have you checked ur coolant level yet? so it's not smoking at idle or not smoking period? try something real quick, get in ur car, let it warm up. take it down the road (not kids or residential) and get on it. go through your 1st n 2nd gear then stop. let me know if you see or smell any smoke when you stop.

 

just had a brainstorm... this will only take about 15 mins to do. take ur coil pack off - 10mm, take ur valve cover off -8mm. get urself a 15mm socket w/ extention. check your head bolts. just give them a tug to see if they are all the way tightened down. the reason these cars are known for blowing gaskets is b/c for whatever reason the head bolts in these cars seem to come loose (more often on the outside bolts). if your gasket isnt blown yet but you just have a loose bolt or 2 this may be a band-aid until it does blow. i've never heard of anybody catching it before it does blow but i don't see why this wouldn't prolong the life of it if not eliminate the problem. make sure you tighten them down using the correct bolt pattern, don't just immediatly skip to the outside.

 

Did we ever get a definitive answer whether he had a 420a or a 4g63t?

 

defenative enough? lol its ok, i do it sometimes to.

 

Ignorance is bliss... Thusly, I was having a blissful moment... lol

 

well bliss off! lol

 

ok well i started it this morning, and it smokes on start up, but i really think thats because its getting to much fuel, its a sweet smell..but whenever i run it for a minute it doesn't smoke..coolent level is not dropping..

 

head gaskets hard to change, estimated time, difficulty scale from 1 to 10, oh yea and even on start up when its warm it doesn't smoke

 

when mine was blown it only smoked for one night then i only saw smoke once in a while when i started it up, other than that, it seemed fine. how hard is a head gasket... i'd say on the level of a 6 1/2'ish. you aren't dealing with any internal work basically the hardest thing is getting timing belt off and the left motor mount out. but basically it's nothing but unbolting things that hold the motor in place. a friend of mine and i did mine in on a weekend while taking our time and made plenty of time outs for food, an episode of pinks anda beer run lol. coolant is somewhat of a sweet smell... and also when running rich (no reason what-so-ever for a 420a to be running rich) the smoke is black, not white.