The monring after a trip of about 5 hours of driving my Honda element had trouble starting up, but once I got on the road it ran just fine. The next day though it was alot worse, so I looked into it and found other people had similar issues caused by valve clearance. I adjusted all the valves and it was seemingly fixed until the next day when I started it up a huge cloud of smoke came out the tailpipe like I had blown a headgasket and it proceded to over heat. The coolant was a bit low so I refilled it and there was a steady stream of white smoke from the tailpipe for a few minutes, and then it seemigly fixed itself, and is no longer smoking or doing anything strange. Do I have a blown head gasket?

 

Probably. Blown head gaskets aren't rare in the Element.

 

 

It could be anything. I would steam clean the engine.It could be something as simple as oil hitting the exhaust. Hopefully you will be able to pinpoint the problem. I had a similar issue with my Element and it turned out to be one of the power steering hoses was leaking a little and dripping onto the engine.