Hey all.

I have a 1991 GTA w/ a TPI 350. On start up, I get white smoke. Most ppl say its the oil and that blue/grey almost looks like white. But, my oil pressure gauge hasn't gone down. (Only put 2,000 miles on the car since the last change.) I did, however, have the car checked out by the dealer before running it, and they said all the fluids were good. Well, before the winter hit, I noticed my coolant level was low and a lot of rust build up in the reserve tank. I had my local mechanic flush it with some special treatment and refill it. Is it possible I do have a coolant leak and not a problem with the oil gaskets?

I really need to get it checked out by a mech. It'll probably happen when I have them install my sub-frame connectors.

Thanks!
Bill

 

Smoke like that on startups are common for these cars. Usually bad valve stem seal. My 350 was like that. To change those the valves have to disassembled and new seals installed. Cheap part expensive labor costs. I recommend just putting up with it. Mine drove fine after it did it for 40k+ miles after I bought it.

 

Thanks fireturd350!

Did you ever need to prematurely refill the oil? Can this harm the engine? Any chance it's coolant?

Thanks!
Bill

 

I checked it from time to time, but I never really noticed loses. Imagine it's just oil burn off from it sitting over night.

If it was coolant you would know it. We had a bonneville blow an intake gasket while the car was running and it filled the hole up with antifreeze and stopped the motor. I recently just blew out a intake gasket on my 3.1L cutlass and it filled the crankcase with 2 gallons of coolant.

 

It's oil, valve stem seals as previously mentioned. If it were coolant, you'd be seeing a whole lot of white smoke while running it.

As it sits over night, oil that didn't drain back to the pan seeps down the valve stems, past the cracked and worn valve stem seals, and collects on the intake valves, once you start it up, the valves open, and all that residual oil makes its way into the combustion chamber and poof, smoke on start up.

If there were coolant making it's way to the chamber, what little bit of coolant would be seeping there, would be magnified probably 100 fold once you started the engine and actually got the coolant circulationg and pressurized. Thus you would see white smoke while you ran the engine.

 

Thanks again guys! I'm glad to hear its not the coolant. I guess the rust is from something else.

Yea, the local mech wants big $$$ to replace the seals. Maybe I'll just leave it alone until I get perfomance heads or something. I just really hope it isn't harming the engine or performance or anything.

 

The rust is corrosion in the cooling system. Normal (not good, just normal) for cooling systems this old.

 

Does anything need to be replaced? Or did the flush do the trick? I still notice rust residue in my resevior. Also, the plastic looks yellow, so I'll eventually get it replaced so it looks purdier!

 

Regular flushing (with water) only gets out the loose crap and whatnot. Most parts stores sell flushing additives (chemical flush) that will take care of the corrosion. Not sure what your mechanic used. Might want to try and find out.

Back in the day when I still had the factory overflow bottle, I did something to it, bleached it I think (I'd say do a search, but that don't work particularly well at the moment), got it REAL white and clean again.