I believe I have the notorious bad coolant seal/jacket problem... After a hot drive, if the car sits for a period of time and is then started... 007 style white smoke pours for 1 to up to 5 minutes.

Now I know unless it's ghetto-done (rad leak-stop style) it requires a rebuild. However my question is... is this REALLY harsh on the motor.... can the car still be driven like this for a period of time? Questioning because I dont have everything together to go NA-T yet and I could crack the ball open fix what I need to and turbo it at the same time--but it will still be another month or so till I'm at this point and I'm concerned because I need something to drive around town until then.

 

yes it is hard on the motor for two reasons. coolant (or most liquids for that matter) arent compressable. so if you get a sizable amount of coolant in the combustion chamber it can cause some serious stress on the internals. secondly the chemicals in the coolant are harsh on the internal surfaces and can eat away the coatings on the housings if left for a prolonged time.

 

a month should be okay. People have driven thier cars with bad coolant seals for much longer than a month.

 

Thanks for the replies... Would it be REALLY benefitial to try that radiator stop-leak stuff to hold it off for a little? (Used this stuff before for blown HG's to hold up another week or so... not too thrilled about this GUNK going all through my mazda's cooling system.) Also would it be better to run more water in my coolant mix because I'm driving it like this for the above said reasons?

TIA..

 

I don't know too much about this problem but it occurs to me that even if you can drive for a month or so, which I'm sure you could, don't beat on it. Cruising only, no races or auto x if thats your thing. If you already have a seal leak or something of the sort, then you could make the problem much worse.

BTW, maybe it has something to do with flooding oil injectors. On cold startups, the mop (omp) is drawing fairly cold crank oil which may not get up to a nice operating temp for a few minutes. Or your oil is old and needs a change. Try premix only by blocking off the mop and see if that helps. Make sure you leave it connected to your ecu though as an s5 will go into limp mode if you don't.

 

why not smoke with your 7 ? if u close the windows its gets hotboxed with smoke like a ****

as far as the coolant leak i got no clue, i just got my engine rebuilt so i have no worries

 

the regular stop-leak stuff did not work for me. i have no idea about the block-weld, but there's a lot of info on that around here.

 

Personally, I would just park it, drain the cooling system and fog the housings. Why take the chance of tearing up more parts, or warping the housings until they are unuseable?

If you don't need the car as your DD, start tearing it down now, that way you will be ahead on knowing what parts you do need and can gather them up when you can afford them.