Help! Engine smoking
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Intermediate
Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 29
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Help! Engine smoking
Being that the weather was nice yesterday, I started up my 88 coupe for the first time in over a month. It started right up without any hesitation and idled fine. I backed her out of the garage and let her warm up for about 10 minutes. Then pulled back into garage and shut her off. When I went to reconnect the battery tender, I noticed a stream of dark smoke coming up from around the distributor area. Got out the trouble light and tried to see what was going on. Looked like there was some new oil on the rear part of the engine block. I assume that some oil had gotten on the hot exhaust and had burned off. This is something new as I have not had any problem like this before and was wondering if anyone else has had this happen? Is there some seal or gasket I should be looking at in that area? There were a few very small spots of oil on the board I keep underneath the car but I figure a 20 year old car with 75k on the odometer will leak a little. Should I be overly concerned?
Melting Slicks
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,171
Likes: 1
From: Warwick RI
Being that the weather was nice yesterday, I started up my 88 coupe for the first time in over a month. It started right up without any hesitation and idled fine. I backed her out of the garage and let her warm up for about 10 minutes. Then pulled back into garage and shut her off. When I went to reconnect the battery tender, I noticed a stream of dark smoke coming up from around the distributor area. Got out the trouble light and tried to see what was going on. Looked like there was some new oil on the rear part of the engine block. I assume that some oil had gotten on the hot exhaust and had burned off. This is something new as I have not had any problem like this before and was wondering if anyone else has had this happen? Is there some seal or gasket I should be looking at in that area? There were a few very small spots of oil on the board I keep underneath the car but I figure a 20 year old car with 75k on the odometer will leak a little. Should I be overly concerned?
Cars sit, things dry out, and leaks at the rear of the intake or valve covers are quite common. A few drops is not catastrophic on a 20 year old car but wipe it off and fire it up to make sure that you didn't blow your sender or switch out. They are right behind the distributor
