Yes...you read the title correctly...i have something terribly wrong with my 7...I don't konw...but it spews out tons of very light gray smoke coming from the exhaust manifold. I started the car, and about 10 min of it warming up, the car starts to smoke, then gets reallly, REALLY bad...like..the smoke is spewing everywhere.

I looked underneath the car from the back, looking down the entire cat, and I saw about 2-3 exhaust leaks...on top of that....i saw something near the engine. I went to the right front tire, layed on the floor and god DAMn, the exhause manifold, If i saw it correctly was orange! I dunno what's wrong...but goddamn it was hot.

What I do know is for sure I need to get my engine swapped now. If I changed my entire cat-back and get a new engine and tranny, everything,including the manifold will be replaced and i"ll have no more smoking. So....on to Robert. I need to get to him. He's my closest vendor and seems to have the best deals and work around here. Robert help me...

 

a friend had a similar problem and it turned out to be his leading coils/ignighter was messed up.

 

Cloged cat maybe......

 

A clogged cat creates enough heat in the manifold to glow an orange as bright as a desk lamp? I kind of doubt that....the muffler was still working with dead on accuracy...hell, the pressure at which the air was coming out was pretty strong...

What's a leading coil/ignitor? Any pics of what it looks like and what it does? Until later on, I guess i'll just have to stop turning on the car and let the battery die or something...i'll just have to save up money for the swap...i'm doomed, and carless

 

Yeah, I'd have to agree with Kompressorlogic on this one. Check to make sure that you have good spark on your leading spark plugs and coil. If the lead ignition is out, then your detonation is occuring too late in the cycle and a whole lot of the combustion is being blown out your exhaust which heats it up.

Just pull one of your lower spark plug wires off and hold it close to the engine block while someone starts the car. If you have good spark then you are ok on that issue. Otherwise, check your ignitor and coil, then spark plug wires and the plugs themselves. Hope this helps. Good luck!

 

Aside from the smoke, does the engine seem to run alright?

A poor spark could cause an excessively rich mixture, which could definately heat up the exhaust components from the afterburn. I don't know much about cats (never had to deal with them) so I don't know if a clogged cat could cause the symptoms you described, but I think it's worth checking. You need to check your spark and timing, and if both are right, I'd unbolt the exhaust from the manifold and see how it runs. Be sure you wear some earplugs.

Oh, the ignition coils are the cylinders that provide the power that makes the spark plugs spark. Looking at the engine bay from the driver's side, they are down near the front driver's side headlight, recessed in holes in the fender. There are high tension leads running from the coils to the distributor cap. The ignitors are square boxes on the distributor itself.



The above is the distributor and the box on the top is the trailing ignitor. Ignore the way it's wired up, this is my dizzy after I switched to direct fire. The leading ignitor on a regular car is on the front of the dizzy, where the blue loom goes into the dizzy. The quickest way to check this ignitor is to swap it with the trailing ignitor. They are interchangable and if the leading is bad, you will notice an immediate improvement in the way the engine runs. The trailing doesn't add much power, it just cleans up the combustion. It also powers the tach, so if the ignitor is dead, your tach will have no signal. The same thing goes for the coils. If swapping the ignitors does nothing, try swapping the coils as well.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

Just had another thought for an easy way to check your leading ignition. At the distributor, remove the high tension wire that goes to the trailing coil so that it will not fire. Then, just see if the car runs. If the lead ignition is ok, then the car should run/idle fine without trailing ignition.

If you're not sure which wire to pull off, just remove the wires at the spark plugs (top two plugs). Good luck.

 

Good call Kentetsu, I hadn't thought of that.

My tests tend to be more complex than perhaps is needed.

 

LOL. Don't feel bad, I had to think about it for a bit myself.

How about it TurboFB, any of this sound right to you? Let us know if you solve it.

 

Geez...well...i KIND of get what I should be pulling off to make things right...i'll go out side and try it right now....hell, WHY NOT! lol...um...in the picture above....the wires that I need to swap are which ones? Can someone open the picture in paint and circle the wires with yellow or something? I'll go give it a shot till some one replys...thanks for your help, though!

 

Ok...i gave it a shot. First thing, i DID notice an improvment....but....after 10 min, the catback all the way down to the resonator was glowing orange....The feul mixture was running much less rich, and didn't pop and back fire like a machine gun, like before....i'm still having problems...i really don't need to get it fixed that badly...since i'm going to swap the engine out anyway...so. Blah...i dunno...save up $$$ get swap, change catback = problem solved.