I was driving, I thought I suddenly noticed some power loss. Drove for another 5-10 minutes and parked the car after idling for about 5-10 minutes. Went out and got back in the car after half hour, cranked up the engine and began to pull out of the parking lot. I suddenly noticed lots of white smoke coming out of the exhaust. The white smoke was so much that I couldn't see the car behind me.

I parked the car again, let the engine idle, raised the rpms to higher rpm range and the white smoke began to subside. All this while I was checking on the dashboard to see any indicators (engine , oil etc). Nothing was turned on.

Quickly searched in this forum and according to some suggestions went and checked the engine coolant level and the oil level. The coolant was full. The oil seemed to be more than full. Couple of days back it was cold and oil had turned semi-hard, so it was difficult to get a reading. I could have ended up putting more oil.

My car has run around 60K, 05 Rx8. I have been driving the car regularly for past couple of weeks. This is the first time I am seeing this problem since Aug 07(bought the car then).

Any suggestions on what could be the cause of the above symptoms?

 

Hmmmmmmmmmmm..............I see that you may have overfilled the oil, so.................that's the likely culprit. Check your oil level again and if still overfilled, get the extra out of there. Then take your accordian tube and intake off and see if you have oil in there. If you do, get it all cleaned out........including the air filter. That's a good start and then we will go from there.

 

good advice,

but in life.

white smoke coolant
blue smoke oil
black smoke running very very rich.

rarely do the problems fix themselves.

beers

 

True Swoope, but one persons "blue" may be another persons "white". After all, the blue referred to is not like bright blue or anything. I can see where slightly bluish smoke could be described as white smoke by a person in a state of panic viewing the smoke through the rear view mirror. Eh?

The OP should use the smell test and that should tell him/her whether or not it is coolant smoke (sweet smelling) or oil smoke (oily smell) or a rich air/fuel smoke (fuelish smell).

 

I drove it around all day today. No problems. If it was a coolant leak, I am guessing that is a big problem? I read somewhere that it is a blown head gasket? Wouldn't the check engine lights get turned on?

I am pretty sure that it was not rich smoke.

 

Just check all your hoses and such around the radiator man, if nothing there then I would go a little further into it. I never really fret over a coolant leak, then again when I worked on vehicles it was government vehicles lol, and mostly just the hoses leaking from the hoseclamp or a cracked one. Do a little look around on your car, at 60000 miles this should not be happening though so the gasket may be the issue.