timing and smoking problems

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Jun 15, 05 9:04 am

Non-Mopar, but you fellas know everything, so...

OK, first up I can't get my timing light to trigger off the Buick ('66 LeSabre 340 4 bbl). Light works fine, tested it again on my Cortina and its fine. No light at all off the Buick. What gives?

Anyway, next thing is I have smoke on acceleration. Its worst if I accelerate in gear. Clouds of white smoke follows the car. I did an experiment where I wanted to accelerate from about 40 so I dropped the selector into 2 first and then hit it, car took off, no smoke. When I clicked the lever back into D at about 60 it shifted right up into top and then damn me but a big cloud of white smoke straight after the change.

If I accelerate from 35 or 40 up to 60 in "D" I get white smoke all the way and it clears when I'm cruising.

If I am cruising about 65-70 and I come to an incline it smokes all the way on the gradient. Not heavy, but enough to see when you look in the mirror.

Motor has about 2500 miles on it from a full rebuild (inc Postons cam, springs, new cam shells, block and heads milled flat, the lot)

Suggestions as to whats causing this? Seems to be if I drive with like 1/4 of the gas pedal movement its fine but if you go to 1/3 or 1/2 gas pedal down it smokes.

Car pulls fine, just smokes.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Jun 15, 05 9:24 am

does it have a vacuum unit on the gearbox ? it could be sucking trans fluid into the intake manifold if its buggered.

Jon · Post by **Jon** » Wed Jun 15, 05 9:29 am

Or it could be sucking brake fluid through the servo, that causes white smoke, and it happened on my mates buick, is it using fluid?

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Jun 15, 05 9:49 am

cheers for the suggestions. The vacuum unit is a fairly new one, less than 2000 miles on it at a guess. Not checked for brake fluid loss, I'll check both again at the weekend.

Not sure if its my imagination but it appears to be worse when the motor is warmed up. Or could just be that I drive like a grandma until its warmed up so it doesn't smoke then.

Any suggestions why I can't get the timing light to light? Its a decent inductive one (Sykes Pickavant) and I can't get anything even an RPM reading on it.

Post by **MattH** » Thu Jun 16, 05 10:48 pm

Servo sounds right for white smoke, Ive had that before, a servo can hold literally litres of the stuff, and it will get drawn into the manifold when there is vaccum from there, such as changing up gear.

Have you tried the timing light on other plug leads? You may have one that is no good, just a thought.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Fri Jun 17, 05 2:42 pm

yeah, tried it on a couple of places (both front plugs and one or more other)