Club 80-90 Forums

A few weeks back, I replaced a leaky manifold gasket and realised the failure was likely the thermostat housing, that sits right above it, dripping coolant.
I replaced the housing

The van had been left a few days with the manifold open and the leaky housing above it - until I could finish the job.

On start up, there was ALOT of white smoke which I put down to coolant in the exhaust system (as it had the opportunity to drip in there - stainless system so not that worried). Thing is that it's not really clearing - despite the van being used for a a few short runs over the last few weeks ( I tend to ride my motorbikes around)

I get it a few moments after startup and it persists until the van get's warm
It' disperses quickly, and isn't blue in colour, so I assume it isn't oil based.

The van has swallowed a bit of coolant - but I have put that down to the convoluted coolant system.
I did bleed it (according to the instructions) and it's run until the thermostat (which I changed anyway with the housing) opened.

Is it that the coolant is still in the exhaust and I need to take it for a long run .. (it likely hasn't done more than 30 miles since the housing change) or should I be looking deeper ?

Of course, the weather has turned alot colder and wetter ....

You don't say if petrol or Diesel, assuming petrol.

This is quite normal in cold weather. The combustion process produces steam and in cold weather this can be seen in the exhaust gasses as water vapour (white). It normally clears when the silencer gets up to working temperature.

madoc wrote:Of course, the weather has turned a lot colder and wetter ....

Is why it happens (you often see this to a greater extent on cold winter mornings, with modern larger petrol engined cars)

madoc wrote: Is it that the coolant is still in the exhaust and I need to take it for a long run .. (it likely hasn't done more than 30 miles since the housing change) or should I be looking deeper ?

No, think about it the whole exhaust system gets VERY hot quite quickly, any water in there would boil away within a minute or two

However, this bit =

madoc wrote:The van has swallowed a bit of coolant - but I have put that down to the convoluted coolant system.
I did bleed it (according to the instructions)

Might be a worry. Bleed it a couple of times more and keep a close eye on it. If the coolant level in the left hand white tank continues to drop you might need to investigate. Test your low coolant warning system by pulling the plug off the sensor on the top of that tank (engine running). It can take a good few seconds though before the low coolant LED starts to flash, and note that re-fitting the plug will not stop the led until you turn the engine off and then back on (fail safe system). I mention this because if you have a leak, you NEED to know if the coolant has dropped to a dangerous level.