Rings or Turbo?

I have a 98 Passat 1.8L turbo that seems to be burning oil. Upon acceleration a puff of smoke is emitted from the exhaust. I also notice the car seems a bit smokey while idling.

In reading past threads I noticed that similar simptoms are associated with bad turbos. I've also had a friend tell me that the rings may be the problem. Can anyone suggest a way to troubleshoot the situation? Any help is greatly appreciated.

If white collor smoke--water leak, possibly through turbo. If grey smoke then it's oil and probably coming from rings. How many miles on your car, and does it has power?

The car has just over 100k miles on it. As for the smoke, it was a gray-blue. Since I've had the car it seems like the power has decreased. Also I'm getting some pretty low gas mileage, roughly 22-23 mpg, almost entirely on city driving. Thanks so much for your reply.

That mileage for city is only a couple off so it could be a number of things... low tire pressure, giving it more gas due to lack of power from compression loss, etc.

My suggestion would be to have someone do a compression test and compare the numbers to stock. If there is a significant difference then you can have a diagnosis done as to where the oil is being used up (turbo or rings) and then go from there...

Turbo

I ran a compression test this past weekend and each cylinder measured 180 psi within 5 psi. I ran the test on a cold engine. I'm thinking about running the same test on a warm engine to see if anything changes.

Now a days, the engines are made fairy well and they should go over 100k with no problem. Unless you did not change the oil or the car was sanding still for 10 years, I say your turbo is bad. Also, the oil needs to be 5w30 fully synthetic and also when you run car on high RPM then you need to let the car sit for awhile so the turbo winds down. Opposite of that is cause for turbo to fail.

Also, are you losing power on cold engine? How 'bout smoke on cold engine?