1) I start car.
2) I DRIVE car.
3)I turn off car.
4) I turn off car, for 30 inutes or longer..
5) I come back to the car, and a "Puff" of "Smoke" ? comes out the tailpipe, and floats away lexactly like a baloon. I can sometimes see it through the back window, floating away.. sometimes i catch it as i run back to see.

Staring at the pipe, i hope i dont see a little drop of water!!!! .. if i did?

Then, i start the car and drive it. It runs good, with behavior i can best describe as "maybe one or more of the plugs is fouled it doesnt old an exact RPM all the time." Spark would be my guess, but its a wild wild guess based on me having a few cars, idl.

Head gasket?
Normal?



Going to the beach, in the car. Back later!

(And Maverick H1L im gonna go get that and do that when it cools. Might be a week or two, money just disappearswhen you work 16 HOURS and expect to live like you work 40.)

 

I know how you feel... Try being in the middle of a complete teardown and rebuild to have your job cut you from the $160 a week you had been making down to $105-115 with over $300 a month in bills. And then not even coming close to having half of the parts required to finish (still need half of the suspension components just to get the car back together with the OLD interior, yuck! and still missing several pieces of weatherstrip).

And, as I said before, that puff is probably the choke... I'm willing to bet it's black (the smoke). If it was a head gasket or severe oil control problem (rings or a crack somewhere), it would smoke ALL of the time either white or blue. Water drops in the exhaust is nothing to worry about. As I said in another post, water vapor is one of the byproducts of combustion. It condenses on cold exhaust pipes and gets blown out the tail as dirty water drops. Even brand new cars do this. Don't worry about the water drops.

 

Maverick, change "16 hours" to "12 hours." but yeah.. ive been living like a teenager the past two weeks, and if i cant "come to an understanding" with them, i do NOT need them. That simple.

On another update, we just drove the car two hours here in North FL on a "warm day(84 degrees, 60% humidity?) and it runs very smooth.. preliminary estimates put it at 15-16MPG with moderate/normal driving, including stop-and-go. 2 hours road time, about to be another half hour or so.

And im not worried about the puff. And it is not black. Its "grey" when it does happen.. and the last two times i started it, it didnt even do that. And when it does, it "wafts" away.

Now, in the morning.. ? (Condensation moreso i guess. I seem to have a large exhaust "surface area" and that hole, six inches away from oil pan.. i can crawl under the car and see steam coming from exhaust in that spot. Car runs pretty good!)

 

Again, don't worry about the smoke. It's excess fuel, caused by the choke blocking off the airflow to the intake, being burned in the cylinders.

 

Mine does the same thing. Most likley valve seals, these engines are known for that. After running HM oil and a bit of lucas it hardley does it anymore...

 

Mine does it too, I'm sure mine is valve seals. Just does it a little bit at startup depending on the slope that the car is parked on. Knocks down 22mpg round town and 32highway so mine can't be because of running rich.

 

i always hear the valve seals are the cause. mine does the same thing. from what i hear unless your doing a rebuild nothing to really worry about

 

.. appears to be! And it sometimes doesnt even do it at all! Then sometimes, its a puffin' on startup. Sometimes else it doesnt puff at all..

How does Lucas help that? I put some in, to be safe.

 

Yeah, valve seals are nothing to worry about. That little oil burn off you get on start up wont hurt anything...
Lucas makes the oil thicker, especially when the engines cold, so oil has a harder time draining down into the cylinder. HM oil conditions gaskets and makes them a little less dry and shrunken. I don't use much Lucas, probably like 1/3 bottle every oil change.