My daughter just bought her first car! 88 toyota Corrolla. Problem is; when first starting and for about 10 miles this huge embarrassingly amount of white smoke emitts from the tail pipe. Then suddenly after sometime nothing no more smoke??? Whats up with that? will continueing to drive cause fatal problems for this old car?? Car does have a huge oil leak under carriage when left setting overnight. Car does not get hot while driving, infact after it quits smoking car runs pretty tight for an 1988. Thanks for any input, Melissa & Tena
I don't know yet, we don't enough information to go from yet. That's okay, we'll drag it out of you... ;-)
But first, the important thing is to pick a level parking spot, roll up your sleeves, and check all the car's vital fluids /daily/ until you nail down exactly what is leaking. Do you have an Owners Manual in the glovebox that shows you how to check everything under the hood? If not, call a wrecking yard and find one, or go get a repair book. It's easy, but it can get a bit messy.
Is the car automatic or stick? Mileage? Accessories?
Do you have a repair history for the car?
Has anyone tested for a possible blown head gasket yet?
You need to watch the engine oil level, radiator coolant level (both in the recovery bottle and the radiator itself), power steering fluid, brake fluid (up on the firewall), and transmission oil or ATF fluid. One of these fluid levels will be slowly (or quickly) going down as whatever it is leaks out...
Any of those can cause major problems if it leaks down too low. Brake fluid runs out (sucked into the engine because of a bad master cylinder), you can't stop. ATF, you don't go. Coolant or engine oil, and the engine makes very expensive noises and stops. Manual transmission or differential gear oil, different very expensive noises and you stop.
Power steering fluid runs dry, and it makes lots of interesting noises and turns into parking spaces (low speed) like you are berthing the Titanic. Other than that, nothing bad happens - except on medium trucks, where the power steering fluid also runs the power brake booster, then you can have /big/ problems...
If your new car is high mileage (over 100,000 miles) it might be a normal aging problem in Toyotas (and other imports) where the valve stem seals are leaking a little motor oil into the cylinders overnight. When you start the car in the morning you get a little white smoke from the motor oil. But that is usually described as "a small puff" of white smoke that stops within several seconds after starting the car, not a big cloud that lingers for several minutes after driving off...
That one you leave alone and watch the oil level weekly - the valve stem seals themselves are little molded rubber 'caps' that only cost a few dollars for a set, but you have to take the cylinder heads halfway apart (minimum $500 in labor) to change them. That's the kind of job you let wait till you do a valve job or head gasket replacement, where it needs to be taken apart that far at the same time.
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