Steam out exhaust

[wjbell]

I have a 1990 535i that I recently had the head gasket replaced on. The gasket was replaced in August, I say recently because I drive the car very little and it's parked in my garage the majority of the time. There's probably been a total of 1000 miles put on it since August when the head gasket was done.

So I had the gasket replaced and they told me I need to drive the car about 1000 miles and then to bring it back in and they will retourque the head. It ran great after the initial head gasket replacement.

So after close to 1K miles I brought it back and they retourqued the head. When I brought it home I noticed the car idling different. Maybe a little rougher. I thought that maybe when they retourqued that they did somthing to the valve adjustment so I brought it back in to have them check it. They told me that "a couple of the valves where a little off" and it should be fixed.

Hmm.. OK. I didn't really buy that but just chalked it up as maybe I didn't remember that the car actually did idle rough and I'm just being overly critical.

So today I start the car up for the first time in a couple of weeks and notice that I'm getting a lot of steam out of the exhaust. Like when you start your car up in the morning when it's 40 degrees out side. Only it's 60 degrees out side. It's a moderate amount of steam and it takes a while to evaporate once it exits the tailpipe.

So I started up my 98 F150 to see if it did the same thing and there was no steam at all.

So does this sound like I'm getting water in the combustion chamber? Is there any way I can test this further? I'm scheduled to take it back in tomorrow morning and if there is somthing wrong I'd like to go in there with a little more knowledge than just a guess in case they try to give me any BS excuse and send me on my way.

Any help is appreciated.

[calmloki]

Drive the car a mile or so, pull the plugs, keeping them in order with the holes you pull them from, and look at all the combustion areas on the plugs. Got one or two that look extra clean and white? There's your sign. :-(
Tom Walrod

[angrypancake]

i thought that the steam was normal and it takes a while for the ehaust/cats to heat up? i know when its humid and or cold my car steams from the exhaust until it gets to normal operating temp and then its good. if the smoke is white then there are issues, otherwise it should be ok.

[632 Regal]

what about your coolant level? This is where you should have concentrated, if you tell them it steams like and the coolant level has went down they are more likely to investigate.

as for pulling the plugs to check for the wet cylinder it should be shut off before it steams like . Removing and tightening plugs in an aluminum head is dangerous cause you can very easily gall the aluminum threads.

Good luck with it all!

[wjbell]

That would make sense if the steam is normal from condensation because my car sits in an uninsulated garage without running for weeks at a time. And it is the rainy season...

I'm pretty sure it's steam and not white smoke, but it's hard to tell. I think I'll take it for a good run tommorow and then pull the plugs after it cools down and see what they look like.

[Kalevera]

It's true that there may be some coolant burning through the cat, the most extreme case I've seen took about 40 minutes of running to clear up after the initial repair.

Burning coolant has that acrid smell, much different than the typical "sweet" vapor you get from an exhaust.


best, whit

[632 Regal]

the italian tune up might be an idea too then! (look at coolant level before and in the next morning).

[Blitzkrieg Bob]

into the chambers it will begin to show up in the drivebility of the car since the O2 sensor will be contaminated with burnt coolent and start to fail.

[632 Regal]

in other words, failure of something is inevitable.

[SRR2]

There is no such thing as a '1000 mile' torque-up of the head bolts. It's not in the spec.

If they performed the installation according to BMW specs, that should have been necessary and sufficient. THEY screwed it up (i.e. it's leaking) by fooling around with it at this 1000 mile point. BMW is VERY picky about the head bolt installation and tightening process. Where did these guys figure that they knew more than BMW's engineers?

They owe you a new head gasket and proper installation to the specification.

Guys, I hate to nitpick, but what's coming out of this member's car is not steam. It's WATER VAPOR. Steam is, by definition, "colorless, odorless, and transparent". You can't see steam. You can see the water vapor produced by steam when it condenses into tiny droplets in the air. Another important property of steam is that it is DRY. Liquid water results only when it condenses, either in the atmosphere (or wherever it's allowed to cool and expand) or on an object whose temperature is below the liquid-vapor equilibrium point at the prevailing pressure.

And while I'm at it, torque is LB-FT. The "foot-pound" is a unit of work in the classical English measurement system. In metric it's newton-meter (N-M) which, you will note has the units in the same order as lb-ft.