willr

Has anyone experienced a brief but large cloud of white smoke after starting a warm engine? Apart from that, smoke disappears after a few seconds and engine runs fine and no CEL light.
It sounds like the oil separator issues noted for 986 Boxsters, but I haven't seen any reports of 987/Cayman owners seeing this...

mooty

i dont know if that's the oil separator issue. i see that in my C2, C4s, and cayman. i have over 6k track miles on the C2, 20k total on both c2 and 20k total c4s, none of them ever had to have anythign repaired or replace.

the white smoke bomb issue is random, sometimes it smokes, sometimes it doesn't.

willr

Hi Mooty. Strange thing is that the Cayman never smoked until yesterday, when I restarted it about 40 mins after some gentle sighting laps. The engine was warm and I hadn't nailed the throttle or the corners. Suddenly it produced a huge cloud of white smoke - at first I thought it must be another car! Since then restarted about 10 times and it has repeated it about 5 times. Doesn't seem right to have started this after nearly 10,000 miles of perfect operation.
I'm used to seeing a little smoke after leaving the 996 overnight, but never had this on the Cayman. Oil guage showing maximum still (maybe this is the problem too - overfill?), and no apparent oil leak.

pstoppani

As far as I can tell, all Porsche's have done this since the beginning of time. My experience is that it happens most just after an oil change and the oil is overfilled a bit too much.

mooty

willr, wow, you got 10k miles, more than me!!! i am at 8500 miles.
i had big white smoke bomb only once on cayman, i parked it in garage overnight, the next morning big smoke. but he car drives the same, then never happend again.

bet

If it was oil wouldn't the smoke be bluish versus white? Just a question. My 986 did this occasionally.

gt3cup98

I had this happen after we had over filled the oil a little. I have also been told that this will happen if the car hits the rev limiter alot.
Boyd

willr

well, i guess it is slightly blue in comparison to the normal white steam that you get from water vapour in the exhast. Anyway, I'm taking it for a checkup and will ask the garage to drain some oil out

Paul Marangoni

It's never happened to my car...

David A

the dry sump is very different from the GT3.Only a GT3 does not have any oil starvation problems.That's why even the new 3.8 is not in a CUP car.

willr

Did anyone expect it to be a GT3? I don't think this problem is related to dry sump or oil starvation - most likely the opposite - too much oil!

willr

Well the garage couldn't find anything wrong, but they said that they've let a little oil out of the car now. It's still showing max on the guage - I had hoped they might drop it another bar. Anyway, will see what happens at the 2 trackdays I've got planned for next week...

Ernie J

Big White Smoke, The oil separator is too small. High revs and backing off the throttle causes this. We at MantisSport have been fighting this issue since the first race at Sebring. This month we will have solution. Oil separator, larger and replumbed hose routing. Crankcase breather is just too small and located in the wrong postion for draining back into the block. Ernie

johnw3d

This happened to me at a recent GGR/DE track day at ButtonWillow. Second lap of the first run, coming out of 13 onto pit straight and there's this huge plume of blue smoke in the rearview mirror that cleared quickly. There was no repeat of the smoke for the rest of the day, *but* from then on the engine would not rev past 6K or so. It would pull as strongly as ever up to 6000 or 6250 and then start coughing and spluttering. No engine check lights, coolant temp just over 175, even had someone with an OBD diagnostic unit check for problems but none showed up. I drove the rest of the day short-shifting at 6K and still was close to the top of my run group (!!). It still won't rev past 6K, even just sitting still in the driveway, so it's not PSM-related.

I have it booked in for service, will report what they find. Does anyone here have any thoughts on what might be causing this?

CosmosC4S

I was doing a search and came to this thread. Is there any follow up on the above issues?

I've had my first white smoke encounter today. Scared the **** out of me!
I thought I blew the head gasket or the engine!
Strange thing is, engine was smooth as ever, pull was strong, not even a hiccup at any point.
I was with a friend testing the car and was pushing it hard, flooring it now and then whenever the situation allows. Then at one end of the road, we made a hard u-turn and immediately floored it...

That's when we first noticed the huge cloud of smoke in the rear view mirror.
Stepped on the gas and another cloud.
So we took it easy and when we were at my driveway, I opened the engine hood,
no smell of burning oil, engine was idling smooth, exhaust was smooth with no smoke.
Stepped on the gas a second, and a small puff of white smoke shot out of the exhaust pipes.

Other than the smoke, everything seems normal. Oil on dipstick is around max level.
Should I worry about anything, or should I have it checked out?
I just don't want to waste time and money to take the car in for nothing if this is normal.

Oh, another thing...on a tiptronic, if the engine is running with no load on neutral...
if you step on the gas, will the engine rev up past 4k rpm?
I tried doing that and it hiccups a sec at 3.5k rpm, then stops at 4k rpm.
Is this normal for tiptronics, or is it related to the smoke issue?
It revs fine in gear though.

Thanks All!