Hi, I’ve got White smoke coming out of my tail pipe of my 94 Honda Passport and I’ve checked the oil on it and its not milky like I feared it would be. I had some over heating issues after replacing the water pump and all the timing belts. Ran okay for about 2 days, 30 mile drives those days. Replaced some old hoses but it still overheats. Was told by a friend I could be losing coolant from the old radiator cap, replaced it and now I hear a gurgling outta my reserve coolant whenever I remove the cap; which I’ve never heard before it that helps. I don’t know much about cars besides your general oil changes and flat tires so any and all input would be appreciated.
It sounds like you have a bad head gasket.
Does the white smoke smell like maple syrup? If so, that’s the antifreeze in the coolant coming out of the exhaust pipe and @MikeInNH nailed it.
A head gasket leak simply means that there is a void somewhere in the gasket allowing combustion gases into the coolant or oil or coolant into the combustion chamber to be burned up and pushed out the tailpipe. You don’t have to have water in the oil all the time. It’ll also cause an air bubble in the coolant, restricting the coolant flow, thus causing over-heating. Time to fix it or say good bye. Might be a candidate just to drop a used engine in it since I’ve never had any luck opening an engine up.
Just gave it a check on the car to see if the car smell like maple syrup. I started it up and it was just your regular exhaust so I press the gas and it took a second to get started but the white smoke was no where near as apparent as before; also it did not smell like maple syrup.
Some white smoke is normal, esp if it only occurs when first starting the engine, then quickly goes away as the engine warms up. And there’s no coolant loss. That white smoke is just water vapor and is normal. But if there’s white smoke when the engine is warm, that’s a sign of a problem. The other symptoms – bubbles from the coolant, overheating – like the others suggest, consistent with a compromised head gasket. If this were my car the first thing I’d try is re-torqueing the head bolts to spec.
You changed your water pump and timing belt? THEN you overheated?
You just smoked your head gasket. WHY? Because you opened your cooling system from your work done…and DID NOT BLEED THE AIR OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM after you tried to fill the engine and rad with coolant…leaving a large air pocket. Prior to driving round like normal, you must have no air in your cooling system…if you DO you will overheat it. I believe you now have almost no coolant in the engine from a bad head gasket.
Sorry for the news