My fc is starting to smoke ALOT! It's a white smoke so it's probably my coolant seals. My question is, can I fix it WITHOUT having to do a rebuild? Or is a rebuild my only option? Btw, it stops smoking a few minutes after startup, and I still have power (seems to run strong still, but very unsure of how long it'll last). Thanks for all the help.

 

i had that. white smoke for a while, then it started overheating and drinking coolant pretty fast, then one night one of the coolant hoses going into the engine blew. I dont think its even worth messing with. im ordering a rebuilt engine very soon. hopefully tomorrow.

 

Look at it this way...at least you got the white smoke to warn you. I didn't. Mine just started dumping coolant all the time and i found out i had a broken coolant passage...once we got the engine out for my rebuild. Start saving now...and fast. It could last a day or 3 months...i wouldn't try to go much more than that...

 

89- which hose was it that blew?
My coolant resevoir drops about 1/8th of an inch every couple days. Bad or not?
I also know that one of my coolant hoses is clogged with crap (the one that wraps from the BAC around the dynamic chamber to the TB). I wonder if this has anything to do with the smoke?

 

Mine started to smoke at startup 50,000 miles ago. It still does it on occasion, but only after the car has been sitting without being run for a week or so. So, it may not be as bad as you think.

I think my smoke is a combination of oil and gas, not water.

 

yeah, i noticed that too. after sitting for a while it does smoke, sometimes alot.

btw, when if first bought it 9 months back, it smoked alot and for a long time. Then i gutted the precats and main cat, and the smoking decreased over time eventually until it didn't smoke at all. But now it's starting to smoke again.

 

im no good at this. it was on the drivers side toward the back of the engine. not far from the lower plugs. I think it went to the heater core. sorry, im still new at this stuff and dont know what all of the stuff is called

 

usually when this happens to me its when my engine flooded and its just excess oil and gas being burnt out of the chambers. now if it happens alot then ur apex seals could be ready to go. my seals went yesterday

 

Here's the deal.... the longer you wait to fix it, the more damage the leaking seals will do to your rotor housings, especially if your coolant is old.

The reason it smokes during startup (most of the time when its a bad seal) is that while the car is running, compression can keep the coolant from entering the housings, also, the heat makes everything expand and seal up a bit better. When the engine cools, it contracts (that tick tick tick sound you can hear while its cooling is different metal compounds contracting at different rates.. (ie iron plates and aluminum housings) When it cools, coolant can then get into the housings more easily. (or be sucked in as the air charge inside the housing cools)

Now then.. the white smoke is telling you that you have coolant entering the housings. What happenes is that when coolant gets into the housings, it eats away at the chrome treatment on the inside of the housings... eventually making the housing usless. The older your coolant is, the more caustic it can be. This damage is usually found at the edges of the housings in a strip about 1/4 to 1/2 inch from the edge.

The motor may run a long time if the coolant leak doesn't get to bad... however... the longer you push it, the more damage is likely to be done by the coolant.

Sadly, because of the modular design of the rotary engine, the only curee is a teardown and rebuild.