnose what particular thing is ruined, but when we do we'll likely have the same resulting action necessary: Replace or overhaul the engine.

Newer engines like in any Buick Encore don't have anything extra in them to allow for getting away with a little damage here and there like many engines of 20+ years ago . . . and even 20+ years ago there wasn't anything that would not be permanently damaged by running for several minutes without oil pressure, let alone doing the work to propel the vehicle for several minutes.

If I had to guess, I'd suspect the rings are toast, and they probably took the cylinder walls with them. The old turbocharger is definitely toast, and now the new one likely is as well. Turbochargers can't be run without oil pressure for more than like a second. Oil is there to lubricate and cool since all of the hot exhaust gases are gong through it. Crank and cam bearings are likely trash if not already spun, cam lobes are probably scored up pretty bad, and the cam chain is probably stretched. Inside the oil pump might be the only part that might have had a chance of surviving this as it gets first dibs at the sump.

You need a new engine.