Everytime I start my car I have alot of white smoke coming out of my tailpipe. This is just extra oil buring off right? Well I belive it is my head gasket. How do I replace this and is it easy?

 

oil smoke is bluish and smells. white smoke is either water, or atf fluid.

If your headgasket was bad and water was getting into the cylinders that could cause this. Also it could just be some bad gas with water in it.

Sometimes if you let the car sit for a long time it will have water condensed into numerous systems and take a while to burn out.

As for an easy fix....? you'll have to find out exactly is causing the smoke first...

 

Cool thanks for the help.

 

White smoke only on startup sounds like bad valve seals to me.

Do you have other symptoms that would lead you to believe it has a bad head gasket??

Sounds common from what I've read on this board. Valve seals can be changed without pulling heads, but I've never tried it myself. I'd just pull both heads, get a valve job at a machine shop, and have teflon seals installed. I think it cost an extra 50 bucks total in machining for them, but it's worth it!

 

whoa....where do you get bad valve seals? if the seals were bad he'd be getting blue smoke from too much oil getting into the cylinder.

 

I really don't know where you get this "BLUE" smoke stuff at. When oil burns, especially on a cold engine, it will appear much more WHITE than anything thing else.

I see countless cars on the highway smoking white. I suppose they ALL have cracked blocks or blown head gaskets right?

His topic even stated...BURNING OIL!.. He must be adding oil too I would imagine, or at least maybe he SMELLS it when he starts it!

If water was leaking into the cylinders, 99% of the time, it will smoke whether cold or hot constantly, along with rough idle, missing, and water dribbling from the tail pipe. Not to mention water in the oil. If the oil is light tan or milky...then I would say you have a blown head gasket!

 

i've never seen an engine burning oil that turned out white somehow. a lot of the time when a headgasket is bad on a cold startup water will get into there UNTIL the engine warms up and the metal and gasket expand to seal the hole.

or it could just be bad gas or such, take a few classes bud...

 

I agree with RJR99SS oil buring is blue no matter if is cold or not. white smoke could be that if the air is cool the exhaust is hot and it condenses this would be a thin white smoke. if it is thick it is probably a head gasket.

 

I would ALMOST take offense to that if your reply wasn't so moronic.

I might agree with your Master Technician response about water in the fuel, although his car would run like sh**t constantly. But you don't know that.

Could be the theory about the self-sealing only when warm head gasket. Figure the odds.



I will agree, that if it's smoking blue after the car is warm, it's probably oil. But, you don't know that.

There are tests for these things. Radiator pressure tests, compression checks both dry and wet.

Bottom line here is this....Get as much info on the problem as you can before you tell anyone to "Take a few classes". After all, I didn't discount anything you said.

Why even bother.....

 

well i got a master's in automotive engineering. and every car that was burning oil i've ever seen was blue....and usually on startup.

i'd comment on your other superstitions but you dont seem to understand the concept of attaching meaning to your sentances. but believe what you want, fine sure burning oil smoke is white now, great. i'm going to bed...

 

 

also, if the head agasket was blown, then wouldn't the cooling system become pressurized and force all the coolent out of the engine....? Our Ford Contour did this....

 

First of all I didn't mean to start a war. LOL

Second, no the cooling system is fine.

Third I can't really tell the color of the smoke because of the tint on the windows, but it does it really bad on a cold start and very little if at all on a warm start. I do have to add oil to my car, but nt as much as I would think from all of the smoke That comes out.

 

A little bit of oil makes a whole lot of smoke. Touch your headers a bit before you install them and you'll see this. Motor oil burns blue, but can appear white if it doesn't have a good background to recognize the blue tint. If you have to add a bit of oil, and your car smokes at startup..well you just found the problem.

 

I used to have an '87 Formula with an LG4. The automatic choke and the carb were messed up. Everytime i started it in the morning, it would belch white smoke out the exhaust. The smoke was definately unburnt fuel vapor, not oil, because the smoke smelled strongly of gasoline. It didn't seem to have an oil-burning problem, so....

 

Burning oil= Blue smoke. Trust me on this my car blows out a cloud of BLUE smoke on start-up because of bad valve seals. The smoke is blue on cold mornings and on hot days. It has never came out white, always blue and stinky.

 

Ok.. didn't wanna say this.. but..
my car burns oil and its due to the vavles every morning or whenever it smokes blue and has a smell somewhat.. if i start my car when its kind of cold it comes out blue then the natural white smoke follows till the engine gets warmer.. so pretty much if its blue its oil.. white is head gasket, radiator related,

 

white smoke = condinsation, water or my tires spinning
blue smoke = any oil under it's combuston point
black smoke = any oil above it's combuston point (ever see a car running REAL rich) also if you spin the tires too long in one place and the rubber catches fire it burns black and leves a nasty stain on your lower quaterpanels
just some of what I was taught in fireschool (I was fire dept. befor I joined the USAF) and info baced on firsthand knowlage

 

Gm issued a TSB with regard to this. They describe blueish white smoke at startup. This is almost every time bad valve seals. They have a service kit available at any dealer to correct this. It incorporates a positive valve seal and a different insert. If you have a bad head gasket I would be surprised and you would know it fairly quickly. Coolant in the oil is easy to spot.

 

I hope we're all better now...

RJR / Confused 1 - lighten up a bit. Yes, oil smoke generally appears to have a blue tint in good natural ultraviolet lighting (that's how it gets the BLUE tint, from the UV refraction). It can also appear more white than blue in some lighting, and when mixed with atmospheric moisture in our "lovely" midwestern humidity.
Couple that with the limited information presented and the filtering of the rear window tint, and we have a good recipe for "flame stew".

Regardless, I would expect a little more understanding and interpretive intuition from two people with your collective experiences. I've found that the accounts and descriptions offered in chat rooms and bulletin boards aren't always 100% accurate. We all have to read between the lines at times to get the true meaning.

I'd expect that from someone who has invested the effort and years to earn a master's, and a fellow cheeser, especially Navy.

We need everyone's input to remain what we have become here. Let's save the generous helpings of "flame stew" for the ricers...