I'm at a loss, it just doesnt make sense
 

i posted a few days ago about how my car acts like it has a blown water seal at startup, but once it starts it seems fine (aside from my fuel problem.. underpowered and sticks a 4k rpm)... anyhow... it seemed to be getting better... now im unsure... if it sits for a while it starts no problem... which is indicative of flooding... but if i turn it off its hard to start... unless it sits... but yea... earlier today i turned it off and tried to start it back up... it smoked like crazy, my coolant light came on, and yea.. it was hard to start... i finally got it to start and drove home.... once it started it cleared out pretty fast... no smoke... coolant light went off shortly after and came on intermittently... im at a loss... i might just rebuild the motor, but i cant really afford that right now... its just such a damn weird problem... i mean if it were water seals wouldnt it smoke consistently?? not stop once it was running and only give me problems at startup??? and as i said before... i smelled fuel in my radiator... which seemed to dissipate when i added water.... didnt seem to get any more fuel in there... but now i think there might be more... cuz it hasnt started like THAT in a few days.... its just weird...

:wallbash:

You've got a messed up coolant seal, it's the bottom line.

I had a 85 GSL-SE that did the same exact thing, horrible starts, only smoke for the first few minutes of driving, cats got plugged up real quick because of that as well. Bought it for a thousand, sold it for five hundred, with all aftermarket suspension, etc.

You have coolant seaping down into the combustion process and back so that's the reason why you smell fuel in the coolant.

Start saving for a rebuild, another car, or something like that...because you're going to get stuck in parking lots a lot, hoping your battery won't run dry trying to crank out the coolant and smoke the parking lot out.