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Relaxing Saturday morning drive, wasn't...

stump

Member
Decided to take the Fastback into town yesterday morning for one of those coffee shop cruise-ins... About 20 minutes into my 30 minute drive I noticed something just didn't feel "right"... By the time I was parked it was running a little rough, smoke and an odd noise out of the right tail pipe...

What do you think, headgasket?
 
White smoke.....water/coolant being burnt....
Black smoke......excessive fuel burning
Blue smoke........oil consumption

If just one side, I would not think carb but possible.......

Plug wire melted and grounding out.

Points/distributor causing misfire.
 
on the power tour I got some bad gas, the car ran like it was missing. I thought for sure a plug wire came off or something like that. Never could figure it out until I talked to some others on the tour that had the same issue. After a refill the symptoms went away.
If it's it's serious, you will have obvious symptoms as stated by others, but never over look the simple things.
 
White smoke; not a lot but still there.
A definite loss of power but not a problem getting home.
Never got hot and no obvious signs of using water; besides maybe the smoke
No sign of water in oil

I certainly hope for "the simple thing"...

Thanks, guys.
 
Sounds like mine, hope it's not. Mine never got "hot" but was above normal by a few degrees. When I removed the head you could see a small indention in the head gasket was allowing water to flow into the cylinder. I'm betting 10:1 on this.
 
Isn't one of the quick checks to pull the spark plugs and look for any evidence of a "steam cleaned" plug?
 
You can also fill the coolant to the very top of the rad. and rune the engine. Watch for air bubbles.....
 
Well it's not the "easy thing"...

I'm told it's a broken piston ring. I guess I'm colored blind when it comes to smoke...

Since this is the only part of the car that hasn't been completely rebuilt since the "Total Restoration", what the hell, we'll go ahead and rebuild the motor too...
 
how did you confirm this? Cylinder leakdown test or compression test? A broken ring should cause a lot of "blow by"
I had a buddy with a small block Chevy that would blow the dipstick out! I'm guessing you should see smoke/oil coming out of the breather cap on the VC.
 
"tarafied1" said:
how did you confirm this? Cylinder leakdown test or compression test? A broken ring should cause a lot of "blow by"
I had a buddy with a small block Chevy that would blow the dipstick out! I'm guessing you should see smoke/oil coming out of the breather cap on the VC.

Compression test.
 
That sucks. I just got done redoing my engine after a lifter failed. Hope you get back on the road soon.
 
We can rebuild him,make him better than before, make him better stronger faster...

Got 6 million dollars. :Mark

Sounds like you have your winter project. If it is just a ring then hopefully nothing major, unless you want more power. :yah

fd
 
"tarafied1" said:
well I am also sorry to hear of this. Ring failure is not very common. I wonder what happened.

My guess is it's part of the long sad story of this cars "restoration". I've been told by the guys who worked at the shop which had originally done the work on my car that, though the motor was rebuilt by a reputable performance shop, it sat outside, sometimes uncovered, for nearly three years before it was installed. It was then another year (about the time I bought the car) before it was started. I guess the way things worked back then, if it ran it was good... Not a mechanic myself, but that can't be good.

Anyway, the great deal I got in buying this car is averaging out as we find ourselves redoing EVERYTHING... The motor, in fact, is that only thing remaining... I hate I have to do it, but in the end the car will be right, and that's all I really care about...
 
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