Trester

Hi. I’ve had a problem going on for a couple weeks with a high pitch sound that I think is some perished ventilation valve thats not really a problem besides the irritating noise so I’ve pushed an appointment to a shop until I get my other car running in a week or two but today running to the store, a 5 minute drive, and looking back at the car I see that there’s some smoke, looks like vapor and didn’t smell like oil that dropped on a manifold or something. It was on the drivers side(lhd). As I don’t know much about these cars yet I thought I could see if there’s anything likely to cause this on the lhd, deep down in the engine bay. I may have to take it to a shop sooner than I planned?

Best regards,
trester

BLKROKT

PCV valve

Could also be intake manifold gasket leak, although that wouldn’t cause smoke.

Maybe both. Or valve cover could be leaking oil on manifold.

Could be many things, need to dig in.

Trester

It really seemed like water vapor, it didn’t smell and it was not heavy smoke like burning oil would cause but there was a fair amount of it and it kept coming for minutes after. I’ll get it diagnosed for sure by a professional soon but maybe I could learn something here first.

Diabolis

Whatever fluid it is it - and it most likely is engine oil - appears to be hitting the hot exhaust manifold. My guess would be on the valve cover gasket (reasonably common and fortunately not too expensive to replace).

Trester

Okay so I’ve been driving my E36 for a couple days but decided to look into my smoking C63 this morning. I first removed the air box to inspect and try to confirm a leaking valve cover but I didn’t find anything so I reinstalled everything and fired the car up.

immediately there was smoke coming from the back of the engine, it came out mostly on the drivers side but definitely from back of engine and not from oil burning on manifold since this was seconds after starting the car and everything was cold still.

the dentist drill sound also came on immediately so this is caused by a bad PCV valve and not the fan that's supposed to come on at high temperatures thats been suggested in another thread about that issue.

Can a bad PCV valve also cause smoke?

Slow_c63

iTrader: (1)

Sounds like the PCV valve is faulty from what I hear. You can troubleshoot this by removing opening the dipstick and seeing if the sound goes away.

Your intake is probably swimming in oil, I hope not. I'd remove the intake manifold as well to clean out any excessive oil.

Others will hopefully give you better info to go by.

skullbox15

Looks like what my C32 was doing when I forgot to reconnect the PCV. Sounds terrible on camera.

Trester

New valve/breather hose ordered, hopefully it'll fix both the terrible sound and the smoke!

Inturrisi

I had the same exact smoke. Had to change valve cover because it had a hairline crack and was leaking oil onto the exhaust manifold.

Solo wing

The loud whistling noise could indicate a large vacuum leak. Also, smoke appears more on the driver's side far from the PCV valve. It might be an issue with the brake booster connection to the intake manifold (or the purge valve connection but it is pre-vacuum so not sure)

roadkillrob

I have the drivers side hairline crack also and leak near the rear bottom and exhaust manifolds will get hot in seconds after starting the car.