White Smoke

[Sprinterboy]

Apart from a blown head gasket, what are some other possible causes of the engine blowing steam? Could a hose be connected wrong? Condensation? I'd like to rule out the simplest things before i pull my 'new' engine down.

Thanks,

Pat

[Matt-AE86]

Check that the rocker cover breather to the intake plenum isnt blocked. I have found that somtimes when people do 4age conversions and have been given a rwd plenum that they have FWD throttle bodies on them, these block of the pvc valve on the rwd plenum as it is reversed. This can cause a type of blow by as the crank pressure builds up and is forced to go threw the pistons rings and out threw the combustion chamber.

Best way to fix this is to get a catch can.

Valve stem seals. Your valve stem seals could be old and hard and leaking oil into the combustion chamber

Blow by. You could have bad rings and the oil is getting threw the rings into the combustion chamber. Sometimes you can check this by taking the rocker cover hose of and looking at the air pressure coming out, if its clear , that is good, if its a little hazzy, abit of blow by. This is created from the fuel vapour.

Then you have blow headgasket, but oil with blow gaskets on 4age's I havent scene much of, its usually just water galleries that blow it most of the time.

[mattysshop]

i have seen about a dozen blow 4AGE headgaskets.. most of them bewteen 2-3...

could be a cracked head also.. which i'm sure you'll agree is alot worse than a headgasket..

is this after the car has been running for a while? like 30 mins of driving??

just trying to make sure your not getting worried about the steamy stuff that comes out the back of all cars when the wheater is a bit cool..

[Sprinterboy]

It's definately water(put my hand over the exhaust) so i can rule out most of those oil leak problems i think. It's a genuine JDM engine and intake too so it can't be the rocker cover breather.
I've had it running for maybe 5mins max at a time in the garage so i dont think it could have overheated, although maybe there was an air pocket in the head(is there some way of bleeding the system?). It doesn't get very cold here in bundaberg but it has been raining, possibly could be just condensation. It gets worse when revved, how safe is it to run witha blown gasket? I'd like to see if it clears up after a while.

Thanks,

Pat

[terryo]

the most likely cause of water out the exh pipe is a damaged head gasket. any large mechanical repair shop will be able to do a chemical test that checks for the presence of combustion gasses in the cooling water. if you keep driving it you will get localised damaged to the head face where the gasket is blown. eventually, depending where the fault is, you may get water into the oil. you will see a creamy stain inside the oil filler cap or on the dipstick when that happens, and that definitely does damage as water is not a good lubricant.
pm me if you need more help or see