my freind's 89 pickup see sig ..... has a problem it had a miss and a check engine light ..... so i replaced the plugs and found a broken ground wire for something i fixed that and had the battery unplug that seem to clear the check engine light and the miss now it runs good but it seems to smoke not a blown hg type of smoke ..... i check it all out radiator looks good oil is fine didn't use any water when i drove it didn't get hot .... its smokes like when u start it on a really cold day it dont smell like coolant it seems to do this when u shut it off for a few min after driving it dont do it while drive it and the idle seems rough

 

condensation is normal in the exhaust, and it should go away once the engine warms up. remember a by-product of burning fuel is water vapor.
a rich idle mixture will exaggerate the problem.
and that ties in sort of with your rough idle issue.
but you say it didn't get hot... do you mean the engine didn't overheat, or do you mean it didn't get up to normal operating temperature?

 

what i say it didn't get hot i mean like over heat it stays right at the normal temp

 

I know what your problem is, to solve it you will need to shove a crow bar into the cat and proceed to empty it's contents.

 

okay.

if it's not a blown head gasket, is not condensation steam like starting an engine on a cold day, it is probably oil burning. so if it only does it when starting the engine, I'd guess it's valve seals leaking oil into the cylinders when the engine is off.

what do the spark plugs look like?

 

the spark plugs looked normal to me

 

well guys thanks for all the help but today was a sad day for the 3.slow it made some clanking noise then nothing it appears to have seized up not sure how it was running like a champ b4

 

truck had 300k miles on it pretty sure it never had a hg problem cant complain it made it that far

 

I am doing that this week.
No smog checks where I live
Uhmm, I am doing it to save the environment ya you know, uhmm no grass fires yea thats it.

 

elton- sorry to hear that the engine went south.
when you find out what it was, let us know.

 

ok update he told me they replaced the hg just seems odd though had none of the tell tale symptoms of a hg