m20 white smoke from engine bay issue (diagnosis)

[inwoo]

Need some help of insight to the diagnosis of my engine.

Engine did not have leak down testing.
head gasket was replaced as well as the head about 3 years ago. <10k miles

Replaced injectors about 3 weeks before loss of power.
Continual slow loss of power until white smoke from the rear of the engine. Stopped driving the car. Would drive with very little power at all, even at WOT.

No visible coolant in oil, or oil in coolant.

I thought it was a rip in the head gasket, so i took the head off the car.

What i noticed,was the last cylinder intake manifold gasket was ripped ...

Head gasket looks good visibly. block is set to TDC, so i haven't seen the condition of the block to see if there are cracks.


Could a rip in the intake gasket cause coolant to leak out of that passage? It's the intake manifold and it's for the cylinder closest to the driver.

I'm also going to get the head pressure tested to see if there are any cracks...

[e30this]

Could be blocked converter??

[jlevie]

The intake manifold gaskets will have nothing to do with this. Distinctly white smoke is almost always vaporised coolant and in this case is probably a leak from a cooling passage to the outside of the block, where it gets to the exhaust or a leak from the heater hose connection on the rear of the head.

[inwoo]

The intake manifold gaskets will have nothing to do with this. Distinctly white smoke is almost always vaporised coolant and in this case is probably a leak from a cooling passage to the outside of the block, where it gets to the exhaust or a leak from the heater hose connection on the rear of the head.

Could a coolant leak from either the head or the block be related to the power loss?

[jlevie]

Possibly, but then I'd expect other symptoms, like white smoke from the exhaust or misfiring.

An intake leak, if bad, will result in a loss of power as more air is entering the engine that that indicated by the AFM.

[inwoo]

update from my side...

Machine shop told me the following:

Rear cylinders has valve seating issues, where during a pressure test it would drip some water every 1/2 second or so.

my rear intake gasket (last cylinder was ripped) , and possibly white smoke was coming out from that location.