Hard to say how high the snow could be if I wouldn't drive it occasionally and no one would plow the snow away.

The pile you see behind my car is now a lot higher. This and last winter has been really great after few of not so cold and much less snowy winters.

suzuki swift sport 1.6 blue one. Photos of google

My new Garage Whifbitz cat-back arrived, looking like this:

Well that's just ants:

Also, battery went dead and the stupid theft deterrent system won't recognise the fobs anymore, none of the ways to resync works. Apparently this system is renown for failing irreparably on a completely dead battery.
I did get round the immobiliser, was nice to hear her purr despite the rough idle (due to the ECU having lost power, thus needing to relearn). However, there was a lot of white smoke / steam from the exhaust even after half an hour of warming up, probably worn valve stem seals.

Not at all how I expected to start this year :melting:

Erm white smoke / steam isn't usually a sign of any kind of fault. Pretty much every car does this when it's cold and moist. It's just water.

If your valve stem seals are gone it usually allows for oil to leak in to the combustion chamber and burn in engine, this results in blue smoke. Oil burns always blue. And the condition has to be really bad if it doesn't stop at all, or there is some other reason for burning oil.

If there is continuous white smoke coming out of the exhaust always, this could mean you have a head gasket or even head failure, which allows for coolant water to leak in to combustion chamber and thus vaporizes out of the exhaust. If this is the case and you have proper coolant (not just only water) your exhaust gases should smell weird, the smell would be sweet, "sugary", non "exhaust-gas" like.

Quote from BigPeBe :

Erm white smoke / steam isn't usually a sign of any kind of fault. Pretty much every car does this when it's cold and moist. It's just water.

If your valve stem seals are gone it usually allows for oil to leak in to the combustion chamber and burn in engine, this results in blue smoke. Oil burns always blue. And the condition has to be really bad if it doesn't stop at all, or there is some other reason for burning oil.

If there is continuous white smoke coming out of the exhaust always, this could mean you have a head gasket or even head failure, which allows for coolant water to leak in to combustion chamber and thus vaporizes out of the exhaust. If this is the case and you have proper coolant (not just only water) your exhaust gases should smell weird, the smell would be sweet, "sugary", non "exhaust-gas" like.

As I said, the engine was warm, it wasn't like the usual vaporisation. Water in the silencers and cats wouldn't explain it, unless they were really filled to the brim.
Trust me, I know the engine pretty well by now and it's a typical sign of valve stem seals. It's time for a new timing belt anyway (the third one), so I'm probably going to end up taking it out and perhaps, if I can afford it, get it built properly. Would give me room in the engine bay to take care of some re-wiring and relocation of some components I've been planning to do for a while.
Definitely not worried about the head and don't think the head gasket is likely.

It's very cold and I think the valve stem seals are more likely to contract in a manner that would suddenly lead to this condition than the head gasket is. Can't put load on the engine, thus can't spool the turbos to see if the boost is holding, but as I said, I'm fairly confident it's not the head/gasket.

My poor little '5 is deteriorating worse than i thought it would, its only been parked up for about 6 months.

So, new jobs are....

Replace the 4 circular blobs of rust that look like they have been under the sea for a thousand years which live behind the wheels with brake discs, plus new pads as well, obviously, plus possible caliper rebuilds all round may be needed.

Repair or replace the drivers side headlight motor as it now will not pop all the way up or go all the way down without a 10 minute battle involving pushing, pulling, and swearing.

Although i have started doing this a bit at the weekend, i need to find a way to fully dry out and clean the inside of the car, as due to the damp, the seats, carpets, dash, doorcards, steering wheel, inside of the roof, were all coated in mould, lovely, and although i have got rid of all the mould i can see, i have to be totally sure that ALL traces of it are completely GONE before i let my new prospective girl anywhere near it, as she has a mould spore allergy that resulted in her getting rushed to hospital last time she had a reaction, i cannot ever risk that happening to her ever again.

Replace the bonnet (which was already creased slightly anyway) as although it didnt pierce the tarpaulin that was covering the car, the large front grille from a 70's ford that i was using to hold the tarp down has obviously rocked around a bit and has worn about a nine inch square area of paint off, leaving green primer, again, delightful.

Quote from Danielw597 :

corsa

WOW, hawt at least somebody on this forum got his car proper height and proper offset wheels

Quote from Danielw597 :

why do you hate cars and driving so much that youd buy a corsa and make it completel unuseable?

Quote from Danielw597 :

Nice, what's the drop on that? Mine is 60mm rear and 40mm front, was thinking stiffening up a little more but that looks smart

ps no doubt people will come insult you because you have a Corsa (as they did to me) - Just ignore them, most of them are Scottish anyway.

Quote from danthebangerboy :

...

So Danny, when you gonna learn how to spell mold correctly.

:P

Quote from morpha :

As I said, the engine was warm, it wasn't like the usual vaporisation. Water in the silencers and cats wouldn't explain it, unless they were really filled to the brim.
Trust me, I know the engine pretty well by now and it's a typical sign of valve stem seals. It's time for a new timing belt anyway (the third one), so I'm probably going to end up taking it out and perhaps, if I can afford it, get it built properly. Would give me room in the engine bay to take care of some re-wiring and relocation of some components I've been planning to do for a while.
Definitely not worried about the head and don't think the head gasket is likely.

It's very cold and I think the valve stem seals are more likely to contract in a manner that would suddenly lead to this condition than the head gasket is. Can't put load on the engine, thus can't spool the turbos to see if the boost is holding, but as I said, I'm fairly confident it's not the head/gasket.

What kind of engine is this? Because I don't seem to be able to come up with an explanation of how valve stem seals should let water/coolant in to the combustion chamber. Normally valve stem seals aren't in any kind of contact with water. Or how oil would burn as a white steam.

-EDIT- Now if I think of it when oil is burnt lots it can make a thick white smoke, I've even seen it happen I think. It's just usually when valve stem seals are hardened or worn the amount of oil isn't big and results are different. Some race engines even don't use any valve stem seals at all and the smoke what comes out is blue.

-EDITEDIT- Tried to do some research, I simply hate when things like this don't get a perfect answer or I can't make it myself. Seems like it maybe doesn't have anything to do with the amount of oil burning if it's blue or white, but dunno. There just doesn't seem to be any explanation what causes oil burning white. Only the usual forum posts of people asking about their smoking cars and then people telling them the basic rule, blue = oil, white = water, black = hella rich AFR and then the occasional yes oil can also burn white. But no I want the friggin physical explanation for this.

I agree with BigPeBe, i cant see any way that stem seal failure could cause steam as the stem seals have no contact whatsoever with the coolant system, well, not in any engine i have ever encountered anyway, the only smoke you would get from bad stem seals would be blue, although i suppose really thick oil smoke could cause a whiter looking cloud, but to have smoke that thick you would have serious issues, it would stink of oil, and you would have an empty sump!

I'm turning my head a bit here.

After doing more research it seems that when oil smoke is white it isn't burning, it's evaporating, similarly to water. Combination of lots of oil and less oxygen and the oil wont burn, it just evaporates in the heat. Maybe it's not turning in to smoke in the combustion chamber but is just pushed in to the hot exhaust and evaporates there then. Or the amount is just so high it can't burn properly even in the engine.

I read a good example of F1 engine failures, there is usually a big amount of white smoke, but it can't be water because the smoke hangs around for a long time. When engine fails there is lots of oil pouring in to the exhaust and thus evaporating oil = thick white smoke.

But I'm still not sure.

-EDIT- Forgot to add, actually when I've seen engine failures with big thick white smoke clouds, I recall it being a big white cloud with blue lining (not silver).

Oh crap you're putting a more disastrous thought into my head... the oil's straightest way to the exhaust would be through the turbos, and those are freakishly expensive...

Uploading a video so you can judge for yourself. Must say now after re-examining it, it does have a slight blue tint to it.

Oh btw it's a 2JZ-GTE

Yeah I started to think of it and that also came up to my mind, might be the turbos. I just don't have any fact how the smoke should look then.

Ah so it's a Toyota motor then. Well can't really say this enlighted me in any way since I'm not that familiar with them.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Nice, what's the drop on that? Mine is 60mm rear and 40mm front, was thinking stiffening up a little more but that looks smart

ps no doubt people will come insult you because you have a Corsa (as they did to me) - Just ignore them, most of them are Scottish anyway.

On the front it's 90/100 can't remember, fully wound down on the front.
Back is 110 removed the two plates from the back for another 10mm
I ripped the wheel arch off the front right when I fitted the smoothed bumper, and one of the nuts came off and shredded off on the motorway lol. But apart from that, the tyres made room by shredding the underneath away to give room

Only gonna keep this car for couple of years or so, so when I leave uni I'll get a MK5 and be like my friend Dan:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hp ... 28_30634364_6629086_n.jpg
lol

Quote from Shotglass :

why do you hate cars and driving so much that youd buy a corsa and make it completel unuseable?

Who said I hate cars? Hense why I bought coilovers so I could adjust the height, I've got them wound all the way down and can even make it over speedbumps, isnt that something!

Thats actually reminded me of something which backs that up, a few seasons ago my mate was racing a granada at bangers, the engine was bog standard, but the quickest 2.8 cologne lump we had, no idea why, it just went really well, so we used it in most unlimited meetings and was serviced avery 2 meetings as a matter of course.

So, heat one, going well, mass pile up formed in front, mate piled in and squashed a jag nice and hard, a lovely hit, but the front of his car had wedged in the back of this jag, and he was revving like mad in reverse trying to get it out, but all this revving, and therefore oil pressure, blew the oil filter off, i guess it was all the services it had been treated too over time which had worn the threads or something, but yeah it blew it off.

There was a thick white plume of smoke for about 2 or 3 seconds, which must have been as you say, oil evaporation, that was until some splashed onto the exhaust manifolds, the entire front of the car erupted into a fireball for a few seconds before it calmed down, quite a spectacular looking flash fire!

Quote from Danielw597 :

On the front it's 90/100 can't remember, fully wound down on the front.
Back is 110 removed the two plates from the back for another 10mm
I ripped the wheel arch off the front right when I fitted the smoothed bumper, and one of the nuts came off and shredded off on the motorway lol. But apart from that, the tyres made room by shredding the underneath away to give room



Who said I hate cars? Hense why I bought coilovers so I could adjust the height, I've got them wound all the way down and can even make it over speedbumps, isn't that something!

Your car had coil overs from the factory you blithering idiot. What do you think coil over means? The coil (spring) is over (or around if you'd prefer) the damper.

I am all for well modded vehicles, I am currently getting the parts ready to build a Trophy Truck out of a 2WD Ford Ranger, but throwing on a cheap spring and damper set then forcing the suspension to act as though it is bottomed out all of the time is not a well modded vehicle. It is a ruined vehicle.

It's just about the ugliest Golf I've seen

Quote from morpha :

Oh crap you're putting a more disastrous thought into my head... the oil's straightest way to the exhaust would be through the turbos, and those are freakishly expensive...

Uploading a video so you can judge for yourself. Must say now after re-examining it, it does have a slight blue tint to it.

Oh btw it's a 2JZ-GTE

I can tell you a friend of mine who had a job in agriculture once had a turbo failure with a tractor he was driving and he told me the whole street behind him was covered in thick white smoke because the engine burned the oil leaking from the turbine. Then again these are Diesels with lower exhaust temperatures. Maybe you have white smoke that turns blue when the engine is warm and/or under load?

Yeah seems like you can't always trust the basic "smoke color code".

BTW about the Cologne and it's power, some could say it's an interesting product. For instance when the Sierra XR4i 2.8 was released they promised 150bhp and 8.5 seconds 0-100 km/h (or 0-62 mph) times and the cars what most car magazines test drove did this and were described as powerful sporty-like cars. But differences between cars what ended up to the actual customers were huge and actually most of them weren't any faster than the 2.0 injected models with ~10 seconds times to 0-100. Only difference was heavier engine at front and more torqueish nature.
So it's not actually that surprising that the one Cologne you had did better than some.

Indeed, the power differences of any 2 'identical' units were huge, even when new so i heard, although i think the reason that this one was quite grunty was because it came out of a B plate hearse that had a broken autobox, and due to the nature of hearses, id imagine that it had never been thrashed, although it did smoke a bit when we first converted it from injection to a nice weber off a 3l essex, i dont think it had ever seen 5000rpm before that day.

I dont know if its just me, but despite all the engine notes and sounds there are out there, supercars etc,, to me, a screaming 2.8 with a straight thru exhaust is pretty much the best sound ever!

Quote from RasmusL :

It's just about the ugliest Golf I've seen

Opinions are fine But here's a recent one
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hp ... 24263_149989_974140_n.jpg

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

Your car had coil overs from the factory you blithering idiot. What do you think coil over means? The coil (spring) is over (or around if you'd prefer) the damper.

I am all for well modded vehicles, I am currently getting the parts ready to build a Trophy Truck out of a 2WD Ford Ranger, but throwing on a cheap spring and damper set then forcing the suspension to act as though it is bottomed out all of the time is not a well modded vehicle. It is a ruined vehicle.

Lols and mega gratz dude!

Adjustable Coilovers then?
Bad day or something? Or you just come on forums to release anger where you don't need to confront people?

I also don't recall saying anything about not having coilovers on the car before? I said I bought coilovers to adjust the height, yes, but I could've said I bought another bumper to have it smoothed, if on this basis does that mean I didn't have a bumper on it to begin with?

Sad person

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Just ignore them, most of them are Scottish anyway.

LOL what shite you do speak from time to time