today i noticed for the 3rd time that my car tends to emit smoke from time to time when i'm not moving. when i accelerate there is no smoke, and when i cruise there is no smoke. my car has 60k on it and its an 00' i baby it for the most part, i get on it some days but its not "routine" a friend of mine said it sounds like a head gasket problem. i looked today and saw dark stains around the block. the car doesn't leak oil in my garage and to my knowledge i've never been low on oil when i take it to honda for an oil change every 3k miles. my mods are a test pipe and exhaust.

any thoughts??

 

Well, my first thought is if you have 60k miles on your car and haven't been checking the oil except once every 3k miles... DOH

Once a week man. Most burn between 1/2 a quart to 1 quart every 1000 miles. You could be 3 quarts or more down by the time you do an oil change. The dealership techs aren't going to notice if its low. They are just going to drain and refill, not measure how much comes out. The s2k does NOT handle oil starvation well. You should do a compression test, and I don't know what else.

What color is the smoke? White is coolant, and probably a head gasket. Blue black is oil, and is probably rings or something similar. Neither is cheap, but I'd rather loose a head gasket over rings.

Back in the day, some of the 2000 s2k's had a problem known as poreous (sp?) block. Honda replaced them under warranty, might explain the dark spots on the block.

 

...brown means your car had to fart.

 

i check the oil from time to time but most definately not every week. i need to make that a part of my routine. although its a daily driver ive only put 7k miles on it since last june. i hope its nothing big.

 

Smoke color, remember to tell us the smoke color. It will tell you if its coolant or oil.

 

the stains on the block are normal. many S2000's have them. some don't.

also, a little smoke while you're idling is also not really indicative of a problem.

IMO you're being paranoid.

 

Anyone notice that he said he is not running a cat but has a test pipe instead? I know that eliminating the cat will add some smell to the exhaust, will it add some smoke too (not that anything is added, just that the cat is not there to clean things up)?

 

so now he's REALLY just being paranoid.

 

Man, I didn't even see the test pipe thing. :doh:

BTW Wisconsin... that cat doesn't look scared, he looks PISSED!

 

honda said nothing was wrong.

...i was being paranoid.