the car is a 90 gxl. sometimes during startup it will start smoking all over the place. It is oil smoke and not coolant smoke. The car does not burn coolant and the oil looks normal. The smoke is very inconsistent when it happens.

When it does smoke it will increase with rpm. The car does not have a noticeable loss in power regardless of if it smoked on startup or not.

Any ideas on what it can be?

oil control rings? purge control valve?

 

The oil control rings allow oil to seep past them very slowly. Older motors will allow this more so than a fresh rebuilt, but they all do it to some degree. A bit of smoke on startup is common. As long as it goes away shortly after startup, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

gotcha. the motor has 96k on it and from what I have been told the previous owner used synthetic in the motor. I have since switched back to regular dino and haven't had any smoke yet.

 

Yeah, synthetics love to seep past gaskets/orings. It costs too much to use the high quality ones anyhow.

 

So its still doing and it seems to be every cold start. After it heats up it goes away. When I check the oil on the dip stick it has lots of little bubbles in it. After the smoke stops and you drive for a bit the oil on the dip stick looks normal.

any ideas?

 

Just wanted to update this thread. I recorded a couple of short videos and uploaded them to youtube.

Any ideas on if a rebuild will cure this problem?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MQsQ54Aglk

 

Yeah, that's a LOT of smoke alright. Not the "normal" small amount of smoke usually seen briefly at startup. I would tend to agree with RotaryRocket as to the cause. And, of course, replacing the oil control rings requires disassembling the engine.

The bubbles on the dipstick may just be condensation that vaporizes when the engine is at operating temp for awhile. If you do a lot of short trips, that can cause a buildup of condensation in the engine internals. In some cases you will see a brownish collection of the emulsion. And you may also see it on the inside of the oil filler cap as well.

 

the thing that's weird is that it seems as soon as a load is put on the engine for like a minute then the smoke will begin to subside. and it won't come back until the engine gets cold again