I start the sludge application a little while ago. I finished the first 1250 miles and replace the oil filter. 300 miles later I'm now seeing white smoke from the exhaust.
It appears my head gasket is gone, but this only appeared after 1600 miles into Auto-RX sludge application. I have had this car for nearly 30000 miles and it is at 100416 miles.
I seriously doubt it. ARX has no impact on gasket materials, especially metal ones. Perhaps the head gasket was the cause of sludging in the first place. Is there any sign of either oil in the coolant or visa versa?
Just came back from the mechanic this morning. They didn't see any smoke. They said I had good engine compression. No gasket leak and no coolant leak. I drove to work, which is 15 miles away. When I reached the parking lot, I saw this thick white smoke. I stepped on the pedal and smoky. I think this is oil burning...
Any ideas? I suspect Auto-RX is related in some way.
If you had a head gasket leak coolant in the oil would cause sludging.
Normally if you are cleaning sludge out of the top end of the motor, particularly around the valves some junk may find it into the combustion chamber, but this would more likely be blue or black smoke. I would wait out the coarse of your treatment, but white smoke is almost always a water/coolant leak making it into the combustion chamber and the resulting steam coming from the exhaust.
I have a similar problem with my 03 Avalon. Whilst I make no claims to be an experienced mechanic...common sense has revealed this to me. I believe if there is pre-existing sludge...it can indirectly act as a sealant in areas where gaskets may have weakened...therfore preventing leakage which could then translate into smoke. During the clean phase...the ARX slowly dissolves that sludge. That's good. However...once that sludge dissolves...that temporary barrier is nowgone & assuming there are some weakened gaskets involved...you've got a potential leak situation. This sceanrio makes perfect sense to me & in no way would I say that the ARX is a bad option in this case as it seems to be doing it's job. What you'll need to do now is to determine what's causing the leak. Could be valve stem seals...or even badly worn rings, etc. As for me...once I complete the rinse phase & if the leaks persists (it has already diminished somewhat) I plan on adding some "Stop Leak" additive to the crankcase & hope that does the trick.
White smoke is almost always associated with water, or more accurately steam exiting the tailpipe. It is odd that would not see during a cold startup and do see after the motor has semi-cooled down. As you know the motor is ingesting airborne humidity with every intake stroke. Many times the exhaust system loads itself with water after the motor is shut down, simply by the pipes cooling and the water vapor condensing. Upon restarting the car as the exhaust heats up the water in the exhaust vaporizes and exits the tailpipe as steam. Perhaps if you were to watch the exhaust on a cold start in the morning it would go through the same steam phase as it does after your highway run. The difference being that it takes a lot longer to build up the heat from dead cold. With todays catalytic converters that re-burn unburned fuel from the combustion process, 3000 degrees at the converter are achieved. I doubt that the exhaust system has lost its heat totally during a 45 minute shut down. However back near the muffler and tailpipe area it is likely have cooled and condensed some moisture. Then as soon as you start the car some very hot air from the convertor area quickly flows to the back end of the exhaust at start restart.
If you have no head gasket issues, whereby water/coolant is getting into your oil or being sucked into the combustion chamber, then I would tend to think that you may not have any real issue. If water was being sucked right into the combustion chamber it would be smoking white all the time. If you have water droplets on the oil dipstick, or a frothy mess, then you have a head gasket issue.
I hope this is helpful to you. Used oil analysis could also tell you if you have coolant leaking into the oil.
I keep my car in a garage at night... so, I'm not sure how the water is getting in externally. My coolant level is still good.
It's interesting that I'm not getting smoke all the time. Over the weekend I drove it for over a 100 miles and no smoke. I saw a light haze yesterday in the midst of driving from one place to the next. Nothing this morning when I went to work. I spoke to couple of other mechanics, but they just told me to monitor it for the rest of the week. It's frustrating, especially when you drive it to a mechanic and the white smoke doesn's come out for them.
Sounds like valve seals. I can surely see it with no smoke ...then after a good warm up and idling through some slower driving, seeing a cloud.
I would expect this to pass. It may not, but if the seals are salvageable, they'll soften and seal better.
Just make sure that you're not consuming coolant. The volume of smoke you're reporting points to some other origin than coolant without overheat and/or coolant loss in some measurable way.
-- Edited by geeaea on Thursday 21st of May 2009 08:03:45 PM
