Coming home from the store tonight I decided to take the longer way and enjoy the nice evening. I hadn't stretched my cars legs for a while so coming up my road I accelerated normally, not full throttle and just let the engine spin up to 5500 rpm and then I costed up to the next stop sign. Sounded nice I thought, and then I looked in my rear view mirror and was horrified to see a white smoke screen that could have been left by James Bond's car. It was pretty bad. Now, the car doesn't burn oil, the level on the dipstick has literally not changed from when I put new oil in this January. I turned it off and started it back up, a puff of white smoke came out of the exhaust but that was it. Drove it around the block and didn't see any more white smoke, but I was too afraid to rev it up again. Side note, the engine seems to run great. I thought I was set for summer. What am I into?

 

White smoke is usually coolant...

BB.

 

white smoke isn't oil.
It's coolant. maybe a slight hole in headgasket that only lets water in when revved high? maybe oil spurted onto the exhaust? (oil burns white when lands on exhaust and blue when burnt in the engine.)

 

Check your oil to see if its a milkshake.. dont panic!! If it was just under a high throttle and not constantly- thats a good clue.

I'll let others post who will have more experience in this problem determination.

 

Well if it's coolant, let me add that the car has a slight coolant leak. After sitting for a night i'll come out to a couple of green drops under the front of the car. Hope it's related to that, and not a head gasket!!

 

See if you can find the source. It's possible, as was mentioned before, that the coolant is spraying on the manifold.

BB.

 

Well the thing is, when I started it back up, I saw the white smoke coming from the tail pipe. If it had sprayed on the manifold, it would come from the front.

 

If white smoke is coming out of the exhaust then there is no question that coolant is entering the combustion chamber. Like others said, it is probably the head gasket.

 

Check your plugs. When coolant enters the combustion chamber the plugs and pistons get "steam cleaned". Do compression and leak-down tests.

Find out where the coolant is leaking from. Check ALL hose clamps and remove the belt covers so you can see the water pump. You can run without the belt covers for a short time while you are investigating.

NOTE: Coolant and hydrocarbon contamination will shorten the life of the O2 sensor. If this turns out to be a leaking head gasket you will need to change the O2 sensor.

 

my uncles camaro did the same thing on night he was driving it and all of a sudden tons of white smoke was coming out so he parked it for a couple of days and now it is fine now white smoke. weird huh. but my guess would be u might have a pin hole somewhere in the headgasket but don't panic its not that hard of a job. i have been through 3 headgaskets on my car and installed another one on a friends p-car.

 

that could be an oil cooler seal too - see if there's oil in the coolant tank.

 

This is all you need:

 

Ha ha! yea that's all you need... No pesky head bolts to deal with...

I would suggest you don't drive the car until you have confirmed a good head gasket. If coolant reaches the cylinders and does the steam cleaning thing, lubricant to the cylinder wall gets cleaned away and scratched bores result (learned that one the hard way).

 

Well thanks for the help guys, but I think it's going to turn out to be the head gasket. I just pulled the oil cap off and it was milkshake city. Today the car started with no smoke, and at 4500 gave no smoke out the back, so I had my hopes up for a bit. Oh well that's life. How many hours labor will it take a shop to replace it?

Here are a few pictures, just for the experts to verify so I can have some peace of mind.

 

You should not be driving it.