I went to prep my car for the drive home from storage last night. Installed a new wiper motor and made sure the tires were up to pressure and such.

I fired it up after a couple pumps of gas and it smoked out the whole neighborhood. It was white smoke coming from up by the exhaust manifold and out the exhaust. After I shut it down I noticed the add coolant light was on too.

Is this the equivalent to a blown head gasket? The car restarted and I gave it less choke and the smoking went way down (after I re-filled the coolant). Am I looking at a total engine tear down here? Or is it as simple as a front cover seal or something? It is about 40 miles away from my house, if I keep up with the coolant and watch the temps like a hawk do you think it could make the trip back to my garage without damaging the internals too badly?

 

Sounds like a leaking coolant seal. Yes you can drive, no further damage imo.

And yes, it will need to come apart to fix it, the good news is that this is the easiest rebuild as the important internal parts could be fine, shouldn't have to replace major (expensive) parts.

 

My guess is the intake manifold coolant seal leaks and left a puddle on the intake that dribbled down onto
the exhaust. Its easily replaced by removing the intake and replacing the coolant seal orings. That would
cause the white smoke by the manifold.

The white smoke out the exhaust may be an internal coolant seal leak which would require a rebuild. If it
persists, try some of the Alum A Seal, it can help with coolant seal leaks. The leak may be very small
and just cause the rotor to get a lot of coolant in the chamber while sitting all winter.

 

Well the intake seal leaking isn't a bad thing. I have a spare carb I was going to throw on that is attached to another intake. If I'm already in there it shouldn't be too bad.

How bad will that alum a seal gum up the rest of the engine? That is my only worry. I'll try it if it could get me through till I replace the injection pump in my BG diesel 323.

 

Fix the intake first and see if that solves the issue.

I'm not a fan of the alum a seal but if it gets you more life out of the engine it might be ok. I've read of people using it successfully but can't speak for the aftermath when it comes to rebuild time.

 

I used it at one time to help with a coolant leak and have seen no issues since doing it. That was a couple
of years ago. My engine has about 130K miles on it and runs like a champ. The coolant in the radiator
has a good color and doesn't show any type of gunk. I think I put about 1/3 of a bottle in there when I
did it. It helped some.

Fix the intake leak first and then run the **** out of it and see if it settles down before jumping to any
other actions. These cars don't like sitting, any old car really.

 

Where is a good source for the intake gasket set? my parts stores by me only have the whole engine gasket set. I'm not opposed to doing that, but if I get that I'm just going to redo it all. It's a fairly simple engine.

 

90% of the time your local parts stores won't have what you need, let alone it being right. Hit up atkins or mazdatrix or the dealer

 

I ended up going through partsgeek. I'll see it in 3-7 days. That should give me enough time to get my diesel 323 back up and running again.

 

Demand pics of diesel 323.

 

Here it is

 

Check that out,worked in Mazda dealer when those were new,never saw the diesel variant. Is that a Mazda diesel engine?

 

This is a Mazda diesel. They never sold them in the U.S. This car was imported from France a while back and federalized somehow. I bought it off craigslist last summer. I just need to add a couple coolant hoses to the temp solenoid on the injection pump and set the timing and it's back in business.

The FB made the trip back home splendidly. I didn't notice any leaks from the intake manifold after warming it up and when it cooled down so I put the alum a seal into it (after siphoning out some coolant and accidentally going too far ). The car runs well now and doesn't smoke really. I need to replace the flasher relay and put some new rubber on it for inspection, but after that it's good to go!