White smoke.... Oh the joy...

[Gsmblue]

I have been out of pocket for a few weeks, but the problems keep coming!

So, I will try and keep this short.. I am look for trouble shooting advice yet again! sorry!

1. After I got the fuel pressure valve sorted I have the oil changed out as there was gas in the oil...
2. The oil was the jiffylube high milage 5W-30 so thinner than the 10W-30 I had before. There was no smoke at all for a while. maybe a week.
3. The temps in Bend, OR have dropped to mostly below freezing.
4. Now I am getting white smoke, not straightaway, but after about a min or two of idling. When the engine fully warms up then the white smoke does die down. This is out of both tailpipes.So this is probably not just condensation...
5. I was losing coolant at the inlet to the heater matrix - I just fixed that today.
6. I am not sure if the smoke smells sweet or not... I just have a terrible sense of smell!
7. I will be keeping an eye on the coolant going forward.
8. Could an O2 sensor have an impact?
9. The idle is steady at about 900rpm in park, which seems high.. It drops to a steady 600rpm in drive. never stalls.

So my questions:
1. Should I be worried ;)
2. Should I change the oil back to 10W30? I have enough sat on the side so this will not cost a penny.
3. What steps should I take to try and trouble shoot this?

I suspect I have a bigger issue waiting to burst through... I suspect the piston rings are shot (118k original miles) but I don't have the equipment to do a compression test and my wallet is empty after the new tires.... If anyone is nearby and would like to help :)

Thanks in advance!!

[PetesPonies]

First, the most important thing here is the color of the smoke. Oil is not white. It is a whitish blue. Big deal? Well antifreeze is bright white. Excess fuel is black or dark gray. So the color makes a difference. If it truly is white, it is not oil.

[FuzzFace2]

I say drive it like you stole it!
If all you are doing is letting it idle then the system is not getting up to temp to "boil out" the water in the exh system.
I bet all is ok once you get the system hot.
Drive it for a week and see how it does.

Just keep an eye on the radiator level and oil level.

Dave ----

[Gsmblue]

My wife said the smoke was a brown color

So I took it for a 30 min drive, the smoke does calm down when driven for a while.

On restart it puffs up again.

I will keep driving her and put a couple of tanks of gas through her.

I will video the smoke and stick on you tube this week.

The smoke smells kinda gas like...

Monitoring the coolant for sure!

Thanks for the advice so far, I will update over the weekend...

[PetesPonies]

Typically a puff of smoke when you start the engine is signs of oil getting past your valve stems. Either worn guides or deteriorated valve seals. Still will be a blueish hue. If it is grayish . .that's over rich.

[Gsmblue]

Definitely not blue. I think it is more gray... I will post a video tomorrow afternoon and we can discuss, it could be the next blue dress/white dress thing!

[Gsmblue]

Ok, so I have pushed through about 1/2 tank of gas this week and taken photos of the coolant 3 separate days with the engine cold.. The level looks identical to me as per the photo:


Engine oil is relatively new and is full on the dipstick.

I pulled KOEO codes today and I got 67 and 84.

I am going to go through the EGR troubleshooting guide over the next few days, I have a friend in town that can help me :)

http://easyautodiagnostics.com/ford/4.6L-5.4L/how-to-test-the-egr-system-1

Any other suggestions?

[Gsmblue]

Cleaned out the connector to the EGR vacuum solenoid so now no codes! I also tested it with a vacuum gauge and it held @ 5mHg, engine rough idled then recovered. So leaving that system alone for now.

So what I know:

No coolant being consumed.
No engine oil being consumed.
No codes on the KOEO
Coolant temp sensor reads ok on the multimeter (I forget the values but they were in range).

White smoke still coming out of the exhaust. looks grey to me, smells kinda sweet and maybe gas like.

The drivers side exhaust is much worse than the passenger side. I have long suspected the #8cyl injector of being faulty as I have previously had issue with that cylinder flooding. After passing through some injector cleaner (seafoam) it was mostly behaving. Could this be something to look at?

Any help appreciated.

[Gary Lewis]

I'm not an EFI expert - nor an expert on anything for that matter.  But, I'm having a hard time believing that you could have an injector slobbering and not have codes.  Surely the O2 sensor would detect that?

And, I wouldn't expect a rich condition to smell sweet.  In fact, I think a rich condition causes the exhaust to stink.

But, you aren't losing any coolant, which is what I would have expected to cause white or gray smoke (steam actually).  But it doesn't take much coolant to cause a bit of steam.

I'm at a loss.  Sorry.  

[Gsmblue]

Thanks Gary! It is a mystery. I know far, far less than you about this stuff. It is my first go around..

An interesting point about the O2 sensor, I believe it is on the passenger side exhaust. The smoke issue is mainly on the drivers side. The suspect injector is on the driver side too.

Doesn’t really help anything but it is an interesting observation..

I will keep muddling through, anything I note I will post here incase someone reads it and can help 😀

[FuzzFace2]

nor me an expert, but I did stay in a.....sorry

My take on this, if the oil & coolant levels are staying the same, getting no codes, and as you pointed out the so called issue could be on the side with out the O2 it may not be picked up by the computer and show codes.

I would put a can or 2 of Sea Foam thru it again then 2 or more tanks of straight fuel and then pull the plugs to see what they have to tell you.
If all the plugs look good and everything else stays as it is I would just drive it.
A little puff of oil smoke at start up I would call normal and condensate smoke till up to temp normal also.

Now if motor is up to temp, gone down the road 5 to 10 miles and you stop and it smokes, unless it is cold out I would say it is not normal.
But that is going by what I have seen in person and it is hard to say what this is over the internet like now.
Dave ----

[Gary Lewis]

If the O2 sensor in on one leg and the problem is on the other then it wouldn't catch it.

But, here's another thought - worn valve guides and seals.  With the engine off oil will run down the valve stem and with bad seals/guides some will get through into the combustion chamber.  So it'll smoke on startup.  But, probably the only other time it may smoke is in high-vacuum situations, like coasting with the throttle closed.  And, it won't use enough oil to be noticed.

[Gsmblue]

So the truck has been running ok, but I am still not happy with the smoke.  

I did not have much time today but I decided to try a couple of things.

1. pulled the cable off the #8 cylinder injector.
- No difference in running at all. lumpy idle about 800-900rpm.

2. pulled the spark plug lead on #8 cylinder, injector unplugged.
- lots of surging up and down between 1100 and 1300rpm.
- very lumpy.

So it is fair to say their could be a problem with the #8 injector?

[PetesPonies]

In both instances, you killed the #8 cylinder. Should be no difference.

[Gsmblue]

My thinking here is the injector is allowing gas into the cylinder no matter what. So the difference is when there is a spark the cylinder is kind of working, without spark the cylinder is dead.

Does that make sense? I think the injector is allowimg gas through it no matter what the signal to the injector is.

I will pull the spark plug and see how it looks too at some point..

[NotEnoughTrucks]

Keep in mind that these are batch fire injection.

I don't know if killing an injector would positively kill the cylinder as there are other injectors firing and even if the affected cylinder would be leaned considerably, there may just be enough residual fuel fulled in with the charge that it would still appear to idle? Now, pulling the plug wire is another matter. You have proven that the cylinder is contributing.

I think this will turn out to be valves and guides. How many miles are on this engine? How do the spark plugs look?

[Gsmblue]

Interesting. I did not consider that.

The engine has 118k miles on it...

[PetesPonies]

If you're talking about SPFI, then each injector is fired separately.And with the wire disconnected from the injector, it doesn't open. It works magnetically. No power, no electromagnet inside. No magnet, no opening.

[Gary Lewis]

Ray is correct - in speed density EFI systems, like used on the 1985 302, the injection was bank or batch-fired, meaning that injectors 1-4 were fired at the same time, and then 5-7 were fired.  And, from what I can tell, 1-4 fired each time a cylinder on the passenger's side was ready to pull in fuel, and the same for the driver's side.  (You can prove this by looking at the wire color to the injectors - there's only one color for each side.)

So, there will be fuel in the intake manifold for each side that could make its way into another cylinder on that side even with one injector being disconnected.  No, it wouldn't be nearly as much fuel as was needed to make that cylinder run properly.  In fact, all four cylinders would be running on less fuel than they were supposed to have, although the ECU would try to compensate to some extent.  But, since there's only one O2 sensor for the whole engine in the speed density system there's no way for the ECU to correctly compensate, and the engine will run poorly.

[85lebaront2]

Gary, all 8 cyl bank fired truck EFI systems are grouped 4 end and 4 center cyls. So Injector 1 circuit is 1,4,5,8, injector 2 circuit is 2,3,5,6. If he has a leaking #8 injector the O2 sensor on the 1985-86 302 will not detect it as it monitors 1-4 only (right side). That is why starting in 1987 Ford moved the sensor to beyond the Y in the exhaust. The 1985-86 O2 sensors are not heated so have to be close to the exhaust ports.