E30 eta White Smoke - BMW Forum

JoeMadoo · 12-29-2005, 05:48 PM

Hello, I recently blew my head gasket (or so i thought) in my 86 325es. I went to my machine shop and had my head that was severely warped machined and compression checked. When i reassembled it, I noticed the timing marks wouldnt line up perfectly. The Cam Sprocket was lined up but the crank mark was about an 1/8 inch off. When I turned the key, to my amazement, it ran! But it felt rumbley and i soon noticed a cloud of white smoke forming behind me. Everything in the engine compartment looked fine, but there was also a little white smoke coming from the thermostat housing (no coolant hoses yet). Inside the intake manifold and throttle body were soaked with oil.

Thanks to anyone who can help me figure this out.

BMWJNKY · 12-29-2005, 06:31 PM

I don't know why your timing marks didn't line up. Have you done a timing belt on a BMW before? White smoke out of the t-stat housing is steam from leaking coolant. How bad was the intake covered in oil? Unless you have just done a hot soak there is going to an oily film in the intake and on the throttle body. The white smoke out the exhaust is probably the coolant burning off of the catalic converter. It will probably do this for a day or two with normal driving, longer if you only drive short distances. Did you adjust your valves once you torqued the head down? Some machine shops with adjust the valves for you while the head is off but once you torque the head down the clearances change and they have to be redone. What spark plugs are you using and what gap are they set to?

JoeMadoo · 12-29-2005, 06:46 PM

Yes i adjusted my valves after i torqued the head. The intake inside was just wet with oil as well as the TB. When i first turn the car on there is no smoke, but after about 10 or 15 seconds it turns into a cloud. I went to autozone to get sparkplugs, they said there were pre-gapped so i left them alone. I just not took off my intake manifold and the #3-4 cyl gasket is soaked with oil. As for the timing all i can think of is the machine shop machined the head way over spec.

BMWJNKY · 12-29-2005, 09:26 PM

The plugs you should be running are Bosch WR9LS gapped to .032in. The reason there is no smoke at first is cause the exhaust is somewhat cool and not hot enough to burn the coolant. Also with the cold weather this time of year having steem come out the exhaust is normal and can look like smoke. Did the car run poorly before the headgasket failed? If not I would look for an intake leak.

Kowalski · 12-30-2005, 07:16 PM

its probably the vacume leak from the valve cover. get a new valve cover gasket, get some of "the right stuff" and then put it back together. also could be the fact that the timing belt is not lined up correctly, your supposed to aline them when you do the Tbelt.

JoeMadoo · 12-30-2005, 07:23 PM

I've tried to align them but they wont. The machine shop took way too much off the head when they surfaced it. And i got a new valve cover gasket.

nukeduster · 12-30-2005, 09:58 PM

You need a thicker HG / head spacer. Thats all there is to it. No point diagnosing ANYTHING if you knowingly have visibly off timing. When timing is off by more then 3 degrees it causes a long long list of problems. You have a car which has a distributor and many other components which already have *some* tolerances allowed due to their own inherant in-accuracy. Having your timing off by that much just makes everything work out of sync worse.

Fix your shit, then go from there.

JoeMadoo · 12-30-2005, 10:58 PM

Where can i get a head spacer? I've seen thicker head gaskets but they are only 0.3mm thinker.