I’m getting a very little bit of white smoke coming from under the hood after turning the car off. It smokes for maybe a minute and it’s done. It’s coming from passenger side. I’ve already replaced valve cover gaskets about a month ago. And now I replaced the coolant expansion tank and it’s still happening. Any ideas?
I had the same symptoms several months back. I couldn’t see anywhere it was coming from.Sometimes i would get smoke out the passenger grill/headlight area, and sometimes just at the front corner of the hood. Just like you said, it would last maybe 30-60 seconds. Eventually, i blew a rad hose (in a 5 mile traffic jam in morning rush hour) and had to replace the radiator because after replacing the hose, we found a pinhole in the radiator. After that, no more smoke.
Was it your upper or lower hose?
What would possibly be helpful is to have a partner drive the car and have you be waiting for the car to show up. Just as the car pulls up pop the hood and see if you can smell to see if its coolant or oil.
The passenger side is easier to get to than the driver side so if the smoke lasts for over a min it should give you enough time to peak in and maybe even remove the coolant tank to get a deeper look.
I would say start with the smell test and that can help give us an idea on where you should start looking.
I believe it was the lower hose that gave out.
Everytime I have looked under the hood it looks to be from around the coolant expansion. I replaced the coolant expansion because I could see it very slightly puddling under it. Do you think after a whole week it could still just be burning off what had leaked out previous?
Had a similar issue that turned out to be my camshaft actuator O-rings. The smoke is from oil leaking on your exhaust manifold.
I replaced the vvt o rings less than a month ago as well when I did vc gaskets.
Pull out the expansion tank. Get some strong paper towel and zip tie it under the drain hose for the tank. Then after a few starts inspect the paper towel and see if it shows signs of coolant or oil. That is a good place to start
I’ll start there and see if I can get any information from that. I will say each day it seems like the smoke has gotten weaker each day. Before I replaced the expansion it was a decent amount of white smoke now it’s just the slightest amount
So it actually looks like I have a bad leak from my rack and pinion and its getting on the exhaust and that’s what’s smoking.
Great update. That helps anyone who reads the forum.
A rack leak isn’t super common. let us know how it turns out.