hey guys i was looking at some posts and hopefully its not a head gasket. my 97 gst has a rebuilt engine in it with around 40k miles on it. i recently have been driving farther than normal on the highways and for some reason when my car idles it runs a little rich and once i pull away i leave a cloud of smoke. its not white smoke its more black. im just afraid of hurting my engine. any ideas?

 

Black is normal : )

 

yea man it has to do with being turbo charged no exactly how but i see it all the time on turbo cars. normally on hard acceleration

 

its because turbo cars are known to burn oil.

 

okay well im glad thats not bad it was after a long drive in the heat. could that be a factor perhaps it hasnt smoked like that before. and it was really warm our and it was running rich not really really rich but it wasnt in the stoich section of my narrow band. it was right on the edge of stoich and rich. but now it is cooler up here in idaho and it seems to be returned to normal is that pretty common too? for them to run rich in the heat. it didnt do that last year that i can remember. thanks te and seb let me know what ya think. anyone else too

 

in the heat gas is less dense...sensors tell the engine there isnt as much fuel as needed even tho there is, its just less dense. your car was probably tuned on the cooler seasons as most people from a snowy state do (garage them build them tow them to the dyno and tune) and like they said turbos tend to burn more oil its just how it works. not really a problem... expecally if its not doing it now

 

Black smoke means you're running rich, which you already know that as you stated it in the first post. It has nothing to do with oil. Burning oil will be a light color.
All that means is that your longer drive has conditioned the ECU to run a bit rich because it's reading more air intake. It takes about 5 minutes for the computer to readjust and unless you stop for 5 minutes and then take off, chances are good that the ECU is still set as if you were still on the interstate. Once you drive around town again for at least 5 minutes or stop the car and shut her down, the ECU will reset on it's own. No big deal, so you're good to go bro.

 

thanks guys you guys rock seriously. silvercoupe you know these cars inside and out. i ran my car this morning and started up perfect ran like a top. the a/f gauge showed perfect mixture. love this website. to bad my freinds mitsus are crap lol both with a 420a and they are falling apart from crashes and deer . there are a few turbos up here. one guy at autozone turbod his rs i was like really, that must of been on pita. he said he was having a lot of problems with the motor though. i thought what do you expect.