Thread: Smoke from exhaust

The English side of Ford is actually quite good. We had a Ford Sierra station wagon that ran great for years in some pretty bad conditions, and we never had a problem with it. Really durable. Then we get to the States and hear the acronym, "Found On Road, Dead". I don't think it's fair to include all of them as a rule, but in general I've found that bad transmissions are common on a lot of American cars. Chrysler-Dodge and Ford in particular.

Not really, theres only two trannies ford has a problem with:

AODE
AOLDE

AOD is the most common, the other two tend to last around 90k. Do transmission filter/fluid changes everytime u do your oil change, and make sure to add Lucas trans and Lucas oil stabilizers and you will be fine.

Chrysler trannies, hah, they go to the junk yard with the 360 oil pumps : )

Just finished a engine swap in our jeep. Had a 4cyl chrysler engine, now has a chevy 454 and a 700R4 tranny. Lunati cams and lifters, holley EFI programmable FI unit, and an external waterpump. Engine mods arent much, but boy does she have some power hehe.

Except that if your Ford transmission is already making noises or slipping you are better off leaving the fluid in it. Changing the fluid in those often causes the entire tranny to go to crapola in a heartbeat.

Problem is this. Ford got a great idea that they would start using aluminum pistons in the tranny instead of steel. Well this worked until the darn thing got hot one time. The heat causes the aluminum pistons to crack, thus limiting their ability to push fluid, thus causing lots of shifting problems. The only way to fix it is to rebuild the entire tranny. I once had a Mercury (no diff from Ford) Topaz that started having problems with the tranny (and the power steering rack - leaked horribly). I was advised not to change the fluid as several tranny places stated the tranny might actually start to fail quicker with new fluid. It sounded stupid at the time, but they were right. Once the tranny goes it's going to fail - changing fluid isn't going to help a broken tranny.

Also I concur with the fact that white smoke is probably not normal in this case. It sounds like antifreeze/water is getting into the cylinder's at some point and being burned in the combustion. You have all the signs of a blown or failed head gasket and/or cracked head.
Usually more smoke is noticeable at startup. This is because fluid leaks into the cylinders constantly and the fluid hasn't been moving so more has leaked into the cylinder. There is fluid in the system at all time, another reason that you should winterize your car unless you want a cracked block - there is fluid/water in the system running or not running. So when you start the car that initial smoke is the built up antifreeze/water mixture being burnt in the first few cycles of the engine.

Do a compression check on the engine or do remove the cap and watch for bubbling in the overflow. Blown heads do not always leak compression nor do they always exhibit white smoke. However, they normally DO exhibit one of these symptoms. Also check your oil for gooey white crap at the bottom of the dipstick. This would indicate that antifreeze/water is leaking into the oil also pointing to a blown head gasket.

And yeah, the power steering on Ford's are/were extremely loud. I'm not an expert on Ford's so I don't know if they have fixed this. My Mits does the same thing when the weather turns very cold.

Nice explanation on the trannies, i dont have the patience to type all that LOL. The reason new fluid can sometimes off a ford trans thats having problems is because the viscosity of the new fluid is higher, causing the pump to push more pressure, making the seals blow out.

You have to get under the car and read the stamp on the trans, manuals, vin's, dont matter with ford. Take it to a tranny place and ask him to check, they'll tell u for free 9/10

warm when the coolant heats up and pushes into the head.

Do that bubble check i told u about, its sounding like a head gasket. Any check engine lights coming on?

could be a clogged catalytic converter or an 02 sensor also. When i talk to my dad in the morn ill ask him, 99.9% of the time his first guess is right. dunno why lol

88 wrangler