Any suggestions would be much appreciated

[echo_artemis]

Hi. I have a 1995 Saturn SL1 with 300,000 miles on it. It has been a really good car. Right now it seems to have some serious problems. Although, I am pleased with the cars performance and feel that I have gotten my moneys worth out of the car, it would be best if the car could remain in service for a while longer. It's leaking oil with oil stains on the driveway and requires additional oil between oil changes. I'm getting about 100 miles less per tank of gas then previously. When I had it in for service, they told me the clutch is going out although it hasn't caused difficulties yet. It occassionally smokes. I've only noticed smoking while sitting at a stoplight idling and driving downhill breaking for a stop sign. Any suggestions?

[Onimacus]

what color is the smoke

[echo_artemis]

I googled on the internet regarding exhaust smoke and found that there is a difference between white, blue and black exhaust smoke. It happens pretty rarely and I have been trying to look to see what color I would say it is. It seems like it is light grey. I suppose, if I had to pick between the three (white, blue, black), I would say white.

I have a few other car things that I don't know if they are related:

• Last Wednesday, at 9pm after sitting for a couple of hours, the car wouldn't start. Nothing. No clicks or anything. Thursday evening, I got my car jumped and the person that jumped it said it looked like I had never changed the battery. I said I had never had trouble with it. The car started and I took it to Autozone and had them check the battery. They can only check the starter if you take it out of the car but they said if you jump it and it starts the starter is ok. It turned out to be a bad battery. Well, the battery had started to leak onto one of the posts so they replaced the posts too. They were also amazed that I had a factory battery and the car is 11 years old.
  
• The car's airconditioner isn't cooling properly so I bought one of those recharge kits and read the directions carefully. I read the directions in my Saturn Repair Manual on the section for charging the airconditioner carefully. I tried to charge the airconditioner in the car and the meter went to red which indicates that my system has a problem other than low refrigerant. I have to go get that checked out too.
  
• I'm at 3,000 miles on this oil change and due to get the oil changed.
  

[XxPurpleHazexX]

White/GRay smoke can be from a couple of reasons from what I have experienced. I am no expert but this is the causes I have seen.

Too much oil - this caused my friends Nissan to smoke ALOT.

Blow head gasket or piston. Water/Coolant gets mixed in with the oil causing the smoke - this caused my Buick to die.

[saturnspeed_12]

a whitish grey smoke can be from oil, but only if it gets into the exhaust without being burned as in bad valve stem seals on the ehxaust side. white smoke is coolant being burned.

about gas mileage, its hard to say with that age. its typically a bad coolant sensor that causes that much of a difference. but could be plugs, bad wires (probably feel a misfire or something), egr, several things.

now about the air conditioning, that thing you bought is no good. the gauge will read well into the red when the system is fine. those little a/c recharge quick kits dont work, you need the actual cans and the a/c manifold for recharging. your system sounds like it just needs a recharge if it was well pressurized (into red on that cheap kit). itll cost like $90, but a shop can do it quick, the cans alone are like $30 and depending on how much the system needs in it, you can look towards $60 for the freon alone.