something had to happen as she´s been running great , especially after the carbon canister removal. Now it´s a smoke issue. When I pulled up yesterday I noticed white smoke coming from between the left fender and the bonnet. Thing is though I can´t tell where it is coming from :confused: when I open the bonnet I can see the smoke rising up as I have a halogen lamp mounted on the ceiling right above the engine bay but I can´t see it actually coming from the engine or anywhere around there. The smoke is white and doesn´t really smell of anything as far as I can tell, and it appears to start smoking once I turn the engine off :(

 

any pointers would be greatly appreciated

 

Maz

The radiator overflow tank is in that area, you have to take the wheel arch liner out to access it, maybe the rad cap is letting some water by.

 

Paul

there´s an idea, I´ll check for that ...cheers guys :)

 

I just thought, the carbon canister was in that area too ..you don´t think it could have something to do with the removal of the canister and maybe not capping the correct pipes or something ?

Always worth checking over any resent work you done.

 

Paul

Not that easy though Paul as the "instructions" were for a 92 model which seems to differ from the 90 model on where the pipes are etc. But I will check over it as best I can .

 

something I forgot to mention; left the engine runing , popped the bonnet, no smoke...switched the engine off and smoke starts to rise , no sound, no real smell and it dissapears after 30 secs - 1 min.

 

car runs perfectly though

I don´t believe it has Mikey, but I will double check as soon as the engine has cooled down.

 

cheers

ok, just checked the water level now that the engine has cooled down and I´d say I haven´t lost a single drop of water, looks perfect to me.

Post the out come of this, if you ever find out.

 

Paul

yep..looks white to me ..but then once you open the bonnet you can only see it´s smoking as the smoke rises to the halogen lamp....when the bonnet is closed what comes out looks white...not blue ...i´ll do a better inspection of it when it happens again.

 

sure thing, if and when I find the cause I´ll post it up

 

Maz

Had this same symptom before. It was the small bore rubber hose that connects coolant water to the turbo that side coming from the back of the plenum I think, It comes down right behind the head and block coming down just in front of the bell housing. When you switch off a hot engine the water pressure rises immediately then the small crack in the hose opens and sprays a fine jet of water onto a hot turbo hence the white mist smoke effect. It doesn last long before the pressure bleeds away hence how hard it is to find it.

 

I think the heat from the turbo eventualy hardens the rubber which then cracks.

 

It is an absolute pita to change because there is hardly any room. You need thin hands, long nose pliers to undo the spring ear clips and to drag off the existing hose break it up etc then patience to replace it with a specially cut to length one that has to be eased on one pipe end then slid back onto the other one then clipped with those spring ear clips. I was able to do it from underneath with skinned knuckles.

 

Always worth changing all these small hoses when an engine is out.

 

You'll need a mirror on a stick and a good light to see it from up top!

 

Good luck if this is the problem.

cheers for that Willie, well detailed description there mate and deffinitely sounds like something worth investigating.

 

would have prefered "It´s dead easy to get to and fix" though LOL

 

Appreciate it

 

Maz

cheers for that Willie, well detailed description there mate and deffinitely sounds like something worth investigating.

 

would have prefered "It´s dead easy to get to and fix" though LOL

 

Appreciate it

 

Maz

 

Had something sililar, small amount of smoke coming up from between rear of engine and bulkhead on nearside, was a very small oil leak from rocker cover running onto exhaust, mechanic tightened it all up and, touch wood, no probs since. Like you say smoke was only visible if the light 'caught it' which makes it awkward to tell what colour it is.

Just a thought,