cuervopawz

Purchased a 92 Toyota pickup with 103000 miles last week off Craigslist. I am the second owner, the truck runs smooth. Oil is clean. The car has been very well maintained based on what I see (cosmetics, undercarriage, the "story" from the original owner).

I drove 200 miles on it before I began to notice a problem:

White smoke & water coming from exhaust on startup for 3-5 minutes no matter the time of day. Then it disappears and it's gone.

Ran Block Test & compression test...
Passed block test, but when draining the coolant found it to be very dirty. Obviously rust damage from the green coolant. Did a total system flush with distilled water and added the Toyota Red.

The compression test was weird: 210 psi on all cylinders but cylinder 4 which is 180psi. Above spec, but a little concerning to me.

Oil has stayed full so there's no leak or burning I know of. Not sure of the smell from the exhaust. I know coolant burning smells "sweet" but I only smell standard exhaust fumes.

Any ideas on what is causing this smoke? And mainly, I'm wondering how worried should I be?

Gargoyle_Runner

Those compression readings are something to look into. Try a different gauge and see if the test is the same. I recently tested mine with a rental from Autozone and got back 90-70psi which should suggest my brand new motor wasn't driveable. Borrowed a friends gauge and got 150 across the board. 210 would suggest carbon build up and the 180, 30#'s difference would suggest a head gasket issue. Do you live some place cold? The smoke you are seeing could just be condensation. After warming the motor up to temp and then turning it off and allowing it to cool to the cold outside temp would cause that condensation to develop. Mine does the same thing in the morning when I first start it. It's a pure white fairly unscented plume. If your not losing any fluids I wouldn't worry to much.

Jasonfriedlin

Id say its nothing but condensation

skypilot

iTrader: (1)

check your fluids everyday. If you are not losing & no milkshake in the pan its condensation.

Odin

At one time I was worried about mine because it's pretty new to me so I don't know it's history and it looks like it's had a hard life. It's never had a hint of coolant in the oil but the smoking at the start made me worry.

The first thing I had to do when I bought the truck was replace the radiator, I replaced the cap with a new Stant while I was at it. I fully filled the cooling system with the heater temp pulled to full hot and I had the front end jacked way up in the air to help purge trapped air.

After about a week's worth of driving I noticed some coolant disappearing. The exhaust also seemed a little sweet smelling to me when I fire it up and it still does. I ended up finding two small coolant leaks and fixed them. The Toyota Red coolant makes it a little more obvious where leaks are at. I again jacked the front end up and re-bled the cooling system.

The next day I drove about 18 miles and shut it off for a period of about two minutes. I noticed the coolant level had dropped but I could see coolant on the front of the water pump and the plastic tray under it.

In that two minute period I started it back up and it started smoking again. At that point I got worried and had a shop check the coolant for signs of leakage. I was standing right there and the guy kept testing it for about 35 minutes. The color in the tester didn't change at all so I stopped being so worried about it.

When I got back home I started investigating where the coolant on the water pump was coming from. While it was sitting there idling I finally started noticing a small drip from the bottom of my new radiator. I was instantly PO'd. Then I noticed on the backside of the radiator there was a trail of red coolant from further up. I followed the trail up to the top of the radiator filler neck. It was either the filler neck had cracked or the radiator cap wasn't sealing.

After the system cooled I removed the cap and looked at it. I found the upper gasket wasn't round but instead it was oval. It was faulty from the start. I've used Stant caps since the 80's and never had a problem so I didn't think to inspect it before installation.
Because of the other leaks I had when I installed the new cap the system wasn't building enough pressure to expose the faulty part/gasket. With the leaks fixed it became obvious.

When the lower part of the cap opened up to allow pressurized coolant to move to the recovery tank part of it was being forced out of the leaking gasket area.

I drove to all of the parts suppliers in town and nobody had a Stant cap in stock. AFTER INSPECTING IT I purchased and installed a radiator cap from CarQuest. I refilled and bled the system and I'm keeping a suspicious eye on the coolant level. Although it's never come close to overheating it is running a little cooler. So far so good.

wyoming9

iTrader: (1)

Depends where you live .

My vehicles seem to smoke quite a bit more at around zero temperatures .

83

Yeah water out the tailpipe is totally normal, though somewhere along the line someone started the rumor that it means a bad head gasket.

White smoke in the morning where it's cold is completely normal, obviously. Just look around at all the white smoke pouring out of everyone else's vehicle.

Like others said, just keep a close eye. If you're loosing coolant, obviously that's a sign. Could be burning some when the engine is cold, then as it heats up and metal expands it seals the leak.

One of those things...could do just that for years with no other problems, or could be a ticking time bomb. Hard to know.

I see you've got 22RE in the tags. It helps to include that stuff in the post so people can't miss it.