The Hoth

Hi all,

Vdub is in the shop cus it started smoking. We could see it coming from the left side of the engine bay and we could smell it inside(spells like exhaust and giving my wife headache--CO poisoning maybe) The dealer said it is bad spark plugs and it is causing misfire, therefore the smoke.

I have never had a misfire on my cars before, not sure if it will cause smoke.

Anyone has experience on that?

Feel free to share.

Thanks!

Legal Bill

Thomas, did the car sound or feel any different that usual? Did you hear any popping or other unusual engine noises?

The Hoth

Nope, everything was normal except the smell of the smoke of course. No popping sound, no rough idling....

It sounded weird when they said they had to replace spark plugs for smoke.

The Hoth

I hope this is not one of those "maximizing profit initiatives when the car sales are not so hot" kind of deal.

Legal Bill

I'd be looking for an exhaust leak, Thomas. It is not at all unusual for the gasket between the front manifold pipe and the manifold or catalytic converter to wear out, allowing exhaust gas to enter the passenger compartment. This is very easy to detect with the help of a friend. Just get the car on the lift, have one person lightly block the tail pipe with the engine running, (you can do this by holding a bunched up rag over the tail pipe. Don't press it on as tight as you can, just tight enough to increase the back pressure a bit.) and see if you can feel or hear exhaust gas escaping from the exhaust system connections.

NH_s2k_Guy

Had the same problem on my winter beater...the exhaust system itself
is stainless but unfortunately those gaskets aren't. I had to replace
all of them from front to back wherever two pipes were joined together.

Legal Bill

Yup. I had to replace two of them on my wife's old Lexus.

ScottyBallistic

Sparkplugs will not fix a smoking issue external of the motor .. They are BSing you ...if it was out the exhaust then it could be a result of un burt gas , but not under the hood . Did you have a check light ? Misfire will throw a CEL

Like some suggested , look for a exhaust leak, coolant leak or oil leak...


Could be someone cat or other varmint ...

ilvmys2000

if a v-dub doesnt have a CEL on then there's something wrong with it.

CTMechE

What year/engine? I agree with Scott - a bad plug won't change the fact that it's smoking. And if it did, the smoke shouldn't be appearing anywhere but from the end of the tailpipe.

If it's smoking anywhere else,it's leaking somewhere else, which isn't the plug's problem.

Sounds to me like they want to sell you some overpriced plugs and then tell you that didn't fix it, so they want to do something else.