white smoke + tapping noise

[PharmEcis]

Ok, here is the situation. Picked up a 95 TSi AWD, it seemed to be in pretty good shape. Has 147K on the odometer. Drove it home and it seemed to do ok. Of course that was in the rain at night. First thing I do is pull off the front bumper and headlights because the headlights were yellow and fogged and needed to be resealed and cleaned. While I had the air box apart, I also pulled off the piping to the turbo and removed the excess piping coming from the BOV so that it was flush w/ the rest of the piping.

After I got everything reassembled and started her up again I noticed for the first time a decent amount of white smoke coming out of the exhaust. I gassed it and a big cloud came out, but seemed to clear it up some as I couldn't make it cloud up like that again. I pulled the car into my garage again and ran a compression test on all the cylinders. Starting from the passenger side, I had 150, 150, 140, 150. Not too bad I think for a 150K mile 10 yr old engine but not the best.

Now I also noticed that if I gassed the engine I was getting white smoke in the engine bay as well. It appears to be coming from below the head but closer to the passenger side. I can't fully diagnose where it is coming from as it just almost suddenly appears. I'm also hearing a knocking or tapping noise coming from two locations. One appears to be the intake piping to the turbo and I'm wondering if cutting out that restriciton is causing that. The other happens only when I rev the engine quickly. It's coming from what almost appears to be cylinder 3, or whatever cylinder # is the one that was 140. To my untrained and uneducated hears it almost sounds like valve's slapping against pistons. It's a metallic sound. Now I did change plugs to some bosch's that I got from pepboys. Yes I know.. not NGKs, I have NGKs on order from clubplug but I figured I'd swap these in while I did the compression test.

I also threw a code after I installed the plugs, cylinder misfire on #2, which if the orientation is from the driver side would be the cylinder that was @ 140.

Could the timing be off and causing this? I have purchased all the items necessary to do the timing, and I think I will be buying a metal headgasket to do that at the same time. Do I need to check the turbo?

Any ideas? Suggestions? I'm trying to do this right because I don't wanna blow the engine up. I have mods coming but I want to make sure the engine is in tip top shape before I start tossing on a lot of bolt ons.

Thanks,

Greg

 

[Staytuned]

Could be lifter tick that you hear firstly and secondly white smoke out the tail pipe usually means your are burning coolant. Check your coolant resevoir bottle and rad cap for signs of oil ....which would lead me to believe it is a HG problem.

Don't know about the white smoke under the hood though.

 

[PharmEcis]

I neglected to mention the fact that the plugs I pulled showed decent signs of oil on them. Not carbonized.

I will check the radiator cap right now. Exactly what am I looking for?

 

[Staytuned]

Look for oil floating around the coolant. I had a lot when my HG went 2 years ago.

 

[PharmEcis]

resevour wasn't empty but low and I didn't see any oil in it. I pulled the cap, it looked clean. Also could see coolant there and it also looked fine.

Hrm..

 

[PharmEcis]

ok.. this is odd.. I was describing what I noticed yesterday. Today, I got a little white smoke on startup, but now not much at all. I also got a tiny bit of smoke from the engine bay, but after running for a little bit it's all gone. The ticking noise I noticed appears to be coming from the water below where the radiator cap is, but not from the head or block itself, some accessory down there, it also disappeared.

)@#(*)#%@#$ I'm gonna do the head gasket anyways.. but ()@#%@)#($ don't make me think I'm crazy! heh

 

[PharmEcis]

Ok I'm not crazy. I doesn't do it when the engine is cold, but as soon as the engine has had a chance to warm up, it starts smoking again.

Any ideas?

 

[PharmEcis]

bump.. any help?

 

[Oldbeaterturbo]

mine was doing the same thing, with the white smoke out of the exhaust and then 2 days later my rad sprung a leak, a little hole had formed on the top and coolant would leak like a mofo! I am about to replace the rad and get a compression check just thought i would share my dilema with ya!