Hi all, my first post on this forum, I wondered if anyone had any pointers?
I've had the car a couple of months, due to lockdown, done the grand total of about 100 miles in it, it drives well with good power, however....
In the first, say 10miles of driving there's a lot of steam/condensation in the exhaust when pulling away from a standstill, it clears after about that roughly speaking.
A pal of mine was driving behind me the other night, he noticed on hard acceleration dense white vapour coming out of the right tailpipe... if I didn't know better I might be forgiven for thinking 'head gasket'!
I've done a couple of simple tests.. no, the condensation in the exhaust tip isn't sweet tasting (antifreeze), the coolant is clear and pink, no residue in the tank, I've tested the coolant for combustion gases (the liquid doesn't go yellow), no bubbles in the coolant, the hoses don't go hard on a cold start-up. Next step will be checking the compression in each cylinder.
All this is for piece of mind you'll understand... it could all be caused simply because it doesn't get driven a whole lot and the exhaust has condensation in it... I'll monitor the coolant level and keep an eye on the oil level and condition...
I had a thought that the there could be an issue with the valley plate, perhaps there are coolant galleries that pass into the cylinder heads and that coolant could leak directly into the intake system from there. I can't find a cooling system diagram, but looking at the various google search results it seems as though they leak externally not into the engine.
Any comments/ideas would be helpful.
Many thanks,
Kris.
