Smoking under hard acceleration...

not for my car but for a friend oversees, I will copy/paste his post from another board on his recent 3rd gen purchase.


Got the Camaro and I may have bought a lemon. I test drove the car and everything seemed tight, but unfortunately I got to test in busy London, every thing seems perfectly fine… Hard braking made it pull to the left a bit, but the owner did tell me it was doing that anyway... The engine sounded nice, went fine, drove perfectly straight, oil pressure was fine, so was temperature, etc... But I never got the chance to accelerate hard. Right, went I kit the motorway I looked back and I thought I saw some smoke, but I wasn’t sure. Then I stopped on some country road and floored it and the thing smokes like a total pig

It got me all the way to Soton without a fault, but it is really smoking BADLY under hard acceleration. I took it for GSi2000_4x4 to see it and he agreed the car itself looks awesome, we started at the spotless engine, bodywork and interior for a bit and then I showed him and his very mechanically minded friend the smoke…

What are the best and worst scenarios? Discussing it with GSi and friends we came up with the following possibilities:

* Oil is being fed into the manifold thru the breather pipe, easy to fix. I’ll look tomorrow to see if there’s any oil in there.
* Valve seal or seals, expensive!!!
* Head gasket gone, but unlikely as the oil seemed clean and clear after I drove it for 150 miles.

Now, my dad thinks it is piston rings, he reckons that a car that you don’t drive too much it is something that could happen.

Understandably I am pretty gutted, although GSi and other people tried to make me feel better saying that the rest of the car is pretty much perfect.

Any ideas??? BTW, just pottering slowly around town and it doesn’t smoke... Can I still drive it like that in the mean time? Just once a week to go shopping?

this was my response to him on the other board.

ool didn't know you got an f-body? What are the specs? year/motor

As for your car,

go here
http://web.camaross.com/forums/index.php?s=
they will give you expertise advice trust me they know everything in and out.

As for your car...

head gasket I doubt it... I would maybe do a compresion check if oyu have a freind with the tools jsut to rule it out.

jsut pull a plug, disconnect the Igntion coil to distributor wire(one dead in the middle of the distributor) and have soemone hook up the compressiontestor and crank the motor. I think the exact measurements is roughly the reading should be about within 20% of the adjacent cylinder.

I would just disconnect the breather pipe to the intake, and jsut run it and see if it does the same thing or not.

Valve seals... it is expensive, might even be cheaper to jsut get a set of heads here and have them shipped to you there.


But what my opinion is or at least one of the first things I woudl try other then the breatehr pipe is run an upper intake cleaner, if you can find it i would try "Seafoam" its usually sold at NAPA autoparts, but like i said may be hard to find a NAPA store, they are kinda rare here in Central Florida.

I think its possible if its a car that was not run hard that maybe it has some carbon buildup, that is why you only see it under hard acceleration, not so much in normal driving. Running it hard may also help clean out some of the carbon, but I would reccomeend using some sort of cleaner.

btw his car is a 1990 305 TPI, and it was babied, not really drivne much.

how are valve seals expensive?

If it was valve seals, it would smoke on startup. Sounds like the rings are going. A compression test would show cylinders low. Then if you squirt oil in a cylinder, it will temporarily help the rings and compression will go up on retest.

It is possible it's a head gasket. Will not necessarily put water in the oil, can go directly into cylinder(s) and come out as white smoke. But if it's blue smoke....your friend is about to experience severe pains in and around his wallet pocket.:(

I thought white smoke is transmission fluid being burned and light blue smoke is oil being burned. It doesn't really mean it'll cost alot, just depends on how much you want to do yourself because if a mechanic does it, you will have to pay most of the money just for labor.

The oil that you squirt into the cylinder to check if the rings are going isn't just engine oil I don't think. it's like 90w-120 gear oil or something heavier that will stick more. Don't put alot in because you are not trying to flood it.

My camaro smokes alittle under hard acceleration, and seems to do it more right after a fresh oil change.

white smoke would be coolant burning, that would probably be a head gasket

my car always smokes on startup, because of the worn valve seals, but also, when i watched a video of my car, i noticed a puff of oil smoke when i shift really hard(not powershift). what would cause this?

white smoke would be coolant burning, that would probably be a head gasket

Not always. I've heard it is tranny fluid, but I guess it could be coolant. do you always have to refil your radiator? Do you have more water than normal comming out your exhaust? That means you might have blown a head gasket and your idle would be off, is it? Even if your idle is off, that doesn't mean you have a blown head gasket though. If you take off the radiator cap and rev the engine, do bubbles come out?

It could be running rich also. Need to find out what color the smoke is and go from there...

too much fuel=black smoke
coolant burning=white smoke
oil burning=blue smoke

you wont see smoke as a result of trans fluid burning, because it wont be in the exhaust. if it is trans fluid, you will smell a burnt toast smell:death:

Originally posted by KagA152
you wont see smoke as a result of trans fluid burning, because it wont be in the exhaust. if it is trans fluid, you will smell a burnt toast smell:death:

It can happen on cars equipped with trannies that have vacuum modulators, e.g. TH350. Vacuum modulator diaphram tears, engine sucks up tranny fluid. But since this was posted on 3rd gen tech, didn't bother to mention it.