christi

Car: 1988 GXL N/a

Syntoms I STILL see:


1. Car is STILL smoking up even after car is warmed.

2. Smells VERY rich - I looked on the passanger side where the R/L switch is, and it's all the way on the R. I don't want to touch it, for fear of messing up the car than it probably already is.

3. Smoke is either White, or white with a blue-ish color to it.

4. After it's fully warmed and quits smelling like it's really rich, etc... it's fine.

HELP! Please.

kllntyme

The R/L switch on the fender only adjusts the air fuel mix at idle. After that the ECU takes the reigns. Every n/a I've ever dealt with smelled like a refinery and loved to flood. Mazda kept them on the rich side to keep the "we're only going to change our oil every spring" crowd from leaning them out and chunking a seal.
Mine smokes a bit too. Even with an Apexi S-AFC in and set to lower fuel at idle my air/fuel meter still reads on the border of rich and stoich. The blue in the exhaust smoke is oil and a little is normal.

Is it misbehaving while it's being driven?
Is it pumping out a little smoke or are the neighbors calling the fire department daily?
I'm assuming that it only started smelling of gasoline recently, can you see or feel any gasoline on the top of the rotor housings?

YakATK

Hrm.....sounds just like what my car was doing. If your car still drives fine then I have no clue, if it is feeling sluggish and poor then get compression tested and be prepared for bad news (same as me ). Is it burning oil much? Or loseing coolant? Then again mine did neither and it still had low compression, so I say go get it checked.

Icemark

Hey Christi, you have replaced the O2 sensor at some point, right???

christi

Mark,

Nope. The only few things that have been replaced on my car is:

Waterpump
Themrostat
Main cat

Could this be hte cause? I didn't think the 02 sensor had anything to do with it? I could be wrong.

YakaTK - Actually the car runs smooth. None of that yucky feeling. The only thing that is really disturbing me is the smoke at start up, and after start up for a few mins, and the white-ish/blue-ish looking color of smoke. However, it had simmered down just a tad. It used to do it roughly anytime I started up the car - whether it was setting all night, or to just 4 hours of being at school.

I'm sure my car has high compression, but out of curiousity... What is good compression and not good compression, as far as the numbers go?

CrackHeadMel

iTrader: (2)

i second the o2 sensor thing. Check it its hooked up, if it is, try replacing it

Icemark

The O2 really needs to be repalced every 60k to 90K miles.

While it won't effect the WOT condition, it does effect idle and cruising mixture after the engine is only partially warm. A bad sensor will cause the engine to run very rich.

Your new cat may be covering that up when the cat is up to full temp (usually after about 10 minutes or so of Med/hard driving).

christi

Okay, I'll take a look at that tonight. How do I know if the 02 sensor needs to be replaced? I bought her around 151k or so, and she's at about 176k or so. Then again, I'm not surewhen it was last replaced.


I did notice something today though. I was taking some shots of the car (video) and started to rev it up - hear a loud ... poppin' kinda noise... sorta. and it does sound like it is from the cat =/ I could be wrong.

I'll wait until my dad gets home so he can have a closer look andu pdate here later.

christi

BUMP

Any other way to tell what's this smoking coming from? I know that when it's cold outside it'll smoke some because of it being cold outside and stuff - but when it was in the 75s here, it did it....


any other way to tell? I'm sorry if I'm being a pest, but .. i'm afraid of the car. If sometihng is seriously wrong

Icemark

well again it sounds like it is running rich.

When driving is it smoking at WOT? (you'll need someone to follow you to tell you).

RX7_ZRO

just a note that no one else seems to have hit on....you menitoned revving it and it popping....I used to think that was a problem...it's just the motor backfiring from high RPM's...now if you didn't go above 6K or so, and it still did it...then I'd be a little more concerned...I'm not sure if it does it sitting still either...I usually just rev high enough when I'm outrunning traffic (daily happening for me, pizza delivery) Icemark could probably tell you better than I could...I'd go check but I'd probably wake up the neighbors...dont' need any probs right now

White_FC

Just regarding the O2 sensor, mine isn't connected and I don't have any running rich probles at idle or cruise.
So i'd be looking at other things first before the O2 sensor, as your problem sounds much worse than a bad O2 sensor.