Smoking badly...2001 3.0i

[The Cleaner]

Originally Posted by ferrariguyma

I went out to start my 02 3.0 x5 in 5 degree weather (I live in MA) Last week I had the car into the dealer to have all 4 doors repaired as I was finding they would not relatch when the weather was freezing. So I get into my car and the drivers door does the exact same thing. THAT ends up being the least of my worries!

I start the car to warm it up go into the house to get my daughter ready to bring to daycare. I leave the car in the driveway running for maybe 10 minutes tops. I get Bella into the car I get into the drivers seat (holding my door shut) and look at my temp gauge. IT IS PINNED TO THE RED. NO other lights are on just the temp gauge pegged. I immediately shut the car off. Now its 6am and I am questioning if I saw what I thought I saw so I restart the car. When I restart it the temp gauge is now below the 12'oclock (towards the cool side) I think Huh maybe I was seeing things. I drive (still holding my door closed) to the daycare about 4 miles from my house. I get my daughter into the daycare and leave the car running outside the daycare for about 2 minutes. I get back in and the temp gauge is normal 12 oclock. I have NO heat coming out of the vents this whole time. I start driving home and the car is very very sluggish almost no power. The temp gauge now drops back to the half point of the cool side of the gauge. I drive 4 miles home, park and call the dealer.
They are going to take the car in tomorrow. It is still THANK GOD covered under CPO. This all happened this morning. I just went out to have a look under the car and under the hood. No leaks under the car but I did notice a odd wetspot around the oil filler cap and when I took it off the inside looks like a coffee milkshake, I decided to pull the dipstick and that looks like a milkshake too. Any ideas what might be wrong with my car?

Thanks!

look in your radiator expansion tank, is there oil floating on the water? You have a blown head gasket or cracked cylinder head. 2-5k depending on whats wrong. That is a big job and not fun.

[ferrariguyma]

Originally Posted by The Cleaner

look in your radiator expansion tank, is there oil floating on the water? You have a blown head gasket or cracked cylinder head. 2-5k depending on whats wrong. That is a big job and not fun.

The expansion tank is dark brown and the car stinks of burning oil when its running. I am assuming at 57,000 miles and the car having CPO coverage until 2/08 this will be covered by CPO?

Does this mean they have to replace the engine? or will they rebuild the engine? This is my daily driver any idea how long these repairs will take?

Thanks
Andrew

[The Cleaner]

At best you have a blown head gasket, at worse it's a cracked head so either way they will be doing the top end. I think the dealer will just install a new head and not bother with figuring out if there is a crack or just a head gasket. I think that job is in the 14-16 hour range so you will be in at least 3 days.

Thats is a rare failure without something else causing it, could also be a bad radiator thermostat or Waterpump. They will likely replace those as well anyway.

Good Luck

[The Cleaner]

Oh and the CPO I am not sure about but I would imagine this is totally covered, this is not a common wear part or anything.

[NOVAX5]

infamous pegged to the right temperature gauge. it is your thermostats/housing fail to open/close. buy thermostats from autohausaz.com for $60 and have a mechanic replace it for $150 most. but while you are at it check for leak in water pump. here is the trick everyone here has been doing when you have that happens. your temp. gauge pegged to the right after 5 mins of start/drive at cold/extreme cold temp. just turn off the car and restart it. it will release the pressure build up and make your thermostats open/close normally, you will get heat coming out normally too. but after you have let the car sit for more than 1 hour outside and it is cold it will happen again. good luck.

[ferrariguyma]

My concern is damage to the engine. My CPO runs out the end of next month and I do not want to have them do some minor repairs to find in 3 months I need a new engine or top end. The car was acting very slow/sluggish and I was getting alot of smoke out of the tailpipes. Once I had let the car sit for the day and then checked the oil and under the oil cap and saw alot of white milky goop. My heart sank. I check the oil regularly and had never seen this before.

[The Cleaner]

They can't fix this with a bandaid, the thermostat maybe the cause but the damage is to the top end of the engine and they will have to replace it.

The car overheated at some point and thats what is making the coolent and oil mix. The coolent and oil usually stay in separate areas of the engine (never to mix). When they do mix it's "generally" not a minor event. The brown in the coolent is oil and the mikly white stuff in the oil is coolent.

Stop driving it if you can it will eventually have catastrophic failure and leave you stranded.

[mrbmwx5]

i had my crank/valve cover replaced last year now it happen again.

[lo_jack]

More than likely your seperator went out and that is when you start pushing oil past your seals and out of your dipstick. That exact thing happened to me; I have a 2001 3.0i as well.

Valve cover gasket is just a symptom. Having said that, I replaced the entire seperator system (seperator itself, hoses, distribution piece) and my ICV (spurious), swapped the valve cover gasket (I can do that in 45 mins or so now) and had no more issues.

This system was designed to fail, and by that I mean eventually oil and blowby will overwhelm the sperator and it needs to be replaced. The other alternative is to have the PCV system cast into the manifold or some such, and the system will constantly innundate one or two cylinders only with blowby, and those cylinders will lean out and others will not. There is a compromise there.

But, unless you are having some awful other problems with the car, there is no reason to huck the entire thing because of the seperator system. It's $300 in parts and a couple hours of labor, and you should be able to get another 70k or so from the new parts, perhaps more.

[primetime]

Originally Posted by lo_jack

More than likely your seperator went out and that is when you start pushing oil past your seals and out of your dipstick. That exact thing happened to me; I have a 2001 3.0i as well.

Valve cover gasket is just a symptom. Having said that, I replaced the entire seperator system (seperator itself, hoses, distribution piece) and my ICV (spurious), swapped the valve cover gasket (I can do that in 45 mins or so now) and had no more issues.

This system was designed to fail, and by that I mean eventually oil and blowby will overwhelm the sperator and it needs to be replaced. The other alternative is to have the PCV system cast into the manifold or some such, and the system will constantly innundate one or two cylinders only with blowby, and those cylinders will lean out and others will not. There is a compromise there.

But, unless you are having some awful other problems with the car, there is no reason to huck the entire thing because of the seperator system. It's $300 in parts and a couple hours of labor, and you should be able to get another 70k or so from the new parts, perhaps more.

Thanks lo jack this is very informative. However, I wonder why my dealer didn't mention this to me at all? He said nothing about the seperator and all that...He just said yeah its your valve cover gasket and we replaced it for you....