So I'm ready to take the wife on a 7 day 2400 mile New England tour for beautiful fall colors, and after waxing and polishing yesterday I went to tuck her in for the night (the XKR, not the wife) when I noticed a puff of white smoke..... hmmmmm... so I let her sit overnight then fired her up again this morning and the same puff, followed by condensation (it was 46° outside).

There was a smokey-ish smell, not a burnt-oil smell, but certainly not clean water vapor.

Just had the thermostat replaced.....could there be residual coolant burning off?

 

Whatever your attached file is intended to demonstrate, it's neither white nor smoke.





Graham

 

It won't even open for me. Try taking a screen shot or saving it as a .jpeg, then upload it here.

 

Darn... when I click on it it downloads, then I open the download and viola! Puffpuff away.

 

A puff of WHITE mist on a cold day is nothing to worry about. If it was Blue or Black, then maybe something was amiss, or if it continued beyond a second or so.

 

+1

White is always moisture in the exhaust flashing off as steam. Happens a lot here in damp England.

OAT coolant has a distinctive smell as it burns off.

Graham

 

If you wash your car in the driveway with a hose, sometimes you can squirt some water into the exhaust pipes. It's got to evaporate and escape.

 

Most people know about the danger of carbon monoxide - the deadly exhaust emission that is colorless and odorless. But they don't realize that water vapor is another exhaust emission among the by-products of an internal combustion engine.

When an engine is shut off and cools down, that vapor condenses into liquid water and remains in the exhaust system. When that cold engine is started again, as it runs that liquid water gets heated up; some is expelled from the tailpipe as liquid water and, once the engine gets the exhaust system hot enough, as water vapor - that's the white smoke. It's just like when you walk out of your warm house on a cold day and see your breath.

For an excellent explanation of what the different colors of exhausts mean, see:
https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/r/...is-telling-you

Do you know how to find the politician in a crowd of voters? Just look for the white smoke from all the hot air!

 

You're in California, where the law requires motorists to park their car in the driveway and drive their cars on the parkway!

The irony is in the truth. Californians drive their cars on and off their driveways all the time, and when they're on the parkway they're parked! Go figure.