9 replies to this topic

[Gooders]

Heya
Was fitting a water pump on a mini today, everything went ok until I started it up. Smoke is coming from the exhaust manifold area.

Has anyone got any ideas what could be wrong? Could it be the head gasget ?

Cheers

[finch661]

is it blowing? could be you spilt some coolant on the manifold and its burning off?

[Gooders]

Doesn't seem to be blowing. Yeh could be but it does smell oily

[dklawson]

The head gasket is below the area where the manifold attaches to the head so unless you have liquid spraying out of the joint I doubt it's the cause of your smoking problem. You could however have bumped the valve cover and disturbed its gasket. Oil from there could be running down the back side of the head onto the manifold.

What can you tell about the smoke? Is it white, blue, oily smelling, sweet smelling? Is there a lot of it? Does it clear up after the car idles for a bit? Did you take a light and look to see where it was coming from (up close)?

[Gooders]

Yeh I had a look and it's coming off from
the bottom of the manifold from what I can see. Think it's blue ish mike and smells of burning oil?
I didn't leave it running to long because I didn't no whether it would mess it up.

What can I do to check it out?

Cheers

[Cooperman]

Sounds like a fluid spill down the back of the engine. Anti-freeze is a possible culprit.
Run it for a few minutes and see if it stops smoking as it warms through.
If not, come back on here for a list of checks to be made to isolate the cause

[Gooders]

Ok I'll get onto that, cheers

[beentheunseen]

My manifold always smokes a bit when I've just finished a job in the engine bay, even if all i've done is touch it with an oily glove - doesn't seem to take much excess oil/coolant on it to make a lot of smoke...

[Gooders]

I ran the engine for about 10 mins but no difference, think it's def coming from the manifold, not sure how I can inspect it without taking it off which is slot of hasle. Shall I run it and see if it gets worse or are
there any checks I can do?

Thanks

gooders

[dklawson]

In a previous post you suspected this was oil smoke getting on the manifold. Repeating my earlier comment, the head gasket is below the manifold connection point. Have you been able to determine if the oil smoke is coming "up" from below, or near the cylinder head itself? If the smoke is coming from up on high, buy a new valve cover gasket and install it. Rather than repeat my installation method here, please use the search feature for recent old threads about how that is done to minimize leaks. And before removing the valve cover, try using an engine degreaser and garden hose to remove the worst of the oil that may presently be on the manifold. Removing as much old oil now as possible will make troubleshooting easier.