I've read several posts about what white smoke can be but I didn't see my question answered. My engine runs great and sounds great aside from the loud lifter noise. I read somewhere to try a heavier oil (I'm using 10-W30 right now). It's a 68 'Lark 350-2 with a Poston intake and Edel. 750 carb dropped in my 85 Regal a couple weeks ago. The only time I see white smoke is when I get the car up around 73mph and it comes out of the driver side only as best I can tell driving 73 looking backwards. The faster I go, the more smoke I get. I haven't checked the oil yet for the milky stuff but so far, could this be a blown head gasket? Wouldn't there be white smoke all the time at any speed? The car has not been put in timing yet and I'm replacing the Edelbrock no choke carb with a Q-Jet. Any thoughts? MARK
Yes it could be coolant leaking into the combustion chamber at high speeds only. It could be that under only high pressure that it leaks. Check intake gasket for leaks around water ports. Check vacuum modulator tube for tranny fluid. Check heater control valve vacuum fitting for anti-freeze leaking into the vacuum system. And the dreaded head gasket failure....only one way to check that. I did a compression test on my engine when I suspected a head gasket failure and everything came out ok. And it ended up that the #1 cylinder was getting a bit of coolant in it due to head gasket failure. Check your spark plugs for fouling - specifically, if there is one plug that stands out as whiter or cleaner than the rest of them. This might indicate a head gasket failure, as opposed to just a leaky intake gasket - since it is only coming into one cylinder. I hope you can follow that...:gt:
I was going to go check the things you listed to see if I could find any of the symptoms but... I removed my first spark plug (which looked normal) when I noticed some "play" in the fuel line around the dist. I followed the fuel line down to the fuel pump which was just barely being held on by a couple of bolt threads!:eek2: I tightened the fuel pump down and started her up and drove to work but didn't notice any white smoke. Could the smoke have been coming from around the fuel pump gasket? I'm going to check everything else you mentioned but was just curious if I may have found the reason. MARK BTW where is the vacuum modulator tube? Sorry, stupid question.
