Most likely the head gasket. We bought the car with a rebuilt motor, but we suspect they didn't do a great job. The motor was blown so maybe they didn't check the head or block for warping?

 

open the oil cap and look a the residue.
Is its milky? if so, then yes you have a blown head gasket.

 

K I'll look at it later today, but I'm guessing a warped head or block would have the same result?

 

Mine smokes if it is overfilled. Also check your dipstick, sometimes the rubber stopper can move so you might be overfilling it all the time (what happened to me).

 

Hmm well I didn't get to look at the oil but I had to move the car so my dad could mow, and there was no smoke at all. Today was the second day of a two day event. It ran fine all day yesterday on an almost full tank because it starves easy so I put more in this morning before we started. I just waited until the pump stopped itself, didn't add any after that. My dad and I both got in one run before it started. Does an overfilled tank make the motor rev funny? It didn't sound like it normally does. The throttle also felt different from normal.

Ah I think you mean oil now that I look at it lol. We haven't messed with the oil at all since we got it.

 

white - water
black - gas
blue - oil

the plugs are your judge of the engine, pull em and see if anything stands out.

 

Mine smokes at high rpms and couple Honda techs have said rings on the piston (blow by). My car has 243,000 miles.

 

valve seals is another culprit as well sometimes

 

It doesn't have any water in the cooling system its straight coolant.

When it did smoke it was constant.

And hopefully not I wouldn't think old seals couldn't be used even when trying to cheaply put a motor back together...

 

what? ??
100% antifreeze? it is guaranteed to overheat

and for track use 20-30% antifreeze is all you should bother with (changed regularly) or distilled water + water wetter (which I'm sure opens up a whole 'nother topic here).

 

A lot synthetic oils burn white.

 

I'll keep that in mind then. I am a tech, but just in general everyday cars. The cars that are such pos that they use oil are definitely not the ones that the people pay for synthetic, so I have little to go on there.

 

once i tipped over my air cooled mini bike and then that **** started poring out white smoke, so i think if your motor is the same(aka over filld+ autox turns) it would smoke white.

 

Yep, that's a baaaaaad move. 50/50 water/coolant mix at most (on the coolant percentage). Typically white smoke is burnt water/coolant (not just water). You'd also be able to smell it, as that sickly sweet smell.

Also interesting about synthetic oils burning white. That is...annoying, from a diagnosis standpoint.

 

This is not an absolute rule. A small amount of "milky" residue under the oil cap can be normal.

If there is excessive condensation it can be from accumulating moisture. Milk on the dipstick however is another matter entirely.

 

actually, unless it has gone a long time, you will never see it on the dipstick. no matter how much water it will be at the bottom of the pan and the stick will never touch it. Best to get under it and let the drain bolt trickle a little out to check.

 

o rly? hmm we figured you'd want more coolant at race temp and we ended up having the coolant come out the top of the radiator before we got any water so we just called it good. The level in the overflow tank is where it should be. Well actually I've only looked when its hot but if its at the correct spot then it should be filled up with the correct amount right? I don't think it has synthetic in it. The smoke was WHITE lol one guy we race with is a tech and said that if we put paper behind the smoke it'll bring out any blue.

The oil level and color was fine when we checked right after it was blowing smoke.

It did have a funny smell, I couldn't remember if it was coolant smell from when we refilled the system.

Edit

My dad doesn't get why an overfilled cooling system would cause an exhaust to blow out smoke. The coolant shouldn't get in the exhaust at all right?

 

Unless there was a blown headgasket, warped head/block, cracked sleeve, etc. the coolant wouldn't be coming OUT of the exhaust. However, if it was coming out of the radiator it could get on the header or exhaust, and may be LOOK like it was coming from the exhaust.

 

Hmm we did notice some coolant around the cap when we pulled it back into the paddock. It blew out more smoke when you got on the gas and like I said while it was smoking the throttle just felt different and the motor almost hinted at sounding like it was struggling to keep going.

I was told this is unrelated but its had a hard time starting every once and awhile. Hot or cold sometimes you have to put the throttle to the floor to get it to run. We started to rev the motor to 4k then shut it off and that seems to help.

 

sounds like clearing water to me.
when you turn it off the higher pressure in the water seeps into the cylinders.

you pulled the plugs yet or are we gonna keep going in circles?

 

X2. We can speculate all day long, but you need to do some more diagnostic work to really get to the problem.

 

Yeah we were attracted to the rebuilt part because we don't have a lot of spare time for working on the car. Might be able to look at it this weekend :/ Got an engineering project due in a week lol

 

Finally got to pull the spark plugs. Cylinder 4's plug was oily....

Compression test results. #1-110 #2-120 #3-110 #4-115 ??? getting oil on the sparkplug without losing compression?

 

wet/dry cold/hot cranking/running compression? that spread is fine, but doesn't say anything on its own.
could be valve guides/seals.

 

Dry and the temp is high 60's we ran the motor to running temp before pulling the plugs and doing the test. It took about 10 cranks to get those readings. We went until it wouldn't get a higher pressure reading. Oil got on the compressor when we did the test.