white smoke

sup guys i have a ???? my car throws out white smoke and no mechanic knows what itis. some people say its air/fuel ratio??? whats that and i think that it does it when my car needs an oil change or low on fuel ..im totally loss...can i get some help please!!!!!!!! thanks.....chris

i know black smoke is burning oil, blue smoke is running rich.. maybe white smoke is running lean..??
im not sure
1

Black Smoke is unburnt fuel and a sign of running rich

blueish/greyish smoke is oil smoke, means you are burning oil

white smoke is coolant being burned.

Check your coolant and oil, if they are both sludgy and grey you have a blown headgasket. If it is coolant smoke, then its the hg.

I would suggests getting down by the tailpipe and smelling it, you will know if its oil.

If it is oil, then you could have piston blow by, blown turbo oil seals, or leaky valve seals.

A compression test will tell you if its your piston rings.

If you have extremely high mileage on either your turbo or valve seals that is most likely the culprit.

Check some of this stuff out and get back to us

aww see you helped 2 people with one question.. thanks for clearing it up for me..
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My friend ahd the same problem.....he found out it was his headers...Have them checked out

thanks bro but my car runs perfectly fine it doesnt make any noise or anything so i guess it cant be as bad as a piston ring or a headgasket..thanks

the 420a's are notorius for blowing headgaskets, which cause a white smoke to pour out. I just recently blew a headgasket and i have white smoke coming out of the exhaust everytime i idle.... just check and replace :smokin:

okay but if i blew a gasket does the car run fine???

does it over heat at all? like does your car get really hot? thats another sign of a blown head gasket, other than that it shouldnt run to terribly bad, i wouldnt drive it though, when my head gasket blew antifreeze got into the cylinders which fryed my piston rings, man that sucked!!! my own fault though so i guess i had it coming!

no my car does not over heat at all....my car has nothing wrong with it (knock on wood) no leaks no nothing...HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!

First, excessive use of punctuation like !!!!!! and ??????????? is aggrevating as all hell. Second, your question has been answered at least 5 times in this thread, starting with AVES. A car can run fine with a bad HG. I drive on bad headgaskets for months at a time until I get off my lazy ass and change them. There is a 99% chance this is your head gasket. Turbo cars runa higher risk of blowing them because of high cylinder pressures, and early 2g non turbos are notorious for it, and there was a recall, or a TSB, not sure which, put out on the subject. Take it to the dealer, since it sounds like the mechanics you have been to are jackass.

And just a note on blown headgaskets. The HG seperates 4 different pressure systems. Atmosphere (0 psi relative to the other systems), oil system (20-100 psi), coolant system (14 psi), and combustion chamber (thousands of psi). The gasket can fail between any two of these systems, or more, and fluids of gasses will always move from high pressure to low pressure, just like everything else in this universe. For example, if the failure is between the oil system and cooling system, oil will move into the cooling system since oil pressure is higher. In some cases it can go the other way, if oil pressure is below 15 psi coolant pressure at idle ;) If the failure is between the coolant system and atmosphere, coolant will move from the cooling system, to the outside of the motor. Its entirely possible to have a bad HG and no mixing of coolant and oil, and no external leaks, while coolant is burned and passed as white smoke. Etc. You can figure out what will happen for all possible failures.

last question can it be the cat cuz i just have a st8 pipe no cat

last question can it be the cat cuz i just have a st8 pipe no cat

You lost me on this one. I'm assuming "st8 pipe" was supposed to be "str8 pipe" or some other clever internet version of a test pipe that replaces the cat. I dont see how it could be the cat if you dont have one. Maybe I'm not understanding your question, but it seems you answered it for yourself there :) Not trying to pick on you, just trying to get to the bottom of this. It seems you are in denial. There is a very good chance this is a head gasket, and while its not that bad a problem to have, you dont want to admit it. Time to take the car to a competent mechanic, perhaps mitsu/chrysler, to get this properly diagnosed. Over the internet, people arent going to be able to tell you anymore than we already have. Make sure you let us know what it turned out to be once you have it looked at. ;)

white smoke is a sign of burning coolent and thats a sign of a blown head gasket. if your mechanic cant tell you this,you are getting your car fixed in the wrong place.