Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I totally didn't see this thread until JUST now!
This is indeed a serious concern my friend.
The turbo should ALWAYS be spinning. If it is not, then you have either a blockage or a dead bearing in the turbo. Blockage is not the case probably because you would have known - your engine would have already let you know with dangerous sounds and malfunction. I guess it could also be caused by lack of lubrication to the turbo, which on its own can be caused by a lot of things, in which case this would also result in dead bearing and/or busted seals.
With the car off, take off your intake filter if you have one, and spin the turbo by hand. How hard is it to turn the fins? Does it have shaft play in and out? Also, how much play does it have side-to-side? All turbos have teeennyyy amount of side-to-side play, but if it is significant that this is also bad. If this side-to-side play is the case, then you may have a bad turbo bearing and/or seal, causing it to get 'kinked' and jammed from too much sideways angle, but unjammed when you give it gas or drive. For mental imagery think of the static position of a top or gyroscope, then when force is applied it straightens out on its axis and spins uniformly.
As inconvenient as this sounds bro, do NOT drive with the turbo like this. You'd be better off taking it off and putting on a stock exhaust manifold. You risk damaging the internals of your engine if it goes off axis enough to cause the fins to break or the seals to completely bust out of there due to the resistance it is overcoming. That's where they will be getting sucked into, in pieces. It is my belief that the smoke is the seals burning when resistance is overcome or strain is put on even during normal idle. Oil would be a darker smoke, but then again it's difficult to tell - does the smoke smell like anything? Case in point, I wouldn't risk it because most likely this is the case. Turbo should ALWAYS be spinning very freely even at idle.
IIRC, you have been using a generic turbo right? Feel free to give me a call tomorrow man we can talk more about this. I'm passin out right now. Sorry to hear about this hiccup Monty! Hopefully we can figure something out.
- Nikita
