exhaust smoke

[gp02a0083]

ok so on the 18th my front driver lower ball joint failed , causing me to replace the lower ball join , axle and the strut. after fixing this I found that the old axle put a dime sized hole in the back of the pan.

i got a new pan, nothing internally looked damaged at all. my father had a hard time getting the hose back on that connects from the back of the oil pan to a little black box behind the engine. needless to say he tried removing it and we didn't , we cut the hose 1/2 inch short and it installed fine. We let the car run for at least a 1/2 hour and i drove it to my house. this was on Friday, i drove the car around all day Saturday and Sunday. I just left my job about an hour ago and i have a smoke screen coming out the tail pipe. I shut the engine off , checked the oil level and it was fine. I put some water in the stock overflow bottle for the coolant. i didnt check the radiator being the engine was hot. But it smells like burning oil not sweet smelling like coolant. i just got home and it doesn't smoke as much but i still see a few puffs from the tail pipe. im really confused on what this could be because the car has 64k on it.

[Xaisk]

I dont remember but I tihnk the black box that was down there was part of the PCV. If a little oil got in the PCV system it might get recycled and burnt in the engine. Give it a few days to see if it stops.

[gp02a0083]

well yesterday morning and after work she only smoked a little bit on start-up and after rev'ing it a few times. I checked the PCV valve out of curiosity, seems like it was lazy and didn't work well, doesn't really rattle around. I replaced the valve with a new one.

would a stuck or lazy PCV valve on an FI engine make it smoke a little bit?
My thought is that the crankcase pressure may have built up and somehow got oil into the intake. it seems fine now after replacing the valve and im only seeing water condensation. i just don't get how this car has 63k on it and it would be the valve stem seals, oil is still at the same level and its not chewing up coolant. I relay cant figure out a reason why it let out a cloud of white smoke the other night.

[Xaisk]

well yesterday morning and after work she only smoked a little bit on start-up and after rev'ing it a few times. I checked the PCV valve out of curiosity, seems like it was lazy and didn't work well, doesn't really rattle around. I replaced the valve with a new one.

would a stuck or lazy PCV valve on an FI engine make it smoke a little bit?
My thought is that the crankcase pressure may have built up and somehow got oil into the intake. it seems fine now after replacing the valve and im only seeing water condensation. i just don't get how this car has 63k on it and it would be the valve stem seals, oil is still at the same level and its not chewing up coolant. I relay cant figure out a reason why it let out a cloud of white smoke the other night.

I agree it doesn't sound like it would be seals or anything. I won't say its no impossible, but unlikely. You said it stopped after you replaced the valve right? It sounds like exactly whaat I said in my last post. You should be fine.

[gp02a0083]

I agree it doesn't sound like it would be seals or anything. I won't say its no impossible, but unlikely. You said it stopped after you replaced the valve right? It sounds like exactly whaat I said in my last post. You should be fine.

yah i agree, tonight im working on replacing the drivers upper and lower ball joint, have to get a replacement for the lower that i installed 2 weeks ago due to creaking / dry socket. The old PCV valve when i took it out wasn't completely goobered up, but did not allow the valve to open freely all the time. The new valve you can shake it and hear it rattle , the old one didn't. I noticed the old valve kinda leaked a little bit here and there too. So im hoping that this was causing the car to smoke on start-up and after i rev the engine. It just confuses me how the hell it got into the exhaust, ill have to pull the spark plugs tonight and see what they look like. Ill have to see how things are after i work on the suspension, also i've been meaning to do a good tune up being it probably didn't have its service done since 30 or 40k miles.

[1813mdw]

well yesterday morning and after work she only smoked a little bit on start-up and after rev'ing it a few times. I checked the PCV valve out of curiosity, seems like it was lazy and didn't work well, doesn't really rattle around. I replaced the valve with a new one.

would a stuck or lazy PCV valve on an FI engine make it smoke a little bit?
My thought is that the crankcase pressure may have built up and somehow got oil into the intake. it seems fine now after replacing the valve and im only seeing water condensation. i just don't get how this car has 63k on it and it would be the valve stem seals, oil is still at the same level and its not chewing up coolant. I relay cant figure out a reason why it let out a cloud of white smoke the other night.

i'm not saying you have bad valve seals but a 20-some year old car w/ 63k usually means the car has sat for long periods of time. lots of time for stuff to get locked together

[gp02a0083]

i'm not saying you have bad valve seals but a 20-some year old car w/ 63k usually means the car has sat for long periods of time. lots of time for stuff to get locked together

oh i agree with you. when i get home later ill start her up and see whats going on after i fix the suspension. From what i saw on the carfax report and the owners story is that this thing was used mainly for going to church on sundays and the local pharmacy. Im not ruleing out that it could be a bad valve seal, i have this issue with my 307ci in my Oldsmobile and my honda is showing minimal signs of this.

[gp02a0083]

well it seemed to run fine last night, i started her up this morning and had some blue smoke, jsut enough to notice it in my yard with the wind blowing a little bit. I drove it to my fathers shop , noticed it smoked a bit on the way there too. I get to his shop turn around the building and it was smoking pretty good. I have my father look at it and not a spot of smoke came out of it. Im kinda convinced that it may be something relating to the oil pan, being that i replaced the pcv valve and i cannot find any leaks. Im going to pull the spark plugs today on my lunch break and see if i can rule out valve stem seals. Im thinking that its still building too much pressure in the crankcase and its getting into the intake. only this morning did i notice a bit of a stumble/ hesitation around 2k rpms. Im gonna leave the dipstick a little undone and see if it still smokes too.

[rocketman]

A blocked or malfunctioning PCV will do that. Cheap and easy fix, too. Hope it works out for you. Rocketman

[gp02a0083]

already changed that out with a new pcv valve. I couldnt get the plugs off the car , i don't have the right socket with me. The oil level was topped off the other day, now its a quart low. Im thinking it might be the stem seals. I smokes a bit on a cold start. ill check it later when i get to my parents house. Im getting really frustrated with figuring this out.

[Xaisk]

hm its possible for it to be a worn seal actually. I dont know why but when I posted previously I was thinking the engine had been rebuilt so that hadn't occured to me.

[1813mdw]

well it seemed to run fine last night, i started her up this morning and had some blue smoke, jsut enough to notice it in my yard with the wind blowing a little bit. I drove it to my fathers shop , noticed it smoked a bit on the way there too. I get to his shop turn around the building and it was smoking pretty good. I have my father look at it and not a spot of smoke came out of it. Im kinda convinced that it may be something relating to the oil pan, being that i replaced the pcv valve and i cannot find any leaks. Im going to pull the spark plugs today on my lunch break and see if i can rule out valve stem seals. Im thinking that its still building too much pressure in the crankcase and its getting into the intake. only this morning did i notice a bit of a stumble/ hesitation around 2k rpms. Im gonna leave the dipstick a little undone and see if it still smokes too.

mine smokes a little sometimes and alot others; i'm pretty sure my rings are toast as the motor has 300k. bout time for a compression test

[gp02a0083]

nah the engine hasent been rebuilt at all and has been serviced by honda for the last 20 years until i bought it. Anyway my father and i thought it may have been an issue with the pvc pipe on the back of the oil pan. We looked at the old stock one and there is a flap that blocks the pipe from oil splash. We thought this wasn't right on the new dorman pan. he checked that this morning (i couldn't being i had a few conference calls to make today) the pipe isnt blocked like we thought and allows pressure to go by easily. He also tried leaving the dipstick out to maybe bleed off pressure , but the car still smokes.

he pulled the plugs this morning and all 4 of them were soaked. I was going to do this yesterday to see if i could rule out and isolate the issue down to a cylinder if it was the stem seals. He's confused too because the car runs pretty good even with this issue, but he agrees that a qt of oil in a week is too much.

So now im really stumped. when i get home later im gonna take the top of the intake manifold off and look around there. i can only guess that somehow its still building too much pressure and back feeding the oil into the top of the intake. This would explain why all 4 plugs were a mess. I also looked in the airbox and its dry. Im wondering what the pvc "catch box" actually connects to besides the pvc and the oil pan, i know it connects to the back of the block with an o ring , but where does that actually dump into?


oh edited for an added thought. if the pvc system is clogged, would it be possible for the oil to get into the intake manifold? I dont think its the valve , i just replaced it the other day. Also to check if the upper end of the pvc system is working , i remove the vac line going to the top of the intake manifold , start the car and i should hear the valve click?

[gp02a0083]

ok so i checked the new pcv valve , its pulling a good amount of vac. my father and i took the pcv valve out of the spot that it sits on the intake manifold, we started the car up and let it run for a little bit. Where the pcv valve goes a little bit of vapor was visible.

regardless it smokes with the pcv installed or out of the car.

[1813mdw]

try pulling the oil cap off and starting the car. see if the oil starts to pool up real bad inside the valve cover. i've heard of the oil passages in the head getting clogged. a qrt of oil in a week is alot. my car burns oil and leaks from pretty much every seal and i only go through about a 1/2 qrt a week

[gp02a0083]

check thed passages, there fine m oil returns from the head to the pan/crankcase no problem. We did a compression testes last night, i was very impressed, after testing each cylinder twice reading the pressure after 10 cycles the compression was 180 for all cylinders.

My father brought home his de-carbonizing kit from work , maybe thinking the bad pcv valve caused oil to back feed into the intake and sit in the runners and anywhere else it could, i know this is a problem with Toyota's dunno about honda's.

we ran the crud outta it, i put fresh 10w40 in it, ran the de-carbonizer a few times through it. She still smokes a bit , its odd how its not JUST a little bit of blue smoke but White as well. We checked the coolant level in the rad afterward and not a drop appears to be missing. After running the car for a while we pulled the plugs, 3 of the 4 plugs have oil on them still, the 4th looked close, didn't have oil on it , but it did have alot of carbon

this morning im gonna try a cylinder compression tests with my air compressor ( similar way to test for a bad head-gasket). i just gotta back off the rocker arm adjustments so that the valves for the cylinder I'm working on is closed for sure, it seems that there is very little duration between the valves opening and closing.

at this point im really leaning towards the valve stem seals being shot. The pcv system hoses appear fine and dry. i got great compression, the car runs great except for the fact that it smokes, no hassle in starting the car either. if it isnt the valve seals , then idk it doesn't look like the car has a bright future....

[Dr_Snooz]

We looked at the old stock one and there is a flap that blocks the pipe from oil splash. We thought this wasn't right on the new dorman pan.

Sounds like a bad pan to me. I would get the right pan.

then idk it doesn't look like the car has a bright future....

63k original, Honda maintained miles??? I'll buy it. Name your price.

[gp02a0083]

Sounds like a bad pan to me. I would get the right pan.



63k original, Honda maintained miles??? I'll buy it. Name your price.

we had the pipe going to the pcv black box off, and it still seems to smoke. We tried again doing a headgasket / crude leakdown test. seems that were having a problem getting the valves to fully close like i mentioned in my last post. We did get the one cylinder closed off, applied pressure from our air compressor to it. I call this cyl #1 (farthest driver side). When we did this we can hear air through the oil return passages. This does the same thing for cyl #4 (farthest passenger side). We tried the same test with the center two cylinders and this causes the engine to roll over a bit and opens the valves. We kept looking at this to make sure the chamber was closed off by wiggling the rocker arms on #1 and #4. I think were not closing it off correctly. My question is , when the valves are closed and air is coming up through the oil returns in the head, would this be a sign of bad rings? i don't really think it is because the compression numbers were good. This seems to have happened a few days (3-4 days) after i installed the new dorman pan. it just seems like its too much of a coincidence. again the compression numbers were spot on 180 for each cyl, the engine doesnt stumble/ misfire , idles smooth as glass does not chew up any coolant. ALL 4 plugs were covered with oil, we replaced then with a set i had hanging around and after testing it and running the cleaner through it , ALL 4 plugs were covered with oil again (after it ran for about an hour). It does have a white/blue smoke coming only from the exhaust, nothing out the dip stick tube and nothing out the pcv. Its got visible smoke when idling and seems to get worse when its hot, it seems to be getting worse over time.


Snooz how much you willing to spend?
the dorman pan is practicably identical to the OEM Honda one with the exception of the dain bolt being 14mm instead of 17mm and the angle of the pcv tube is more of a 45 degree than a J bend. We thought it might be that flap in the pan, we haven't taken it off the car yet. Like i said we took the pipe off and checked for air flow, to check to see if its not blocked, this was fine. we left it off when running the car and also had the dipstick removed so it vents the crankcase, no smoke or vapor comes out of these lines. I was possibly thinking blow by the rings , but i don't see anything out of the dipstick tube or the pcv tube....

[lostforawhile]

if that shield isn't over the pickup in the pan, it could be pulling oil into the intake, that has to be there, I have a good pan, I don't know how much shipping would be though, I just did some pan modifications, so i used an extra pan

[gp02a0083]

if that shield isn't over the pickup in the pan, it could be pulling oil into the intake, that has to be there, I have a good pan, I don't know how much shipping would be though, I just did some pan modifications, so i used an extra pan

i recall that the shield is there, we were questioning it when installing it. We haven't taken off the pan to look at this, we've been thinking that it might have too close of a gap or something, but we checked the flow by breathing in/out of that pipe. Again when we tested/ ran the car last night we had this pipe removed to check for excessive crankcase pressure. needless to say we did not see any oil spewing out of that tube.

i may be contacting you, lost for that pan relatively soon, we are having one of my dads fellow mechanic friends come over and look at this too and i also have some friends from highs school looking into seeing if anyone in the local area is really good with old school honda engines.

[lostforawhile]

i recall that the shield is there, we were questioning it when installing it. We haven't taken off the pan to look at this, we've been thinking that it might have too close of a gap or something, but we checked the flow by breathing in/out of that pipe. Again when we tested/ ran the car last night we had this pipe removed to check for excessive crankcase pressure. needless to say we did not see any oil spewing out of that tube.

i may be contacting you, lost for that pan relatively soon, we are having one of my dads fellow mechanic friends come over and look at this too and i also have some friends from highs school looking into seeing if anyone in the local area is really good with old school honda engines.

well it's here i'll have to clean it up, but you can have it for shipping or anything you feel it's worth

[gp02a0083]

well it's here i'll have to clean it up, but you can have it for shipping or anything you feel it's worth

i appreciate it lost, my fathers friend stopped by to check this out. he doesn't think its the rings at all, but it may be stem seals being the last owner put 5k in 5 years on it and the seals may be rotted.

we ran it for a good hour, doesn't seem to be smoking or acting up at all. we think the exhaust / cat converter is gummed up with carbon deposits after we ran the cleaner through it.

ill post again tonight with updates.

[gp02a0083]

didn't take the car home, smoked on start up and a bit after. Coolant levels are ok and the oil level is a quart low again. I shut it off and start it back up 10 -20 min later and it doesn't smoke.

my fathers friend said that its odd when pressurizing the cylinder, with all the valves closed that there is air coming out of the oil return passages in the front corners of the head. This does the same thing with both outer cylinders. When we pressurize the middle pistons after making sure we had the valves closed, it caused the engine to roll. Now we tried this with my fathers friend there, he suggested to lift the rocker rod retainers so that there is no pressure on the spring at all. we tried again pressurizing the outer cylinders and again air flows through the oil returns ( note also the whole time we are checking this we are also checking for air flow from the dipstick tube, we noticed no flow at all). We also tried to check for air flow out the intake and exhaust

i bolted everything back up, ran the car and it starts and runs just fine. Still looks like its burning oil and has blue smoke. I pulled the plugs and sure enough there oil soaked again. I re-installed the plugs and started the car, didn't appear to have much smoke.

im at my end with this, i can't tell WTF it is , if its the valve stems or its the oil rings on the piston.

[1813mdw]

whatever you do don't sell it! eventually you'll figure it out; i've lost a couple great cars this way and still regret it. if you would consider selling it when it was running fine then go for it. but if not don't take the easy way out. just my opinion.

[Dr_Snooz]

Swap the pan for the right one and see if it still does it. I mean, the car runs fine until you swap the pan for one that you think is suspicious. Car immediately has trouble. I'm no genius, but that right there points to the pan you put in. Maybe you spontaneously had a major engine failure immediately following the pan replacement, but that doesn't make much sense does it? Sounds like the pan to me.

The alternative is to sell the car to me. Name your price. I'm boarding a plane on the 17th. I'll be flying out to Maryland to help a buddy put an addition on his house, so I'll be there with cash in hand if you want to sell...