Uncle Buck.....Thick White Smoke from Exhaust
 

Alright, so I'm heading out of town to start on a an epic road ride...bike on top of the roof rack, good music playing, windows down on a great summer night. I look in my rear view mirror and see white smoke billowing out of the back of my 04 vel red 8. I pull over, notice I have NO power in first gear and decide to call Mazda towing service. If you've ever seen the movie 'Uncle Buck', you'll know what I'm talking about. A couple of days ago I could feel 1st gear being very granular/gritty...not as powerful until I hit second gear...thought it was bad gas..(the car not me) :)
Vehicle has 15,000 miles on it. I have it towed to the dealer where it now awaits the diagnosis.......thinking it's not going to be good news. Anyone have a similar experience with white smoke coming from the exhaust?? :confused: I know it's not steam for sure and I've kept up on adding oil every third or so fill up. not looking forward to the dealer's call tomorrow morning but wanted to give the rx8club a heads up for any advice they could share. Thanks in advance everyone.
Least I have my bikes.....

White smoke is usually an indication of overheating. Anti-freeze and oil mix.

Or bad gasket/o-ring. Coolant may be leaking into the combustion chamber. This would be a very costly repair. G'luck.

FS

white smoke with a slight sweet smell is an indication of collant getting in the combustion chamber....black smoke is normally oil (if there is nothign else funny with the car that is...ie too much fuel etc.)

i got a misfire with the exact same symptoms you described. or at least that's what the dealer told me.

white smoke=bad for rotaries

most likely cooling/coolant fluid issue as stated before

Think positive. It could be a malfunction of the intake system causing a condition that could result in clouds of white smoke. I speak from personal experience having forgotten to reconnect the AFM electrics and some of the piping to the air funnel on my RX-7 after working on it the other day. When starting the car, huge clouds of white smoke let me know something was not right. After finding and correcting my mistakes, the car runs fine with no smoke. Maybe you will be as fortunate.

White smoke can also be mass quantities of unburned fuel per POP's post here.

Thanks for the heads up guys. I picked up my car last night from the dealer.....they replaced the plugs, said that was the problem. They mentioned that the plugs were "gunked" up and needed to be replaced....didn't really understand that issue and how it related to the white smoke....but anyways I drove off.....only to return to the dealer a few hours later to drop it off again. The car's got 15000 miles on it....the dealer couldn't give me a good reason/root cause of why or how the plugs got gunked up or how to, in the future, not have the problem later on. (other than reving the engine before shutting it off)
The white smoke was gone but I have a significant loss of power, the engine light went on, on two separate occasions in that short time. Also at 2000rpm's there's a gritty/granular feel like something not 'hitting' right. Anyways, it's back at the dealer and shoult know more tonight. BTW for anyone that has sqeeking brakes, there is a new shimkit that was relased to fix the problem.

Could be overfilled with oil. Happened to a few on this forum in the past. Dipstick hard to read....put in another quart. Great white clouds of smoke above 4000 rpm with a loss of power. This would also explain the gunked up plugs.

Double check the oil level.

Just got a call from the dealer.....Gomez hit it on the head. I usually put in a quart of oil every 3-4th fill up and you're right, the dipstick is a bit hard to read. Guess it had too much oil resulting the oil backing up into the air intake and clogging the air filter as well as gunking up the plugs.
Guess it's my own stupidity but everyone I've spoke with has said put a quart in every 3-4th fill up and you'll be fine. I'll be a bit more detail oriented with putting oil in.
Going to run me $50 or so for a new air filter......This explaination from the dlr makes the most sense in relation to the issues I was having. Problem resolved..picking up car tonight. Live and learn I guess.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback.

I agree it's gotta be one of the WORST dipsticks ever - hard to get at, hard to read.

But you want to CHECK it every 3-4 fillups - only add oil if needed. :)

----- Background on car - 2004 red 125898kms called mazda gabriel here in montreal with the VIN they told me all recalls were done but none were concerning engine it was mostly suspension parts and a re-programming of ecu I think...

So over the weekend ( sunday ) I drifted my 8 for the first time at a local car event, After some hard revs and slides THICK clouds of white smoke come bursting out of my exhaust to which I automatically turn the car off and limp back to the paddocks...

EVERY rotary guy there was trying to tell me I blew an apex seal and that it was game over for my car...

I got this thing june 6th no way I was letting myself believe it was dead already...
I got on this very forum and looked up all the white smoke articles I could find... fell onto this one last and I too noticed quite a bit of oil in the Air filter...as it did drip out from the filter... I towed my car home unscrewed maf which is connected to my air intake somehow.. I cleaned out quite a bit of oil from the intake and the rubber ribbed hose connecting it to throttle body... after that was done I also cleaned up the oil that was left around engine bay which wasnt like a crazy amount..

Anyways after cleaning that out My car idles 700 to 1000 sometimes going under 700 but its relatively more stable than what I remember also...my temp gauge and oil pressure have never went up...

I am seriously thinking I need to flush all oil and coolant change plugs, and coils then see how she'll behave...

So far after clean up everything is a ok no smoke no nothing ( and I have since clean up hit red line at least 3 times in my spree of joy that nothing was dead... )

If anyone is going through this white smoke and oil burning smell ( like burnt rubber kind of )

Clean out your intake + the ribbed rubber part connecting to throttle body ... it helped me a ton.

Nice 10 year old thread bump.

:lol: wtf.

how do you fix that issue

my 06 rx8 had a crack in the radiator and it kept over heating so I changed it.. now that I did white smoke comes from the exhaust and it's still over heating.. why????

Because you did not troubleshoot the issue properly and by overheating it, you likely damaged the internal coolant seals and now the engine needs a rebuild.

A proper coolant system pressure test will give you the answers you seek.

Cooling systems are pressurized at abt 14 psi. The crack probably released pressure from the cooling system so the coolant was not being forced past the seal, nor was the system cooling the engine properly because of the lack of pressurization. Overheating can affect the coolant seal. By replacing the radiator, the system was again normally pressurized allowing the coolant to blow past the coolant seal.

oh...

so now I have a new radiator but the car still over heats and white smoke comes out the exhaust..

Yes. As said above, the engine was ruined by repeatedly overheating it.

So what must be done moving forward to fix the problem?

Replace or rebuild the engine. Either way, that bad boy is coming out of the car.

Ok....once engine is out what must be done... cuz on a normal car u get a head job and rx8 don't have heads..