My car has been sitting for about 2 months with a small water leak. I finnaly found the pinhole leak over the weekend. when I started up the car it took for ever to finally start. It has never done this before. Once started there was the small amount of Blue smoke followed by about a minute of white smoke. ever since then it starts the same way, hot or cold. At first I thought it was a fuel pump or clogged filter, but the smoke does have the smell of coolant.

Is the motor toast?

The motor has 130K on it. I know I have been living on borrowed time, but do these things just happen with out lead in or warning?

Dave

 

I'm not an expert but the same thing happened to mine. Looks like time for a rebuild. 130K, you got your money's worth. Good luck!

 

If you had a pin hole leak in your cooling system before letting it sit it would have been hard to tell a coolant seal from the pinhole leak in a hose. Does the coolant system act the same now as it did with the pin hole leak ? ? ? ? Coolant going into recovery tank but not refilling system when it cools with the recovery tank eventually over flowing ? ? ? The white smoke, hard starting, and smell of coolant out of the exhaust is a pretty clear pointer towards a seal failure. Where did you find the pin hole leak ???

 

I jacked up the car and started her up. Within a couple minutes water was dripping down under the master cylinder. I found a mini fountain shooting out from under the throtle body. It is a little L shaped hose about 3 inches long. I could not find the name of this hose, i think it is part of the heater system.

 

Have you fixed this leak yet ? ? ? I believe Mazdatrix has a list of all the hoses, you can either look through there pictures or call Ray at Malloy Mazda and tell him which one you need, he can send you the right one without you having to know the part number, just let him know it the one off the bottom of the TB to the rear iron that feeds the thermal wax unit. I'd seriously think about replacing all the small hoses on the motor as a package deal is much cheaper than individually. Jack

 

The leak is fixed, and I just replaced all the hoses about 6 months ago when I put in a Fluidyne radiator. The strange thing about this is when I started it up to find the leak it started fine. after replacing the hose is when the broblem started. It's like a switch was flipped and it went to Hell.

I tried starting again today after topping off the coolant and the problem was still there but not as worse. It acts as if one of the rotors is not getting spark or igniting the fuel and then it starts working. Again the car drives fine after just a minute of warmup. Can't even tell there is a problem. I'm going to pull the plugs and replace the wires. Also going to check I didn't unhook something by accident.

I now the smoke is not good, but I'm not looking forward to getting my motor rebuilt.

 

i had this problem 1 day out of nowhere. but im having coolant/seal problems with my motor.

all i did was clean the plugs(blasted them) carb cleaned them..

and tightened my waterpump/alt belt.

problem solved, not sure what the cause was but im glad its gone

 

Your symptoms indicate a failed coolant seal. What happens is the rotor housing will fill with coolant after the car is shut off. When you start the car, the car is literally only running on one rotor until it burns enough coolant off. Your motor is on its last legs.

 

damn.

in my case it did it 3 times for 1 day only. since then its been starting normally