Strange smoke, can see ash/dust -- on cold starts
 

The last few mornings I've been starting the car and waiting for the car to warm up, I get this white greyish smoke. As I start to pull out (and into the smoke), it hits the sunlight and I realise its not smoke, but ash or dust (could see the particles *very* clearly). Any ideas? I thought coolant, but would it create this ashy stuff thats big particled?

My other thought was fiberglass from exhaust... but I have a flowmater 40 series which I don't remember having glass packing-- even if it did, it shouldn't be blowing out on cold starts-- maybe hot revs...

any ideas?

It's possible that fiberglass could be settling and then getting blown out again, but generally this shouldn't be enough to see or last very long. Have you stuck anything back there and tried to catch any of it to try to identify it afterwards?

There is only one mufler on the car, the flowmaster 40 series (manifold -- downpipe-- mufler [not rear exit])

The FM 40 series has no fiberglas (thanks james, forgot what the packign was for a minute) packing. Is it maybe the interior of the mufler flaking out-- does that ever happen?

http://sheepdog.ar2engineering.net/temp/fm40s.jpg
I'll see if I can't catch some of that stuff tomorrow.

On my '87 sport with stainless packed mufflers, I have a fine metallic dust in the mufflers that will occasionaly blow out, it's kind of like the dust on a SOS pad, but it's generally not a whole lot. Look inside your pipe and see if there's anything floating around in there (such as this tiny dust I speak of, near the exit) Or if it's something else. Otherwise you just have to try to catch it on something (such as a board/etc sitting behind the pipe so it blows it onto it). Good luck, hopefully it's nothing serious.

You premix or OMP?

Premix, ashless walmart type twc3

Kinda rules that out, I've been using the same stuff for a year now & have never noticed what you're describing...SonicRat might be on to something, though...

Gotta love $1.07/16oz :D

I get it by the gal at $5.79 or something like that, fill up my "little" container every two days (11 oz for my 8 gal "fillup"), and have the emergency "standby" bottle in the car (only used it once).

Like mentioned above, make something to catch your little aliens. A piece of 1 X 12 with a wet white towel might work nicely...

Interesting find guys! Normaly when I start up, I hold the revs around 3k until shes warm enough to hold her own idle. I went outside just now and looked under the car to try to reach the exhaust. In doing so, I got my knees white with floor dry dust.

Floor dry starts to seperate the dust from the pebbles after its been on a driveway and rain-washed, and baked in the sun for about two months.

I started the car and took a peak as I gave a good rev. Sure enough, the ghetto exhaust is pointed at a downward angle, pushing the floordry dust/pebbles a good 3 feet back from the car. Found the culprit!

I was overly concerned cause I hadn't seen smoke from the car since the 5spd swap 4 months ago :D

I guess I need to get the broom out and sweep the driveway off one of these days!

LOL, you just wanted to start a thread, didn't ya...

Should have put it on the Home Depot site instead, j/k...

How much of that stuff have you sucked into the intake??? :O

get one of those prefilters for your intake, like a lawn mower or a desert racer. ha ha......thats not that funny. darn.

I don't even want to think about that :P

I guess between getting rained on, baked, and driven on/pressureized, it just kinda turns to really light dusty stuff. Pretty crazy

Well.... That's something I wouldn't have thought about!