I just bought my GS a month ago, and ran into no problems until a few weeks ago. Recently, I've noticed that it smokes white often, smells like burning oil on occasion, and has a slight light-sounding knock when idling that speeds up with acceleration. Anybody wanna troubleshoot me here?

 

Headgasket for the smoke, common for the GS and RS. That knocking is probably a rod....not good

 

Well white smoke usually is coolant... maybe headgasket, but for the knocking try to pinpiont if it from the head are block area.

 

i would assume that its a headgasket...that might alsobe the cause for the rod knocking

 

a headgasket isnt gonna cause knocking. Its probably just lifter tick. But the smoke is definetly the head gasket

 

It's the headgasket that let antifreeze leak down into the lower cases that took out the rod bearing and the crank bearings just finish my engine with the same problem cost about $1500.00 for parts no labor did it myself save 30 to 50 hours worth a labor for a shop to do it

 

got it a month ago and didn't have problems until a few weeks ago... so it ran good for... a week? bummer. it's almost certainly the head gasket. from the factory the head bolts were not tightened enough to keep the gasket from blowing to usually between 80-110k miles they will go. mine did, it's about a 100 dollar fix if you can do it yourself.

 

Thanks guys. It's exhaust smoke, by the way, since I didn't specify, but I assume you all know that.

What's the difference gonna be problemwise?


How can I tell if it's just a lifter tick or a rod? Should I just fix the head gasket and see what happens with this 'knock'? Or should I fix the head gasket and stop driving it until I can fix the knock? And how hard are head gaskets and rod bearings to DIY?

 

how knowleged are you mechanically? on a scale from 1-10 on a car i'd say it's about a 6 - 6.5. While you are doing this it's always a good idea to change out your timing belt, water pump, bearings and tensioner. It will run you another 100-150 bucks but it'sbetter than snapping a belt 10k miles down the road and having to do all tha work again and a possible fried head.

i would fix the head gasket and then see about the ticking noise. try to see if you can pinpoint it like dsm said. actually if you can just tell us if its coming from the head or the block it's either a lifter tick, rod or spun rod. you CAN change out your bearings w/o dropping the engine but it's not a very fun process. you have to drain the engine and disconnect everything from under the car after you drop the oil pan.

 

Lifter tick is an actuall annoying ticking. My GST does it to but only for a couple seconds when i start it. A rod knock would be a loud acutally knocking. Look on youtube and there are plenty of vids with rods that are knocking. Lifter tick might be on there to.