Hello guys,

After a lot of customization of the car (nothing with the internal system, just cosmetic like paint, seats, tint, 4 new tires, etc) and having the car exactly how I always wanted, just a week later came the issues (none of them related to the customizations)

Everything started when I was stopped at a red light, it was an unusual cold night here in Florida, from my rear mirror view I noticed a huge cloud of smoke when I pressed the gas, but since it was kind of foggy that night, I wasn't sure if it was me or just the weather.

Like a half mile later and like a minute away from home making a turn and pressing the gas I heard some kind of rattling noise coming from the front of the car, there was no fault code so far, I got home and checked the car looking for fault codes with a Bluetooth scanner and I found misfire on 1-3-5-7 plus low input circuit on O2 sensor 1 and sensor 2 (Bank 1 and Bank 2) so both of them.

I didn't see any overheating warning during my driving time, it was around midnight so I leave it to check on the morning.

I have been battling with a coolant leak that I couldn't find for years and even the mechanic couldn't. But it wasn't a dramatic leak, I think I used just like a quarter of a gallon since the reservoir tank was replaced and the radiator and that was like 3 years ago. So it wasn't a dramatic loss of coolant, I thought it could be a bad cap, but apparently was something else.

Reading and searching about the symptoms, everything was pointing to a head gasket problem.

I checked the spark plugs and one of them (the number 1) was noticeable black and it was relatively new just like 2 or 3 months old but it was totally black, some signs of oils but not that much. I also noticed it was not that tight, it wasn't loose but it wasn't as tight as the others.

The car now has hesitation when turned on, I haven used the car since that night other than just testing.

The white smoke persists, but not at all the time, just when I press the gas on drive, even if I leave it idle for more than 30 minutes it doesn't smoke until I put it on drive, but it is weird, it's not constantly, for example:

I started the car, drive slowly around 25/30 mph but if I have to stop or reduce the speed to press the gas again, the car shake and drop the smoke, during that period of time the dash flash the restricted performance warning and then disappear.

I bought the combustion kit test to find out if I actually have the Blown Head Gasket. The fluid has not changed to Yellow and I did the test more than 10 times on different days and every time has been a negative test. But the symptoms point to Blown Head Gasket either way.

A FEW SYMPTOMS other that the already mentioned.

My heat is not working, but my air conditioner works.

I heard a click on the thermostat/water pump area, similar to the rattling noise from that night. I also noticed that my upper and lower hoses collapsed when I turned off the car and the engine has been shut off for a while but never during the car is turning on.

The smoke always come just after the rattling noise but just when I'm driving, not on parking or neutral or reverse, just on drive.

I'm sorry for overwhelming with this very long Post. But I wanted to be as explicitly as possible.

I attached pictures of the combustion test.

I was nervous to do the test with the blue fluid and find out that could be a blown head gasket but I did it

Also I attached pictures of the smoke, the smoke is coming more from the driver side, both pictures (driver and passenger side) where taken at the same time.

Thanks guys, I could still be missing some details to describe this








At that point, just the driver side was smoking hard, the passenger side just slightly.

​​​​​​​The smoke usually disappear after 2 or 3 minutes.

 

This is really interesting. The fluid test is telling you there is no leaking of combustion gases into the cooling system -- it stays yellow. If it had a very small and intermittent leak, it would not have to go full yellow (e.g., green = intermittent leak) but yours is staying blue.

At the same time, you are seeing white smoke -- presumably vaporized coolant -- when you decelerate.

When you decelerate, you are placing the intake between the cylinder heads and the throttle body under vacuum. If there are any cracks between the cooling system and this part of the intake, high vacuum is when you would pull coolant into the intake (and you describe the smoke on deceleration, or high vacuum). The coolant in the intake would then give you the symptoms of the head gasket failure, but there's no actual interaction between the cooling system and the combustion gases so... your test fluid stays blue.

At the same time, this is only occurring to the passenger (US passenger) side of the engine, because spark plug #1 is dirty and your misfires were on plugs 1, 3, 5 and 7 (the passenger side). (I'm ignoring that both your O2 sensors failed for the time being).

There is one area that meets all the above criteria... if you had a crack in the heat exchanger core above or near the number 1 cylinder, then you would be pulling coolant into the number 1 cylinder (and perhaps the others in the bank to some extent).

Unfortunately in order to remove the heat exchanger, the supercharger has to be pulled first, so you'd want to do more diagnostics to verify that this could be the case before starting out to remove and inspect the heat exchanger.

Am curious what others think.

 

Thanks a lot for your response.

The sensors went bad that night at the same time, it was the first time that I discovered theses codes. I check for codes almost every 2 or 3 days because the aftermarket stereo has the option to check that out and there was not codes until that night. I was wondering how both of them went bad at the exact same time.

My vehicle is not a supercharger it's the regular XJ8L 2005

I've heard that others vehicles with a Blown Head Gasket can drive and other than the smoke and the high temperature on the engine they wouldn't notice the issue. In my case I haven't seen the temperature higher than 94C, Yesterday I flushed the coolant following the instructions in this forums and the car was idling for long periods of time and at any point the engine was higher than 93/94c according to the obd2 scanner, I was monitoring all the time.

There was not smoke neither during the idling, but as soon as I drove it and I stopped at a stop sign there was smoke and the rattling sound. But this time the smoke is not that white as used to be previous to the coolant flush.

Thanks again.

J.A.G.

 

LOL, I missed your signature line. Ok, no supercharger so no heat exchangers. What about an internal failure in the EGR valve that leaks coolant into the intake manifold? It's after the throttle body IIRC (in fact, isn't it closest to cylinder number 1?) so it would be exposed to vacuum.

 

PCV Valve?...It is situated on Bank 1? Although, I would imagine it would affect both banks?...Not sure, perhaps someone more knowledgable could dismiss this suggestion?

 

You know, there is an "air scaping" noise on the PCV Valve, i replaced it with another used one that I had and the noise is a little bit lower that it was, but I was reading that PCV valve could produce some smoke as well. I might considering try out and see if gets better.

Thanks for your help.
​​​​​

 

Well guys, as I mentioned on the description of the issues that I'm having. According to the scanner the car has the two upstream O2 sensors with low circuit input.

I bought them and today I pulled out the bad ones, one of then looks bad, but I can't figure out if that's oil or something else like coolant, etc... Since I don't have combustion gases on the coolant reservoir (according to the test) I could say it's oil. I'm really bad identifying some scents.

Can someone please tell me what may cause that an O2 sensor looks the way this one looks.

NOTE: The ugly one is the driver side, the one who's smoke the most.

 

I've been still trying to figure out how to fix the mentioned issues, I removed the water pump since the current one is really old and the thermostat as well, I found dry coolant around, there was a small leak from the screw of the water pump. So I decided to take it off and clean it to replace it.

While I was doing that, I removed the Throttle body to have a better access... But what I discovered could be part of the problem and that dry coolant wasn't from the water pump but from some other place around and I need so help to find out.

There was a ruber hose that was connected from the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) to the Throttle body and that same line has an exit on the other side of the Throttle body connected to another rubber hose... (The link below has a description and a picture of that hose)

https://www.jagbits.com/product/AJ89554.html

This hose was totally disconnected and since it's underneath I can't figure out where it is supposed to be connected. Since there is coolant running in that disconnected hose and is supposed to be under the intake manifold, I guess that's why I'm having all this white smoke and both of my O2 sensors went bad at the same time.

Can someone please put me on the right direction to plug in back that hose, where is supposed to be connected or there is a diagram so I can be able to see?

Thanks a lot and happy new year to all of you.

 

That hose runs from under the Inlet Manifold (it is known as the 'Valley Hose') to the Throttle Body; if it is disconnected or leaking under the manifold, you would get a substantial coolant leakage out of the back of your engine?
The other end is connected to the rear underside of your throttle body.

 

Continuing with the car, I removed the intake manifold in order to replace that Valley Hose that was totally disconnected, or maybe just lose because I never was super low on coolant and there was not coolant on the floor indicating that I had major leak like a disconnected hose.

Maybe the total disconnection happened when I was removing the intake manifold, but definitely at least should have been loose for a long time, otherwise wouldn't be unplugged by itself without any pressure. See attached pictures. Maybe I never found coolant under the vehicle because that area it's like a pan, what ever dropped there stay there or maybe go into a rubber seal See picture below.

BUT at least that a clear problem, not doubt at all of this leaking hose. THE MAIN CONCERN was how much oil I found inside the intake manifold. Like one and a half of this 17 oz bottles, around 24/25oz of oil.

I noticed that I was loosing oil but not visible under the vehicle. Could that oil be the reason for all the smoke, misfire, hesitation? How could be possible to get all that much oil in there, a bad PCV?

As you can see, the oil is really black, but the oil in the dipstick is clear because the oil was changed not a long time ago which makes me think this oil has been there for a while.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.


It was like this when I removed the intake manifold.

Seems like a piece of the plastic pipe was broken inside.

The coolant was probably accumulated here and also maybe some of the coolant entered to this rubber seal and that's why I couldn't find it under the vehicle?

One and a half of this bottle was inside the intake manifold. Around 24oz.

 

Your broken hose is just one issue.
Thats an awful lot of oil, guess it could be from a bad PCV valve.

 

Yeah, they are unrelated problems. All this came trying to find the cause of excessive white smoke from the pipe and replacing water pump, thermostat, etc I have been finding other problems.

The PCV valve was considered since the beginning but because the white smoke my fear was blown head gasket, that's why I started to looking for coolant leak, but I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen or feel any overheat and I have never been alarming low on coolant. I work around 2 miles away from home, the car does not even heat up. I thought that a bad thermostat in a closed position could be the problem or a faulty water pump. Now I think that I'm closer to the problem.

This week I'll get all the parts like the Water pump, Thermostat, the broken hose and intake manifold gasket. Waiting for them I took the time to replace all the spark plugs.

The good thing is that I have been able to have a better understanding of the car and some essential components.

But again, can all that oil cause white smoke?