Ok, I have an '87 IROC with the 305 TPI. After running it fairly hard for a bit, and then parking and shutting it off, I'll get some white-ish smoke from the engine. Not sure exactly where it is coming from, somewhere under the intake I believe. It doesn't smell like anything in particular. Kinda like burning oil. The motor has 100k miles on it, so I guess it's possible something is leaking and burning off. Can anyone guess as to where this leak might be? Or could it possibly be some gunk on the engine just burning off and not a leak at all. I guess I'm just wondering if I should worry about this. Thanks guys.

 

Just hunt around for leaks. If anything I'd say its a valve cover leaking onto your header, pretty easy to fix if that's the case.

 

It's possible . I have spilled some oil on my engine before and it would smoke some . Before you start the car , look and see what you see in that area . Sounds like a small oil leak from somewhere

 

Thanks guys. I'll hunt down that leak after she gets out of the body shop. Some idiot rear-ended me at a light. Might be a blessing in disguise though, because it seems the rear bumper support was starting to rot away, so now I get a whole new one.

Oh, one more quick question. The car has stalled on me a few times recently. Just happens when I pull up to a stop sign or light. It idles ~500 and sometimes it'll drop just a bit below 500 and then die. Sometimes it'll just start right back up or sometimes it takes a min. A friend was thinking it might be the fuel filter. I thought it might be heat related as it has been really hot lately. The car isn't overheating tho, but the gauge is kinda wacky. Any thoughts on that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all your help so far.

 

You could just need a tune-up . When's the last time you had one ? Go out at night and pop your hood and see if you see any plugwires arcing out ...you will see a blue glow . It could be many things . But start with this . Could even have a leak in a vacumn hose .

 

Not sure when the last tune-up was. The guy I bought the car off of replaced all the plugs and wires recently. I've only owned the car for a couple weeks now. I'll check to see if they're arcing though. And I never thought about a vacuum leak. Any easy way to find it if there is one or should I just start replacing hoses that look a little flaky?

 

about the smoke, i had the same problem. tends to be embarassing when your at a stoplight and the smoke is being blown back by the electric fan. turns out that there is this little gasket under my distributor that went bad on me. oil was leaking out of there, dripping down and being blown back onto the catalytic converter. after driving it hard for a bit, crankcase pressure built up and the leak would get worse. check there. just my $.02

 

Thanks for the tip nasty_bird, I'll check there.

 

you said you had white smoke coming from under the hood right? you also said your car overheats? white smoke is consistant with coolant (oil smokes blue). try checking for a coolant leak.

 

ROTFLMAO Nasty_Bird, the same exact thing is happening to me. A small leak right below the distributor, dripping back onto the exhaust. Yeck yea it's embarassing, now I fear everytime I come to a stop light smoke is going to come out of the bottom.

 

Yeah it sucks. I put some high temp gasket sealer down there a week or so ago and it helped, but it still leaks. It doesn't smoke anymore though . If anyone else found a fix for this problem, let me know. Or i could deal with it for another 2 months until i put my new motor in.