BVD

Hi all,

Can anybody please shed any light on what happened to me today?

I picked my brand new RX up for the first time and headed for home, pottering along at low revs on freely moving city roads for a few miles. When I reached a four-lane by-pass road I decided to open it up a bit, and take it up to 5,000 revs or so. I took off from a set of lights – at what you might describe as about medium pace, i.e. not too aggressively – and when I reached about 4,000 – 4,500 revs it coughed, and stopped accelerating. I dropped it into 4th and all was smooth again, but to my horror it emitted a fairly solid cloud of white smoke behind the car.

The rest of the journey home (about a 30min drive) was uneventful but when I restarted it in the garage, half an hour after stopping, it again put out a generous cloud of white smoke from the exhaust.

I rang the dealers, who were apologetic and concerned and even offered to drive up with a courtesy car for me and to retrieve the vehicle for testing and fixing.

I decided to drive it back myself, but when I stopped to close our gate I could see white smoke puffing from both exhausts just at standstill tick-over.

The drive back was uneventful and I could see no more obvious smoke in the rear view mirror.

On arrival the service manager suggested that it might have been accidentally overfilled with oil during the pre-delivery process. We’re all keeping our fingers crossed that this is all that they find when they give it a full check-over in the morning.

Does this sound likely? Or are there other possibilities that others have experienced.
(BTW, it was a mild, “shirtsleeves” day, neither hot nor cold).

Thanks. Chris.

LL7

Was it really smoke, or maybe steam. White smokes tends to actually be steam. I would return the car and get another either way, unless the oil really was way overfilled, which I doubt from your description. Good luck.

Psylence

White smoke is not oil.. white smoke is water or coolant. If it was gray/blue or black then I'd think oil..

I'd make the dealer look at it!

wakeech

yeah, how'd it smell?? the anti-freeze in the coolant makes it smell quite sweet...

dude, that's some serious bad luck. a total warranty issue, no doubt. hope everything works out for you.

BVD

Thanks for the replies,

Interesting that it might be coolant not oil. At first sight, the colour did seem to be a sort of light grey/whitish colour and not dissimilar to smoke that I've seen from cars with oil problems (i.e. worn piston rings). However, I was on my own at the time, and mostly seeing the "smoke" from inside the car, so didn't really get a precise colour assessment of it.

The first thing that occurred to me was that one of the injectors that squirts oil on the rotors was malfunctioning. As I don't know how these work, or how the management system operates, it was just a wild guess based on hearing of other types of injector difficulties on this forum.

Still, the coolant possibility will be easy enough to check when the workshop goes over the car - which should be in the next hour or two. I got it back to them yesterday afternoon just before closing, so they'll be onto it first thing this morning.

Here's hoping for a quick clean outcome - but if it is a coolant leak that could mean all sorts of dramas....

P00Man

that sucks man, hopefully its nothing
________
Honda Domani Specifications

RX8-TX

Burnt oil tends to be a sort of blueish color...which in most cases can be confused with the white puff he describes.

Reeko

Yes,
But steam from a coolant leak has a very distinctive sweet smell.
If it were coolant, you should be able to tell quickly.

Kas

i had coolant leaking. when you start the car you will notice what "looks" like condensation. Take it back, your engine like mine is stuffed. My car did still run smooth, but the front housing was cracked leaking coolant into the engine.

BVD

Thanks for the support and suggestions guys,

Unfortunately I didn't think to do a 'sniff test' on the 'smoke' - not being in the clearest frame of mind at the time....

After seeing the regular puffs on tickover I rang the dealer and suggested that they might need to collect the car on a truck, but they felt that driving it back wouldn't harm the car. So they were obviously thinking oil at that stage too. Doesn't mean they were right of course....

Still, no point stressing out about it - they should be checking it out now, so I should hear what they found later today. I have confidence that both the dealer and/or Mazda will sort out and fix whatever the problem is.

Just reassuring to be able to have a quick chat with others here instead of just sitting by the phone chewing my sleeve and pulling out my hair... :p

Cheers, Chris.

BVD

Thanks Kas,

I was hoping to get some feedback from you - knowing that you had the housing/coolant problem.

Did it take long for it to happen with your car?

Kas

Chris,

Personally, i'd go and thrash the car silly on the way to the dealer and make sure whatever problem there is with the car has some effect.

Better have the engine replaced than just parts

Kas

It was noticed at 1300 kms. I did however notice the white smoke before that and took no notice of it thinking that it was a new car and it wouldnt happen.

Mazda had the engine replaced in 2.5 days however it may be different in your case as mazda US has ran out of replacement engines (apparently).

So my suggestion is thrash that engine to a point that its un-repairable. That way like me you will either get a new engine or in my case, a new car=)

Kas

how many miles/kms has your car done?

BVD

UPDATE:

The car had done only 34k when I took delivery of it. Apparently it's fairly normal to have 25+, and the rest may have occurred with the dealer taking it for a run with trade plates on, or whatever. When I dropped it back last night it had done 98k (i.e. to my home and back).

The full story is that the dealer I bought the car through did not have the right colour/config in stock and negotiated a swap of some sort with a dealer in country WA. I stipulated that any car must have less than 50k on the clock. With such a new car and short supply it seemed reasonable to me that some new cars may have been driven a short distance. Above 50k I felt that it was starting to get into the realms of having been demonstrated more than I felt I wanted. It was trucked back to Perth.

The original dealer supposedly did a pre-delivery check there, so "my" dealer only did a clean and general checkover (a decision they apparently now regret, but which I'm not about to make a big song and dance about). They seem honest and genuine and keen to sort things out, and I have no reason to suspect foul play, previous thrashings, cover-ups or whatever. If it turns out to be no more than an inexperienced mechanic overfilling the oil, then we'll all be relieved....

I spoke to them a few minutes ago and they told me that the coolant level was OK and did not appear to have dropped. However the oil did seem to have been overfilled (which was in line with what my quick check seemed to suggest).

They are draining all the oil and refilling to their satisfaction, plus doing a full checkover with the appropriate testing gear.

They should let me know in an hour or so if all is OK, but at this stage a happy ending does look possible.

Naturally I'll be watching it extra closely for the first few weeks, even if it does look OK when I pick it up.

Kas

doesnt oil burn blue?

BVD

Well it looks like good news. :D

They drained and refilled the oil coorectly and put it through a bunch of diagnostics and test drives and couldn't reproduce the problem.

I just drove it home again, and I couldn't make it happen again either - despite repeating the conditions that made it happen yesterday.

It did look more like oil at the time, a fairly classic "cloud of smoke" effect that you get with oil. But I certainly couldn't have sworn either way what it was - particularly as I was feeling somewhat stressed at the time.

Phew! Let's hope that's the end of it. Thanks for all the info and feedback.

Fabulous car though....

Kas

just out of interest, i got my car with 2 kms on the clock.