car smoking
 

I have a '05 x-type 3.0. I few days ago after about 2 miles, the car started to smoke really badly. But I was still able to drive it with no problem and it was not overheating. I recall that, at one of my services, the dealer said there was an oil leave but he didn't seem too concerned about it. That has been several years now. So I assume it is the same issue. But the thing that is really confusing is, when I went to drive it to a mechanic today, I could barely move the steering wheel. I just pulled it back into the drive. Does anyone have any idea of what might be going on or how much I might be looking at, hypothetically, to repair it? This is now a second car and I don't want to put too much money into it at this point (it has over 150k miles on it)

I have to assume the smoke was coming from the engine compartment and not the exhaust. Most likely you have ruptured a power steering hose and it was spraying on the forward cat. Check the power steering level it is probably low.

Thanks
 

Thanks for your response. And yes, the smoke was coming from the engine not the exhaust.

Jag05, just to ask a silly question, did you recently do an oil change? If so, you may have gotten some oil on the exhaust which could smoke. The smoke would roll up the engine, right behind the passenger headlight.

If this is not the case, can you be a little more specific in where the smoke is coming from. Saying smoke coming from the engine compartment is a little vague. it is possible that you have a valve cover leaking and that is hitting the exhaust header, you could have an exhaust manifold gasket that has failed and resulted in the smoke. Because you mention a lack of power, this could point to the failed exhaust gasket. Granted, if you start up the car and you see it coming from the driver's side, near the front wheel, it may be that your tranny is toast and the smoke is from the tranny overheating which would make the engine temp be just fine, but the tranny is cooking itself. This would also cause the tranny to either put excessive load on the engine or cause the engine to not adequately apply power to the wheels.

Sorry for not being more specific. If I had to narrow it down, it appears to be coming from the oil dipstick area. The last oil change was a few months ago.

If you can't move the steering wheel, you may want to check your steering fluid.

It's here:

Thanks. That's very helpful!

Anything leaking to the ground? Check oil, steering and coolant levels. If you've got steering problems I'm guessing you've had fluid depletion from hose failure. This fluid is ATF - same as what's in your transmission. I'll betcha the fix is simpler than you think. If it were me I'd get the front end of car up and have a look underneath.

Any possibility that the power steering unit seized (hence hard to steer) & the smoke was a burning belt? Just throwing thoughts out there.

I don't see any fluid beneath the car, however, the steering fluid seems low (though I'm not sure exactly where it is supposed to be). Is replacing the hose something I could do myself?

Yes, replacing a faulty hose can be fairly easy, depending on which hose is leaking. Have you topped up the reservoir and tried driving the car again? The reservoir cap has a dipstick on it. With the car cold on a level surface the PS fluid level should be between the two marks on the dipstick. The fluid used is Dexron III ATF, which can be found at any auto parts store.