I have a '93 with 74K on the original engine. See my mods in my sig. The car runs great and my boost pattern is perfect. Compression was good last year. I started to notice recently when I first start the car I have white smoke for the first 15 seconds and it goes away. I also have my coolant buzzer going off after a week of driving. No brown residue when I fill it up. I suspect my overflow bottle has a hose leak and sucking air instead of coolant during cool down because it is always full. What do you guys think? Is this the beginning symptoms of a rebuild?

 

In my experience... it's time for a rebuild soon.

But before you jump to that conclusion, check the filler cap on you AST, and thoroughly check all your coolant hoses for leaks etc.

If there's nothing wrong there, then most likely it's coolant seals in the engine, which will often still show up good on a compression check (as was the case with my engine)

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and if I get flamed for jumping to conclusions, I'm only trying to be realistic

 

Do you hear gushing sound from the passanger dash? I've got my white smoke for 1-2min at morning start when the 0-ring was out. First 15sec. sounds like condensation and not the coolant.

 

Pressure test the cooling system - it will show external leaks if there are any, hopefully that will be the case for you, and a simple fix.

If it doesnt hold pressure and you see no leaks, that's most likely your coolant seals.

If it holds pressure and there are no leaks, but you keep myseriously losing coolant, then that might be your coolant seals. There are other tests you can do such as the champagne test and so forth.

 

where do u get the tools to do a pressure check...? do they have them at autozone..?

 

It sounds like condensation. It also sounds like you have a vacuum leak in one of the caps. so your car is pumping coolant into the resevoir. I'd fix that first and then see if the coolant level keeps going down. Two caps are not that expensive. A lot cheaper than an engine!

Remember, the cap without the spring goes on the engine filler. The cap with the spring goes on the AST.

 

That's not true anymore. After I got my new reman, I've noticed that the filler cap also had springs just like the cap that goes onto the ast. Anyways, I agree with David. It sounds like you have a problem with caps.

 

Thanks for the replies guys..

Evilg: I going to do just that and replace a lot of the hoses.
RE: No gushing sound.
Jeff: Pressure test is next if the hose replacement does not work.
David: Thx, I replace the caps and have the right ones on the right place.