I went a a long trip and saw a big cloud of smoke out of my exhaust. I changed my oil and saw my radiator had a leak in it, so i bought a new radiator. I can still smell the smoke though as i'm driving....any ideas?

 

Check if you're burning oil

 

What color is the smoke? This will narrow it down as to if it is burning oil (blue smoke), gas(running rich, black smoke) or water(white smoke).

 

It was white smoke

 

Does it smell like eggs?

 

Then you're burning water.... Might be a blown headgasket...

 

blown headgasket eh? THat doesn't sound very good, what do i need to do to clear this up? Approximately how much will it cost as well?

 

ok check this out


a: pull out ur dip stick and check for coolant on it and see if the oil is milky color
b: pull out a spark plug and see if there is coolant on the tip

if these are like stated above u blew a headgasket

if u do it urself its a whole weekend worth of work that depends which side blew the gasket. the gaskets are about 20$ a piece and i would replace all the gaskets that you take off in the process to getting to the headgaskets. it costed me about 150$-200$ on my old car i dont really remember! good luck

 

If that is the case you should consistently have more than normal white smoke coming out.... Fixing it: Have to take the cylinder head off and change the gasket... hell of a job, probably costs a fortune. Other indications of a blown headgasket is exessive pressure in the cooling system. Coolant contains oil and/or combustion deposit. Oil contains coolant (dangerous!!!!) will show up like light brownish deposit on oil-cap. I guess most shops who repairs cooling systems can find this out fairly easy by measuring pressure loss in the cooling system and the amount of hydrocarbons in the coolant.
And since it's a V6 you have 2 heads and 2 headgaskets...

 

If it is a blown headgasket you can pull the sparkplugs out, one by one, to narrow it down to which side is blown. I've done this a lot in the shop and it works. Of course, the last time I did it, the problem turned out to be a hole in the block and not a blown gasket at all.

Edit: forgot to mention that when you pull the plugs out, your looking for water on them. You should be able to tell the difference between water and gas on a plug. Once you find out which plug has water on it, that will be the side.

 

I think my max might be smoking also, i had my car runing and i went around and put my hand in front of the exhaust. The fumes coming out of the exhaust was humid. I was like ok hopfully it wont be like stanza and start smoking. Then I started to back up and a cloud of smoke went by me. i stoped and reved it a bit and sure enough the same thing happened. What do you guys think it could be ?? a blown head gasket? or what else. the car already was warmed up and the weather is not cold here. From what i can tell the smoke was white.