My wife noticed that occasionally when I accelerate hard there is a puff of smoke from the exhaust of my 2.0 Tdi DSG Octy 2. Car has done 7,000 miles and runs faultlessly, added approx 3/4 ltr oil since new.

Anyone else noticed this?

Black smoke?

Its a diesel you know yeah?

My wife says it looks black - I haven't noticed it but I thought that with all the suppression equipment on modern diesels that it wasn't supposed to "smoke". Or am I being anal?

It's gotta go somewhere.

That's normal mate........ be very careful not to overfill with oil as a few people have reported using lots of oil, and it turned out it was due to overfilling, which make the engine get rid of the excess oil quicker to avoid oil pressure problems. They then keep putting more and more oil in thinking it is actually 'using' oil.

The Octavia 2 as yet doesnt have particulate filters. It is coming though,

I have been warned to be careful adding oil. I have to say that I find "reading" the dipstick very difficult, the first time I added oil the level (after sitting overnight) was clearly in the "add" sector defined in the handbook. It then seemed to be all over the place with the two bobbles on the dip stick sometimes both being oily and at other times the level was close to the bottom bobble.

Has anyone a fool pfoof way of reading the dip stick?

Nothing to worry about Expatman. This is a characteristic of diesels.

Watch the exhaust pipe of any diesel undergoing sudden acceleration after steady cruising etc. There will more than likely be a moderate amount of black smoke, perhaps a small cloud of the stuff if the driver is 'going for it'.

If you read the dipstick at night using a torch, the oil is easier to see on the dipstick.

Normal, expent more smoke in hot weather too.