Pajero Owners Club of South Africa

I have had a problem for quite some time with black smoke on acceleration. Took my vehicle to 2 dealerships and was referred to Udel in Stellenbosch. On their recommendation the EGR sensor was replaced at a burning price. The smoke problem continued. To cut a long story short, we with the help of one of the dealerships discovered that the reason for the smoke was Synthetic oil. I did a oil change on one occasion with a non branded service station and must have replaced the normal 15W 40 multi-grade oil with a synthetic oil. Hope this can help someone else!

Hi JMB,

Thanks for the heads-up, but are you sure of the solution. Your symptom sounded more like over fueling and it is difficult to blame full synthetic oil for that.

Must agree with Roelf. Black smoke is bad combustion of diesel - too much diesel or too little air. Oil smoke is blue. You would have something really bad going wrong if you could see oil smoke. A good synthetic from a reputable company is fine.

I am not technical, but after a long process of two different Mitsubishi dealerships who could not diagnose the problem, it happend that at the last service with Mitsubishi, I provided the oil (synthetic) and on arrival the car was smoking (black) on acceleration. More specifically when cold. The moment they changed the oil the problem disappeared. The service manager confirmed that he spoke to Mitsubishi "headoffice" who confirmed.

What was the synthetic engine oil you used?