So i was driving down the road in my 2004 mazda 6, and the engine just shut down. You could hear it winding down. Then once i was pulled over i noticed thick white smoke coming from my exhaust. I checked the anti freeze and it was dry. My car didnt say it was over heating, temp gauge was in the middle where it should be. I tried to start it up, it would crank, but not turn over. It has under 120k miles. No idea why this would be happening. Any suggestions? Its a manual 2.3L. I tried to pull it in gear to see if i could pop the clutch and start it but it gave me nothing, it yanked the car. Wheels didnt move. Doesnt even turn over now.
My guess, catastrophic failure of the head gasket. Engine is probably toast.
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I would agree with that! Strange that OP did not notice any of this happening before the engine stopped.
OP, does this car give you an audio alarm when it detects overheating? Many cars don’t. My Corolla doesn’t. Neither does my Ford truck. Both only provide a dash gauge. You’d have to be forgiven for not constantly looking at the temp gauge when that hasn’t been necessary for the past 14 years. It’s also possible the coolant drained out quickly, or possibly overnight, and so the cooling system was empty. The coolant temp gauge may not register overheating temperatures when it isn’t immersed in coolant. When my Corolla overheated one time in stop and go traffic (b/c of a faulty engine fan control) the only way I noticed was steam coming from the engine compartment. The radiator has blown a seam.
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A lot of cars now don’t even come with a temperature gauge anymore–just an idiot light that tells you that the engine has already overheated. This one apparently does have one, but it malfunctioned for some reason–or perhaps the coolant leaked out suddenly, and the gauge did not register overheating in time.
Not a sinlge alert.
I checked my spark plugs, completely dry. So i doubt its the head gasket. Dried to manually trun my crank, and it was frozen.
That’s not a good sign. Sounds like there’s some internal engine damage.