jtgs400

iTrader: (1)

Ok, this past Mermorial weekend some of us guys took a trip to Vegas for a bachelor type party. There were 2 cars, mine and a friend's and he was following. There were 4 of us in mine and 2 in the other. Our average cruising speed was 80mph.

Everything was going fine until about 40mins from Vegas when my friend from behind calls me and says that my car is smoking from underneath. My heart just dropped and pulled right over. As soon as I came to a complete stop the smoke just consume my whole car. It was a whiteish smoke with little or no oder. No warning lights came on nor did the temp go beyond normal so I couldn't figure out why there was smoke.

Looking under the car, I could see that something was leaking and dripping onto the exhaust piping causing the smoke. I immediately went and started checking oil and tranny fluid but both were fine. Too hot to open radiator but I figured if it was low the temp would have gone up but never did. I decided to move my car up a little so I can check what was leaking. The liquid felt a little oily but would dry up if you rubbed it between your fingers so mostly likely it wasn't some type of oil based fluid...more like water. There was no smell either.

The smoke died down so we decided to take it slow the rest of the way with no AC on. It still smoked a little but not as much as before. When we finally got to vegas it was too damn hot to check anything so I didnt check til we were coming back. All fluid levels were normal and no leaks on the concrete either. The strange thing was that it did not smoke at all during the trip back and I had the AC on during the whole way. I was going 75-80mph most of the way too.

I suspect the AC was causing condensation which was dripping onto the pipes and caused the smoke. What do you guys think? I'll be sure to have it check when I go in for a oil change this week.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

umm that's very weird, do you know roughly where the leak is? still the front?

it does sound like something about the ac dripping to the exahust causing all the smoke though

cliffud

iTrader: (3)

has your car smelled lately like stagnant water?

I've had a car or two in the past build up stagnant water from the byproduct condensation that the AC unit creates and it sometimes smells... maybe you had something plugging your drain pipe and it suddenly overflowed or just flowed out all over your exhaust pipe?

In fact, my car is smelling a bit for some reason after about 30 minutes of driving with the AC on. i suspect it may be something to do with my cabin air filter since I just changed it but i dunno.

just a thought.

chuckb

water hitting exhaust would be steam, not smoke. does the smoke smell like burning oil? any oil puddle under car?

jonathancl

Condensation from the AC doesn't make much sense since there's not enough moisture in the desert air to create that much consensation. It would also repeat, which didn't happen.

Radiator leaks make white 'smoke' and leave the fluids you describe. But they don't just go away.

What if the radiator was too full and the overflow container filled and overflowed due to the heat? That would explain it. That would give you lots of white, billowing 'smoke' and watery fluid, and it would go away leaving your fluid levels normal...

vicestan

Yea but burning antifreeze has a very sweet smell to it and its very unique.

cliffud

iTrader: (3)

or it's really diluted?

Belshe1993

My car did the exact same thing. I had 4 guys in it and they were all over 200 lbs... We were running a bit harder than 80 but I had the same smoke you did I checked all fluids and they were within the norm. After further inspection they were not within norm. The tranny fluid was over filled. This caused the fluid to over flow from a spout when ran hard. If you had 4 people in your car and you were putting a load on it you could of simply had to much fluid in your tranny as well. It all ran out so when you checked it the fluid seemed to be ok. When the fluid got to the normal parameters it did not leak again no matter what load was on it.
I hope this makes since and helps relieve some uneeded suffering.

Later
Red