Engine missing sputtering

SOURCE: thick white smoke coming from exhaust

If it looks like a James Bond movie, you have a blown headgasket

Evan Jenson

• 122 Answers
• Posted on Nov 14, 2008

SOURCE: Blue smoke out of tailpipe both at idle & acceleration

Gary,
The initial oil leak will most likely be attributed to a worn seal or gasket. I'm sure your aware of this anyway. My concern is that the additives, although advertising a sure fix, may have made your problem worse. I personally don't believe you can buy any product that will fix faulty seals and gaskets as you drive. Typically we as drivers do not pay attention to a fluid leak in it's early stages. There might be a chance that then would be the time that these "gasket in a can" fixes would treat or slow down the leak. What will ultimately happen is the gasket goes bad anyway. Most of us don't notice the drips until they're all over the driveway. You see, if you were adding these things and not actually putting in the proper viscosity oil during this time. The oil got diluted and internal engine component wear may have been accelerated.The internal oil passages can clog and bearing surfaces can lose they're critical tolerances. In many cases causing low oil pressure. Your engine's oil pump pickup screen may be partially clogged with sludge as well after the motor flush knocked all the gunk into the pan.
As for the smoking, the oil rings on one or more pistons probably have broken. Your engine's pistons will have a couple of "rings" that seal the piston in the cylinder. There'll be a set of compression rings and an oil ring. The bottom ring is the oil ring that keeps excess oil out of the cylinder. What happens is the oil ring breaks and allows the engine oil up into the combustion chamber. There it's burned producing your cool James Bond smoke screen. Unless you plan on rebuilding the engine, chances are you'd be better of replacing it with a used one. It's usually much less expensive that way.
*personal experience*
My vehicle at the time was a 1990 Acura integra w/200000 miles on the engine. One day as I was happily driving down the road....poof....James Bond!.. Car lost power and I couldn't see for blocks behind me. Didn't need GPS to find my house that day, just had to follow the cloud. This particular vehicle actually never smoked prior to that day. Anyway, I pulled the engine, and took it apart. Sure enough, as I had feared, the oil ring on #3 piston was broken. Ultimately I replaced the engine.
Good luck with yours, and I hope this helps.

SOURCE: Loss of power and acceleration on Mazda 6 Turbo diesel 2003

I'm assuming that that smoke was more previlant while going uphill because that's when the turbo would be really spolling up to max psi. I would guess that if you really got on the gas hard and got the turbo going even on a flat surface, that you would notice the smoke too. The loss of power and the white/grey smoke are tell tale signs that your turbo is bad or starting to fail. Good luck!

SOURCE: white smoke coming from exhaust when accelerating

This is usually an indication of a bad head gasket.I gasket. The white smoke is the coolant leaking out of the engine and winding up in the oil passages, due to a bad head gasket. To confirm this,
1. check oil. Is level increased, or milky appearance?
2. Is coolant level dropping, but u don't see any signs of leaks?
The above indicates a bad head gasket, causing the white smoke u describe. Let me know how u make out.

SOURCE: Rough idle, Car shakes, sputters and misfires upon acceleration

It sounds like you may have a problem feeding the fuel to your engine, I had the same problem with my 89 RS. All the 1989 model's fuel systems were recalled. I think you may need a new fuel pump. The fuel pump is located inside the gas tank in the rear of the car right under the rear axle. The fuel pump itself isn't too expensive, but with other small parts such as the electrical harness upgrade and fuel filter and the labor you should be looking somewhere in the $500 range. I hope this helps.