94 ford explorer with white smoke

I have a 94 ford explorer 4.oL v6 with 4 wheel drive after the fuel line had froze and i had managed to thaw it out,I added 2 bottles of heet the red bottle.and 3/4 of a tank of gas after about 30 minutes of driving it started blowing white smoke out the tail pipe I have checked the oil for water nothing it has not overheated although the radiator does have a leak the radiator does after turning the truck off boil back to the over flow bottle but has done that since i got it.I did notice what looked to be either water or tranny fluid in the overflow bottle.any suggestions on what might be the cause of the white smoke would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to the forum!

How much white smoke are you talking, a smoke screen cloud or just enough that you could see it from the rearview mirror? Did you smell the exhaust to see if it smelled like coolant? I'm curious what you noticed in your overflow tank, the water we have around here looks considerably different from tranny fluid.

-Rod

thanks for the welcome.at first start up it is normal white smoke after it warms up it is excessive filled the entire garage idoled rough then the smoke cleared and went to normal idol just went back forth like this the entire time i had it running which was about 20 minutes.as far as the stuff in the overflow it was either brown or redish to dark to tell but it didn't mix more or less floated and stuck to the sides of the overflow bottle.so really not sure as to waht it is just an educated guess.

One way to check for a head gasket leak is to pressurize the cooling system using a pump with a hose that has what looks like a radiator cap attached to it. Do not pressurize the system past the PSI rating on the radiator cap.

Remove the spark plugs and crank the engine. Check to see if coolant came out of any of the spark plug holes. The holes that have coolant in evidence are the ones where your gasket as failed.

i removed the plugs and cranked the engine i saw no coolant coming from the cylinders,also tried the pressure test and the only leak i found was the one in the radiator.I'm really at a loss here this truck is making no sense.

Since it filled the garage, the exhaust should have been thick enough you would have easily been able to smell coolant if the white was due to coolant. When you had the spark plugs out, how did they look? Did any have a greenish tint or look really clean?

Since your Explorer also idles rough, I suspect more that you have a misfire and the white exhaust is due to a rich condition (probably a bluish/white or gray exhaust). You might have a vacuum leak or misfire that's causing the rough idle, poor fuel economy (even though you don't mention this) and thick exhaust.

-Rod

when the exhaust filled the garage it didn't smell like coolant it smelled like raw gas.when i removed the spark plugs they looked normal,the plugs where not wet at all.did notice though out of the tail pipe little drops of water not radiator fluid i found this sort of strange considering that my radiator is full of antifreeze no water.when i started it up today took forever to start and times sounded like i had just sprayed ether into the cylinders.

Yeah, I don't think you have a head gasket issue. It sounds instead like either a misfire or vacuum leak.

-Rod