Could this be a sign of K Series HGF?

[chris whitlow]

I know it's been a little cooler this week but when I've started my car first thing in the morning I'm getting quite alot of white smoke from the exhaust.

Recently the engine has been misfiring at first but a couple of blips on the accelerator normally sorts it out. However, this week it's taken around 30 secs of blipping before it settles down.

When I started it yesterday evening it misfired at first but just as it started running normally a cloud of white smoke billowed out. This didn't last long but it made me think that coolant might be leaking into one of the cylinders when the engine cools down.

I removed the spark plugs this morning and when I looked into cylinder no. 4 I could see a reflection of the sky. I'm assuming this was coolant sitting on top of the piston.

I tested the compression with the engine cold, as I think that's when I have an issue and it runs fine when hot, and got 220, 200, 220 and 218 psi respectively from cylinders 4 to 1. I was expecting number 4 to be really low.

This is what the spark plugs look like with no. 4 being on the left.

There's no oil in the coolant expansion tank and no emulsified oil under the oil filler cap.

Am I being paranoid, do I have HGF or could something else be causing the white smoke?

All suggestions gratefully received!

Thanks,

Chris

[SM25T]

I would suggest it is water vapour condensing ... not smoke. Perfectly normal. Plugs look good. Have you checked the gaps ?

[Mechanical Moz]

The inlet manifold seal can fail and allow coolant to leak from the cylinder head water outlets on the inlet manifold face into the end cylinders. Relatively cheap and easy to replace first if you have coolant finding its way on to the piston.  Also worth checking that the inlet manifold face is flat while its off, if it's warped a new seal may fail pretty quickly.

[paul richards]

What Mechanical Moz says. Failed inlet gasket around waterway next to number 4 cylinder. Assume you will have lost a little coolant. 

[SM25T]

Must admit I missed the reflection comment in your first post. Amazed you could see that down the deep plug recess ! Does sound like inlet manifold.

[Garf]

I'd agree with the assessment above and it is the inlet manifold gasket.

I had this fail in my 1.4k ss a few years ago - it was a bit more sudden than you and happened while driving thus producing a large white cloud which was effectively steam (key point it was white and not grey with oil burning). I stopped immediately and got a tow home - no additional damage.

As others have said not a difficult (or expensive) repair. I hope this is all yours turns out to be.

[oilyhands]

A big thumbs up to the advice above, first step is replacement of the plenum gasket, early ones are known to harden and leak.

If the problem persists, its time to lift the head..

Oily

[chris whitlow]

Thanks for all the replies.

I really didn't think it could be anything else but the head gasket so I'm feeling relieved.

Oily, thanks for supplying the gasket.

Cheers all,

Chris