Exhaust Smoke Question

[Scotty_Boxter_S]

hi again,

I just checked my levels and if anything they are on the High side, they are above the maximum mark the car is cool, in the manual it says when the car is cool the level
should be between the min/ max marks.

could too much coolant cause the smoke?

[Scotty_Boxter_S]

an addition to my last comment. (please read last comment)

the smoke is not there all the time, just every so often, I have been using the car in anger again today and I haven't seen anything. you said "a fluffy cloud that follows the car" do you mean if the smoke is there all the time?

the exhaust generally does not spit out smoke "white or otherwise" is has just been on the odd occasion.

thanks for all this advice guys, what a great forum!!

[Scotty_Boxter_S]

it done it again today, worse than ever, I keep checking my coolant levels but they do not drop at all, if this is a cylinder head gasket popped, wouldn't the collant level be dropping??

I am getting real worried now.

[RandallNeighbour]

Scotty, get it checked out... this way you won't be so worried and you'll know what's going on with your fine ride.

[ralegen]

How's your idle? My idle started to get worse and worse because I had a bad oil separator which was leaking a tremedous amount of oil into the throttle body and intake system. I would get misfire codes and what have you. I swapped the separator and cleaned out the throttle. Runs perfect now, and no more white smoke. Do a search on WHITE smoke. You should see a post where I uploaded some pictures.

[Scotty_Boxter_S]

ralegen,

my idle seems fine, I will keep a very close eye on this over the next couple of days, I have contacted my dealer and he says I could be lack of use, he has asked me to keep a very close eye on the coolant levels, and I will drop it into him later this week.

I will keep you posted guys.

thanks again.

[Scotty_Boxter_S]

Hi Again Ralegen,

I am looking at the pics on your other forum and this looks identical, did this only happen to you on start up, or did it happen whilst you were driving too?

I too get this at start up, but it seems worse every so often when I am giving it some gas.

[ralegen]

Only on start up. Someone suggested to disconnect the battery, reconnect and start the engine without revving it up. From what I've learned here, our boxsters will learn and compensate any problems. When I did this, my idle was all out of sync and my CEL started to flash. I freaked out and shut it off. I reset the car again (battery disconnect) and gave it some gas; this ultimately helped prevent my car from being immobile. After finding my problem, it makes perfect sense. It was like any person trying to inhale while water/mucous trickles down the trachea.

On a day to day basis, the white smoke got worse and worse. It started out intermittently present, but as time progressed, I undoubtly expected overcast of smog upon every startup. The only reason why I let it go for so long was because I accepted the fact that our engines will do this, due to position/design of our engines. However, knowing that I had an idle problem AND progressively worsening white smoke, I dove into fixing it myself. I only spent less than $150 for the parts and about 3-4 hours of my time. Saving a few hundred dollars and having the relief of that nightmare was well worth the time.