BigTone

The mixture of oil/fuel sounds like a possiblity, just a little odd that so many people seem to have the same problem and no one knows what it could be. I find it hard to believe that someone has not had this problem before. The fact that it clears up and only smoke durring start up it what stumps me.

Kento

Well, here's the deal: if the car sits outside overnight in cold temperatures, a hell of a lot of moisture condenses inside the intake tract, the combustion chambers, and the exhaust path (exhaust manifold, DP, cat/MP, and CB). The engine can't burn off all that moisture in less than a few minutes, because it gets forced through the combustion chamber, and then settles into the exhaust, which needs to get hot enough to boil it all off (especially the main cat, if still present). Unless you're sitting there revving the motor wildly while warming it up, it takes time for all that metal to heat up.

If this steaming/smoking occurs in car that sits in a fairly insulated garage, then perhaps you may have a problem.

If there was oil being burned, you'd smell it right away.

FD Seeker

I'm not sure why you're expecting to smell coolant in the 'white cloud' when you're running all water?

BTW, not to scare you, but similar symptoms (coupled with an overflowing overflow tank) proved the need for a rebuild for me

ubernoober

I'm not expecting to smell coolant, it's just possible that it may be in there since I was running coolant just a few days prior to finding out I wasn't leaking at all.

I still have yet to get this checked out.

BigTone

The thing is that I have had two engine badly blow coolent seals on me. Both them would smoke all the time and the big give away of them having blown coolent seals was the overflow resivoir overflowing. I constently check the overflow resivoir and no coolent has been kicked out.