exhaust is starting to smell like coolant...I dunno if white smoke is spewing out or faint of it, I can't tell but someone has told me it has happened....


I wanna know if I have a leaking head gasket....I have had several people follow me and tell me its not smoking or whatnot, its getting on my nerves, but the exhaust does have a funny smell to it.


I replaced the EGR not too long ago, it smelled even worse when it was bad...


Someone, anyone please help.

 

Is the coolant level dropping?

If not then its not eating coolant...

 

well I dunno, the coolant is leaking, but it still has a good amount in there...I have no idea what it is, the only things I find funny in the car is that it misses at idle....

 

have you checked your oil for water/coolant? that'll tell you if the head gasket is leaking.

 

better to err on the side of caution and fix it before it destroys bearings. see if the oil is chocolate milky. check all the plugs and see if any are really clean looking which can indicate its getting "steam cleaned" by burning coolant

 

I checked the oil and I cant tell, I wanna know what I am looking for here, can someone post a pic of a chocolate milky brown oil


its sad I know, but I cant pay attention to these things close enough worth a damn....

 

you know what (new) oil out of the container looks like, right? if you have water in your oil, it's going to look like chocolate milk - no kidding. dang near the same color and consistency.

 

my oil has a streak of black, I cant tell really, its brown but not chocolate milk brown with a streak of black...

it doesnt make sense that it is black though considering the oil is prolly only about a month old and a little less than 2000 miles away from its next oil change....as I got it done last month....

 

How fresh is your tune-up?

 

list of things as of done today?

-New Autolite Platinum Tip Spark plugs
-New O2 sensor
-Brand New EGR valve, new vacuum solenoid
-New Polyurethane Tranny mount
-Air Filter replaced
-Entire Cooling System changed May 05' (includes, new hoses, new thermostat, new radiator, new radiator fan)


Thats about it, I have yet to check the wires as I am afraid to do so in a darkened garage because of the car exhaust (it just doesnt smell normal, it never did, compared to my previous car the exhaust gas was hardly noticeable, however on the Camaro it is noticeable, mechanic friend says it smells like coolant)

Am in a tight spot, need to know whats up with the car......

EDIT: I was suspecting that maybe a bad cat converter could be causing the commotion. I dont know, the cat looks pretty used, and I did pass AZ emmissions with it recently. But whenever I am driving I hear a clunking sound from the passenger area where the cat converter is stationed, which leads me to suspect the cat converter could be at fault...is this a possiblity

 

please, I really need help diagnosing this problem guys, it is my daily driver and its the only set of wheels I have. The car has been going through on and off problems lately due to the lazy *** owner before me who didn't care to maintain it...

 

Ok man. Look at a milkshake! Now look at your dipstick. Does it look like milkshake??? IF not than youre fine. If it looks like milkshake than don't drive the car.
Do you smoke on start up???
If you do check to see if you are smoking white or blue. I smoked white and it wasn't the headgasket, but its a good indicator.

Also, make sure sometimes the heater hoses can leak at the firewall and drop down on headers/manifold and it would smell like coolant.

Locate your leak. IF you can't than there might your problem.

It sounds like your headgasket might be out, but make sure your oil does not look like MILK SHAKE, LITTERALLY!
Take your dipstick out and look at it, ahhhh milkshake!!! If not than we need to look elseware.

 

Chocolate milkshake!

 

again oil is new oil color with streak of black, I am gonna take it into the shop tomorrow, it becomes a pain in the *** knowing nothing about diagnosing your cars, once I know the problem I can figure it out easily.


But what about my spaz at idle, it is not consistent, it doesnt ever so often at a stop light it is noticeable...and if the oil is not chocolate milk colored then why is there that funny coolant smell...I wanna punch friend in the face on a daily basis cause he is always nitpicking and telling me my car is running like ***...

After I had spent x amount of money to fix it up...

The car seeps coolant out through the upper radiator hose, the one that connects to the block just below the air filter housing thats where it seeps coolant, I tightened the hose clamp, inspected for any deteroirating spots on the hose nothing there shouldnt be anything wrong with it, its not even 6 months old...I dunno if the hose clamp thing worked or not yet, but I will say this much, I definitely had alot more coolant than I do now, I cant remember the last time I filled up on coolant...its not empty or anything it still has a good amount in it...

I know I am retarded when it comes to diagnostics, thats why I hate going to shops and paying 800 bucks to tell me "oh yeah 5 dollar fix, poop done"

I just wanna get this car back up and running, again the only drive problem I have is the idle issue, it just spazzes simply put, there is no other way to describe it...idle speed remains steady but the car just spazzes...


Again wanna punch friend in the face...

 

Ok buddy. So, I belive that your smell is the coolant being burned on the engine. If its leaking its gonna burn. On ur oil, take a picture of your dipstick and post it here. Black streak somehow does not sound right...
Also if its leaking from the hose than a clamp, or a new clamp should do the job. If not than inspect whats up with your thermostat and housing.
I'd hate to see you spend money on a shop trying to figure out whats wrong. Cuz you know they will tell you ten different things that are wrong, but only one is truly wrong.

Do you overheat!?!?
Run hot??

 

does this smoking occur only on start-up, or is it consistent, at least for a few minutes? if it's only on start-up, smells like ***, is kinda' grayish in color, and your oil looks good, and you don't seem to be using any coolant, then... it could probably be your valve stem seals. yes, that will ruin an O2 sensor, and oh, by the way, will eventually ruin your cat converter, but sounds like it already has. that rattling you hear is from it coming apart inside and if the car is running rough, attribute that to the crap in the converter blocking the exhaust. how many miles on the car? also, if it is your valve seals, do yourself a favor and don't just replace the cat cuz you'll be doing it again. fix the valve seals.

 

no overheating, car runs at normal temperature. Car has 111k miles on it.


I dunno, the black streak could mean I need new oil....I have no idea...we'll find out.

EDIT: Smoking is only on start ups, friend says it happens when I am driving too, to make sure I got another friend to drive behind me and much to my surprise he said there's nothing coming out of the exhaust...I looked at it from behind driving as well and nothing is coming out....

 

Warm your car up. THen let it sit for a few hours to cool down. Get someone else to start it, while you sit near the exhaust. Look for any "odd" color to your exhaust at startup. Also, the smell is a good indicator as well. If it is sickly sweet smelling, and IMMEDIATELY burns your eyes, chances are you are burning coolant.

White smoke=coolant
Blue smoke=oil.

 

OK, go do that.....

Now that that's out of the way:

You gotta figure out if it's burning coolant, or not. Doesn't matter if you think it's hard to do that, or what; but you MUST do that first.

What will happen otherwise is, you'll take the car to the shop, and you'll say something about "I think my car is losing coolant", and they'll ask you why you think that, and all you'll be able to tell them is, "My friend with the fresh black eye says my car runs terrible".

Not real convincing.

So, they will promptly use their finely-tuned "repair shop" X-ray vision, and examine your wallet (including your available demand deposits such as checking account) while you're not looking; and they will write up a quote that will EXACTLY DRAIN your wallet, within a couple of dollars.

Don't laugh, I've seen people who can do that.

Then, when you get your car back, depending on how much money they saw, the car might or might not do anything any different than it did before.

I think we can move on past the coolant-in-the-oil thing. What that does to oil, is SO OBVIOUS, that anyone who has ever seen used oil before, will IMMEDIATELY recognize that what you'd have is something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from normal used motor oil.

It's extremely difficult to tell about burning coolant by any method other than smell, because there's always water in normal exhaust anyway (it's the single largest product of combustion, there's even more water produced by burning gasoline than there is carbon dioxide). You need to SMELL your exhaust..... carefully... so that you don't poison yourself.... and compare it to a "known good" car. Like maybe, the kid with the broken nose, no doubt his car is perfect. Right? Yeah sure.

Now, if the car is burning coolant, it can be caused by either a cracked casting (head, block, or intake manifold); or a bad head gasket; or a bad intake gasket.

Let's look at those 3 possibilities. Start with a cracked casting. If it's a crack in the block or in the head, a small amount of water will leak into the cylinder; but, a HUGE amount of combustion will leak the other way. Water pressure = 15 psi more or less, combustion pressure = 1000 psi more or less. Which way is stuff going to move? Right. Check your cooling system for the presence of exhaust.... because if a leak is severe enough to leak water IN in sufficient amounts to affect how the engine runs, it's also going to leak combustion OUT, from the cylinder to the cooling system, far worse. People actually have hoses and radiators explode from this when it happens suddenly.

If there's no exhaust, odds are, it's not a cracked casting.

Same for the head gasket. A leak there will produce EXACTLY the same results as a casting crack. So, if your cooling system isn't full of exhaust products, you don't have either of those problems.

Your intake manifold has water passages RIGHT NEXT TO 4 of the intake runners. Therefore, if the intake gasket fails (as it often does), it is possible for it to leak water into the intake manifold; which will cause the engine to burn coolant, but NOT leak exhaust into the cooling system

Approach it logically, and patiently, with intelligence and reason; and once you've broken your friend's jaw, you'll be in the right frame of mind to troubleshoot it.

 

If theirs no exhaust start the car


You should easily be able to identify contaminated oil, even if you dont know what your looking for.

 

In the coolant

 

could be an intake gasket...ive had that happen before and it ran like ****. again take the plugs out after running it and see if any of them look like they are all clean. they should be a light brownish color, if theyre really clean looking than youre probably getting water and coolant in there which is steam cleaning the plugs.

 

They way we found it on my buddies 90 Chevy P/U 350 TBI was to observe the coolant in the radiator, with the engine running & the cap off. We found a continuous stream of small bubbles, almost foam like. It turned out to be the left side head gasket burned through between cyls 3 & 5. There was no real smell or steam from the exhaust, only a persistent knock when accelerating from a stop. I have also seen some mechanics use an exhaust gas analyzer probe into the filler neck to detect CO & HC (exhaust gas components).

 

Took it to a friend today to have him check it out...he said he doesn't find any symptoms in the car leading to a bad head gasket, the oil looked normal he couldn't see smoke from the exhaust in revving...


He said that the exhaust did smell didn't smell right though...when I revved it, it smells bad but not like coolant. he suspects a bad cat. converter to be the mastermind of all this but he checked the oil and found no deposits of coolant at all....

 

So no MILKSHAKE . Thats very good!

If it was a headgasket I bet there would be some smokey problems which you don't have.
Its hard to tell now... but I am thinking that the cat could do that kind of crap, but it usually smells bad, and quite predoiminant.

Bad smelling exhaust could be few things.
Bad cat
Running rich
headgasket
valve seals
a rodent stuck in there
something dripping on the pipes..

Do you have a problem with your performance? no pun intended.
Is everything going like it should again no pun intended.

If so I would check the cat instead of replacing it, and check your mufflers too.

Usually something dripping on the exhaust can cause it to smell and throw a curveball on everything.

Good luck.

 

Friend says the car smells like its running rich, I replaced the O2 sensor not too long ago, my average mpg is almost 16 and I have been driving softly....I heard TBI cars get up to like 18-20mpg

The car smells funny when you rev it, it doesnt smell like antifreeze or anything, just smells rotten simply put.

I dunno how TBI cars are supposed to drive, when I got the car it wasn't running very good, I fixed alot of the problems it had at first and drove better with each time (I especially noticed a huge improvement of when I replaced the EGR valve and stuff)

But yeah, my friend says everything checks out ok...he suggested that i changed out my distributor rotor and cap because I only got new plugs that was it, the rotor and cap could be what is causing the spasm the car has at idle..

btw, is it okay to mix orange coolant with green coolant? I mistakenly bought the wrong kind
and was wondering if it would do any harm to the car to add the orange and green coolant together. Friend says its ok to add a little water to top off the coolant tank but should the water be hot or cold or what....

 

I would just add water, hot/cold your choice...

I believe theirs some sort of chemical reaction (not good ) when you mix the green and orange A/F.

 

don't mix green and orange, orange will build up sluge after awhile. I have changed out all my orange cars to date.

ROTTEN EGG SMELL??? usally means bad cat. cats are only good far about 80,000 miles on the older pre-ODB II cars.
But why did it go bad? Age? running rich is a VERY common and probaly the #1 reason they go bad prematurely. Ask how I know!! ;-) LOL!
O2 sensors or dirty injectors are the most liekly cause. Also the coolant temp sensor if bad, can register cold when it it actually hot causing the engine to run rich and have poor gas mailage. Is you check engine light on? Even if it is off, check your codes.

FYI-There is a de-orderizer that you can buy that you put in the gas to help relieve the odor.

good luck
Steve

 

I am pretty sure its a stock cat, I mean its been dented and scraped because the car sits so low...I also hear a clunking noise over bumpy roads near passenger area which coincidentally is where....bumpity bump! My cat converter is!


Hurray!!!! Maybe this is a good thing as I have been eyeing a new cat converter for awhile...the car is 15 years old and it is nearing 112k miles on it...

 

put a good hi flow cat on there and enjoy!

 

I am pretty sure we can agree on the cat being the culprit. Change it with a highflow one and you will see the performance go up immensly.
You clankety clank, does it happen when you drive from idle or does it clank while idling.

If it clancks when you give it gas from idleing than its possible that you need a new tranny mount.

If it clanks while idling it could be the exhaust, but most likely its you air tube. A little tube that comes from the cat and it runs to the exhaust manifolds.

You need to find out why you are running rich. It might be that some of your sensors, and maybe bad igniton parts are doing the trick.
What you need to do is cap and rotor. From my experience just get the normal AC delco, and don't even worry about the high performance crap. It messed my car up..
Than, if your car starts hard you might wanna see you CTS. CTS is a sensor on the manifold that tells your computer the temperature of the coolant thus allowing for computer to callibrate. If you don't have problems starting than it might not be the problem.
Bad CTS usually makes the car run rich because the ECM thinks its awfully cold outside.
Check your pluggs for fouling too!
If this does not help make sure you find out why you are running rich.
Check your sensors, and there is a how to in the tech articles on this website.
If not the sensors, check your FPR, fuel preassure regulator to see if its damaged at all. Any little bubbles or tears on it, its ready to be replaced.

Watch when you get that cat off, and either straight pipe it or get the high flow cat, the car would wake up like you never thought possible.
Do the tune up and check for what I wrote previously and you will **** your pants my friend.

Now I just need to find what the hell is wrong with my car. Probably the fuel pump, but with no tester arround its hard to tell.

 

no not tranny mount I replaced the mount with an Energy Suspension Polyurethane last Thursday and it works great, definitely not the mount, it only clanks over bumpy roads...

O2 sensor is fairly new, I changed it prolly 3k miles ago, not too long ago...it just smells like, not strong pure gasoline gas, but just unburnt rotten gas I wanna say....kinda hard to explain it, its definitely not a sweet smell, its more like a gag I wanna choke smell...

I'll prolly do a high flow cat, maybe magnaflow style I have no idea yet, is running a straight pipe through the cat. converter a bad idea or does it do wonders for the car?

We will see how it all turns out, I am looking for some cat. converters now....plugs are new also, changed them about a month after I got the car...

 

so I just basically found out today that I am like colorblind....


I am burning oil not coolant the smoke on startup is actually light blue and I mistakenly took it for white smoke....

It makes sense though, because my oil level has always been dropping and consuming faster than it should....

This is a valve seals problem, and it reassures me that its a common problem with 3rd gen cars as they age...here I was thinking it was head gasket...

Anyways yay today was the day it ever smoked the most, 3 startups in a row ROCK ON!

It usually doesn't do it very often at all, I'll be sure to get that fixed but, in the Haynes manual there's nothing on replacing valve seals which means this might be a handyman's work, how hard is it? I know where they are....

And I am pretty sure I have the necessary tools as I have a garage full of tools and I just bought a spiffy new tool set

Wow I am dumb...

 

91ChevyRS, hows that work coming?
I also have a 91 RS. It has 106,000 miles.
My car's exhuast also smells nasty. It smokes white smoke (unless I'm also colorblind ) at startup, but goes away.
Its getting colder here (sub 30), and the smoke stays with the car a little longer and is a lot more smoke than usual, but it does eventually go away.
Anyone think I have a valve stem issue?
How much is that to get done at a shop?

I want to do a catback, maybe a new cat will also be a good idea.