white smoke out the tail pipe

drumyn29

drumyn29

Senior Member
I have a lot of white smoke out the tail pipe so I'm guessing that a valve spring may be stuck or the seals are just shot!!

Is there anyway way to stop the smoke until I'm ready to rebuild this motor?


Is there a way to unstick spring? The motor seems like it's rattling more now which is making me think valve spring.
 
I was always under the impression that "white smoke" indicated steam as in leaky/blown head gasket. Blue smoke would indicate burning oil, possibly from valve guides or oil ring. Don't see how a "stuck valve spring" would make it smoke but you definitely would have a dead cylinder.
 
Y-Blockhead said:
I was always under the impression that "white smoke" indicated steam as in leaky/blown head gasket. Blue smoke would indicate burning oil, possibly from valve guides or oil ring. Don't see how a "stuck valve spring" would make it smoke but you definitely would have a dead cylinder.
Click to expand...

Thats a damn good point!

it's either rings or guides.
 
I was always taught White smoke = blown head gasket/ cracked head ect. , Blue smoke = oil burning. At start up seals/valve guides, while running rings are bad, Black smoke = running way too rich and to check the carb/choke. Ive read on here that some have good luck with running marvin mystery oil in the gas for unsticking a valve. Spark plugs would tell you which cylinder is getting antifreeze in it. Id also do a compression test.
 
Last edited:
White smoke can be oil
mineral oil burns a nice blue colour
some synthetic oils are very pale blue most would call white
 
Hi Drum,

Remove all four 4 plugs -- the clean one(s), cleaner than all the rest, is the one getting steam cleaned.

Look inside all 4 combustion chambers -- the one(s) with almost no black carbon is the one getting steam cleaned.

Let us know all of what you "see" on your end after removing plugs -- difficult to actually "see" from so far away; but this is a good test to try.

Sincerely hope this helps.
 
Valve guides do not have the same effect in a flathead that they do in a modern overhead engine. There are no seals in the flathead valve system to fail. If you are using anti-freeze it will smoke white if you have a blown head gasket or a crack in a combustion chamber. H.L. is correct about the clean cylinder showing the offending area. A compression check and/or a vacuum gauge will tell volumes about your engine and what may be wrong.
 
plugs
 

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Dog:cool: here,
Let ure Dog:cool: smel it, he'll tell u if it's coolant ur oil ur old ROTTEN ges!! (Ol' Bill's Farts smell like like old crummy, varnished up GES, we sleep together & sumtimes I git EVEN!)
Buster T.:cool:
 
can't see deep enough into the cyls. the way you can in person.

what does the compression test show? Typically the gasket blows between 3&4 and they end up being low compression and about equal
 
I was taught that if it smokes more under hard acceleration, it is rings. If it smokes more under deceleration, it's valves.

This is in reference to blue or oil smoke.

The theory goes that high vacuum under decel will draw more oil past the guides.

One caveat though. I had a 289 Mustang that smoked more on acceleration and it turned out to be clogged up oil return passageways and about a quart of oil hit the floor when I pulled the valve covers. The guides just could not deal with being submerged in oil. Different story with a flathead, though.
 
To test for bad rings, run the car down a hill at speed and let off the gas completely for a way till the car slows to about 15 MPH. Shower down on the accelerator and watch the mirror. If it smokes, you have bad rings or in the case of an overhead, bad guides and seals. This is because when the throttle butterfly is closed, the pistons will cause a vacuum and suck oil into the cylinders in a loose motor and when it is opened it burns it making lots of smoke .
 
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