Ugh - lots of white smoke and leaking fuel
 

Hi guys - not sure what happened here. Car would puff a brief oil smoke when parked after I reconnected the OMP. Drove it home and parked it on an incline with the nose pointing down but is only a 5% grade.

Just went to jump in it and it was dripping fuel from the mid section of the car and didn't want to start. After a bunch of cranking it started but I now have constant white smoke out what looks to be the thermal reactor exhaust pipe (but not the main exhaust).

Sorry for the gigantic picture, not sure how to resize it.

If you have fuel dripping from the exhaust, it's not a good idea to start it until fixing the leak.

I'm guessing it's coolant.

Next you'll tell me that playing with matches under the car was a bad idea too! Ha, and agree.

It stopped leaking when it was back on flat ground, so it appears it was running down the exhaust. I waited to spin it over until the under section of the car was dry.

Coolant = rebuild, correct?

Thanks for the help.

If it's coolant, it could be a bad intake o-ring. Easy to replace. Jusdt take off the intake manifold/carb/rats nest as one unit. Replace intake gasket and two intake o-rings.

The first thing is to identify what type of liquid it is. If it's gas, it could be a bad line/filter/fuel pump. That cloud of smoke from the muffler sure looks like the leak is internal to the engine (o-ring or water seal). Check if it smells like coolant and hope it's just an o-ring.

I had an internal water seals so bad that the steam filled the entire 40x60 workshop so much we couldn't even see each other.

Good morning, thanks for the note back. This car is trolling me.

Just check the coolant levels and radiator is full, overflow right in the middle unchanged.

Started it up and brief white smoke for 5 seconds and then no smoke at all.

Is it possible that the downward angle for a couple days resulting in more oil collecting in the engine than usual and that simply needed to be burned off? Know I am reaching here...

Of course it's not a coolant leak. Sheesh. Coming out of that pipe as you pictured simply means what you experienced was a fuel flooding issue, which dumps a lot of fuel into the engine, which then flowed out into your thermal reactor and finally trickled down into your heat exchanger pipe (sorry, I don't know thermal reactor tech so I am not using the correct nomenclature here but you probably get my meaning).

This explains the puddle of fuel under you car which dribbled out through seams and flanges along the length of your thermal reactor tube system (again, incorrect nomenclature).

The exact same thing happened on my 76 Cosmo way back when I was first trying to get it started. The Hitachi carb's floats were stuck in the downward position and the fuel pump started coming to life after having sat for many years. I glanced into the carb and saw what was going on so I cut the power but only after several minutes had passed. Fuel was dripping under the car much like yours and upon finally getting it running, it smoked like a chimney for several minutes. Otherwise, no harm done.

I think your onto the issue. If you have no more leaks from underneath and it only last for a few seconds it can be condensation or oil like you summize. I think your ok.

Good morning-hope everybody's having a good day. Just to close this out I have the car delivered to lucky seven racing and they were able to dial the carbon well enough to pass smog. It appears that the issue is that I have a problem with my secondary dumping too much fuel in and I need to carb rebuild.

Thanks for talking me down off the ledge, appreciate the help and coaching on keeping her on the road.

Well if nothing else; he has good shocks on the RX7. I spy some "Blues" on there.

She does :nod: