My car has been eating up coolant but is not overheating. There is white exhaust smoke coming from my tailpipe when idling and heater on. I have low engine performance and sludge. Rough idle. Loss engine power especially when going up hills. I was putting regular gas before I found out it takes 91 premium. I can smell gas/fuel when I’m driving. I just changed my spark plugs so I’m sure the misfires are because of my fuel issue. Someone told me to change my oil filter housing and to get my throttle and air filter cleaned. I bought some of the fuel cleaner bottles to clean out my fuel tank. I’m not sure how to directly diagnose the problem to figure out what exactly is the issue. Maybe a blown head gasket also. What test can I run?
1
-
Welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair!– Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 ♦Commented Nov 18 at 22:56
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Your description leads me to believe you have a head gasket leak due to coolant in the exhaust (white exhaust smoke). The easiest way to tell if this is actually the problem is to check for hydrocarbons in the cooling system. There's a tester you can get which has a fluid which changes colors (when used correctly) in the presence of hydrocarbons. The cooling system will not have hydrocarbons in it if running correctly. Obviously, if your cooling system has brown sludge in it from oil, then there'd be hydrocarbons present, so there's that caveat. Testers for the cooling system are relatively cheap, but aren't the easiest to use. If you get any liquid from the cooling system up into the testing liquid, it can give you a false positive.
