Big smoke screen - then normal.

I was coming back from the store tonight on a stretch of Interstate where the speed limit is 70mph, so I'm sure I was doing at least that. While going up hill, and maintaining speed, a big plume of oil/smoke came out the back. The driver behind me swerved to the other lane. Since it was night I could not see it that well, but vision out the back window was pretty much blocked by blue/black smoke. I notice a little loss of power.

As quick as it came, it left, and the rest of the drive home was normal with no smoke and the car ran fine. I'll look at it in the morning, but am a little confused as to what would cause this?

The little Metro only has 328K miles on it - hardly broken in...

check air cleaner housing, sometimes when engine is worn and pcv is plugged it will pump some oil into air cleaner housing then into motor. if there is oil there replace pcv valve and make sure rubber hose to it is clear

PCV was change a little over 3K miles ago, but I'll check the hose and for excess oil in the air cleaner housing in the morning. Thanks.

PCV was change a little over 3K miles ago, but I'll check the hose and for excess oil in the air cleaner housing in the morning. Thanks.
Dont they all do this?

I think it's kind of normal to have a little bit of oil in the housing of an older engine where the oil has come up from the PVC hose. I seemed to have a one-time, large, sudden, blowby of oil somewhere.

Mine did that ,and the blown head gasket did not reveal itself for a couple of days.

I had the same thing happen even after the engine had been rebuilt. I seems to only happen when the engine is under a heavy load. I live in an area that has mountains. When woring the engine hard It's almost sure to happen. PCV is new compression is great. The oil must collect somewhere then get pulled through . It would be interisting to hear if anyone else knows whats going on here.

Interesting. My engine was also under heavy load at the time. Tune-up was just done, mileage is in the 45-50mpg range, and it runs fine.

Daylight check showed; no leaks, no oil in water, no water in oil, no smoke, runs fine.

What I did find was a lot of oil in the air cleaner housing. PCV and hose is clean. Looks like it somehow burped a cup of oil into the throttle when the engine was under heavy load. Under normal load, it doesn't do it.

Unless someone else has something else to check, I'll keep an eye on it and try to avoid heavy load situations where possible. Which makes perfect sense for a tired engine...