Hello Everyone,

My cousin and I just got done putting a new HG on. We turned it on with no radiator to see if it would start. We left it running for about 5 minutes and we noticed the car still smoking like crazy from the exhaust. My cousin told me it was left over water and that it would go away after we drove it.

Any body have any idea what would cause it to smoke?

Thanks for the help!

Angelo

 

Probably letting it run for 5 minutes with no water in it has something to do with it. Do you know how hot cylinder heads get with no water?

 

You let your engine run for 5 minutes with no ability to cool itself?

 

Time to start over with new heads and gaskets

 

You have a real risk of a damaged head, as others have pointed out. But with no coolant at all, that wasn't the source of the white smoke.

So your cousin may be half-right; the smoke may be left over coolant burning off. Since you have no coolant to leak into the cylinder through your possibly-cracked head, soon enough you will have no white smoke.

But you may also have no compression (cracked head, blown gasket, ...). All I can suggest is filling it with water (no point wasting anti-freeze if you need to start over), and then let it run for a bit. Don't over-do it; if it doesn't run right after a minute or two you don't want to turn a (maybe) blown head gasket into a cracked head. If that clears it up, pull the plugs and check for compression. If that's good, fill with 50-50 antifreeze, and buy a lottery ticket. Because this was your luckiest day in a long time ...