Zimmy

For the past two weeks I've been blowing a considerable amount of white smoke at start up, which would clear off after a minute or two or about a quarter of a mile. It would only smoke the first time I'd the car each day. From my understanding this probably meant that the coolant seals were going out. Well, today I drove to work, no problem, then after work I went to get my oil changed, no problem. After they changed the oil I started it up and it started smoking. I thought, weird, first time its did that during the day. I drive down the road and more and more smoke starts coming out until I have to pull her over and cut it off. I checked everything and only found one hose undone )hose from Charcoal canister to Intake manifold.) Hooked it up still no good.

Is this my sign that its time for a rebuild or just a smaller problem that I'm over looking.

Thanks, Zimmy

dre_2ooo

Hmmm... are you losing coolant daily w/no visible exterior leaks? is there OIL in your coolant? If it's idling... look in teh overflow bucket, are there bubbles popping up?

If you answered yes to these. .... then yeah... sad but true, seal failure.

Zimmy

I have had no noticable loss of coolant the past three weeks. As far as oil in the coolant, there doesn't appear to be any. And another negative on the bubbles.
The thing that troubles me is that I have none of these syptoms but seal failure has been the only thing I can think of to explain the billowing smoke.

If it matters it is an NA 86GXL.

Zimmy

emagdnim

Nooo! Not seal failure! It's those damned dirty fairies that keep taking it! (Sorry I'm tired).

Zimmy

Another scary thing I found today. I am not reading any oil on the dipstick. I only drove about one mile after the oil change and I didn't see any oil spots on the groud beneath the car.

Any ideas?

Zimmy

Scracho

Hmmmmm.... I thought I had the dreaded coolent seal leak too, but it was only the coolent line to the turbo. For a while I couldn't understand why I was loosing coolent then after I started seeing smoke coming from under the hood and smelt that sweet coolent smell. After opening the hood I had noticed my turbo was a nice new white color and smelt funny!

hypntyz7

Seal failure, yes. Water seal failure, no. OIl o-ring/seal failure, yes. Doesnt mean the engines going to die necessarily, a rotary can have great apex seals and bad oil seals if they were reused in a rebuild before. But most likely, if the oil seals are that bad, the rear of the engine cant be far behind.

IF you were throwing out white smoke int he form of steam, youd be missing the coolant that was converted into steam, and youd have a highly pressurized coolant ssytem/hoses swelled.

The fact that you lose oil adn nothing else tells us that you have oil seals that allow oil into combustion thus buringin it, similar to a piston engine with bad oil rings.