B757 Smoke Trails

[eyeinthesky]

Watching a Thomas Cook 757 (forget the reg) take off from Salzburg the other week, I noticed that the left engine was emitting a smoke trail whilst the right was not. It was not an excessive trail, just noticeable that there was nothing from the other one.

What would cause one engine to make more smoke than the other? I imagine that anything in the fuel wouls affect them both.

[expedite_climb]

Was it the left engine ?

[seat 0A]

probably just chemtrails:}

[Virginia Plane]

Don't know for sure but could it be the difference between a phase 2 combustor on one side and a phase 5 on the other?

[Golden Rivet]

Probably just a high time engine. Not unusual.

[Noah Zark.]

Still got the choke out!
(This possibly may only be understood by lovers of older motor vehicles!) :D

[av8boy]

Nonsense. The choke controlls both engines at the same time. Anyway, I think all them newer 75s are either injected or have the automatic choke.

Prolly a bad ring.

Dave

[expedite_climb]

eyeinthesky,

Okay, I didnt RTFQ.

Sensible answers are as VP says it could have two different phase engines. (At least one TCX aircraft has this).

Other possibility is, both engines are identical, but of course are mounted at different angles to the horizontal due to dihedral. The net result is it is not unsual to see an aircraft with less oil qty in the left than the right.

Whilts this may be the answer, I'm not overly convincing myself, didnt think it'd be that obvious on t/o. Have seen it smoking on the ground after shutdown though, particularly if it had been recently topped up.

[eyeinthesky]

Thanks for the replies. I hadn't considered that the engines could actually be different.

I must confess I watched it disappear into the cloud and half-wondered whether it would reappear because the right engine wasn't working... But then I couldn't see any major rudder deflection.

Thanks for the info.

[*Lancer*]

At least it wasn't that perpetually playing up number 2 engine again!

Maybe it had just had an oil change and was burning a bit of the excess...

[Volume]

Maybe the left engine was a diesel ?

[Noah Zark.]

Don't think so. Eyeinthesky didn't say anything about it sounding like a can of marbles rattling when it went past! :p

[747FOCAL]

one engine was probably operating at a higher temp than the other.