White smoke (lots) from exhaust?
 

Had a huge amount of smoke from the exhaust appear during a skidpad exercise. Had done 3 ten lap trials of the clockwise pad, when I did my first lap of the counterclockwise pad there was a lot of smoke from the exhaust. I shut her down. When started 15 minutes later some smoke came out and there was a strange ticking engine sound, shut it down immediately and had it flatbedded to mechanic who looked it over and found no problem. He thought it might have been some oil in the manifold that occured because of an oil vapor separator problem the previous owner had. Does this sound possible or probable? Needless to say this is not how I expected my first DE event to go. Really enjoyed the throttle steer on the skidpad while it lasted.

coachb
New 986 owner (7 weeks)
1997 Ocean blue, gray interior, black top
53,000 miles

hard to say. i can tell you, though, that when my oil separator failed, the lifters would tick after running hard. basically, the oil can foam a bit and the lifters sag, creating excessive valve clearance. i replaced the oil separator, changed the oil, and have not had any problems.

on another note, if the smoke was BRIGHT white, it could have been coolant. the overflow tank and overflow tube are on the passenger side by the rear wheel. it's possible that it kacked some coolant onto your exhaust.

This is a personal opinion that I'm sure will be contested, but I think the "instructors" that required you to run ten-lap circuits of a skid pad in one direction in a car that basically has a wet sump oiling system should at least be figuratively horse-whipped, and maybe thereafter run out of town on a Miata.
It sounds to me like you have been the victim of the ol' debbil centrifugal force, which had the effect of sloshing the oil god-knows-where, but a good portion of it ended up in the combustion chambers, resulting in all the smoke.
Hopefully the examination that showed no damage was accurate. It could easily have been a lot worse.

Sure hope you are right, sounds like what my mechanic said could have happened. I was sure expecting worse.

coachb

oh god....i read that wrong. they actually had you do ten laps of a skidpad....three times in a row......in the same direction???

no joke. just hope the oil deluge on one side didn't correspond with total starvation on the other.....

That is a lot of laps. I wanted to chuck after one lap on the skid pad. I can fly aerobatics all day long...but lateral g's give me the mini vomits.

As pointed out above, usually when we are talking WHITE smoke, some coolant has made its way into the combustion process.

Normally, this is not good!

Definitely an Oil Separator issue. No Biggie...Replace if neccessary and enjoy the ride :)

No biggie? Why is it something easy to fix? Please let me know because I've noticed that I've been getting a huge amount of white smoke every start up. The car usually needs to sit for atleast 2 hours before I see it again. But every time I start it up. PooF.. It's freakin embarressing!

Dude,

Turn the frown upside down...marinate a brisket, put it behind the pipes and make a picnic out of it. What do you think the ladies want huh? I ride around the skid pad in the mystery smokin' machine or a nice marinated smoked brisket with white bread and pickles? Damn, I should be Dr. Phil...who else has a problem they want me to fix.

Run a search on PPBB.COM or RENNTECH. There was a thread that explained the whole Oil Separator replacement(with pics) in detail. The Oil separator will run you around $120-150 from the dealer. Its a relatively simple R&R job. Just remember that the car would still smoke for SEVERAL minutes after the replacement bec. it will burn off the oil left in the system.

$80 from sunset imports