White Smoke from Tailpipe, Sweet smell (hot maple syrup), No Oil on dipstick, No Coolant in Reservoir

Cold weather outside?

Is the coolant level still going down?

The sweet smell is not a good sympton. Leads me to think about a coolant leak. Is the smell coming out the exhaust pipe? Engine area?

Good luck.

snipped-for-privacy@netzero.com wrote:

You're losing coolant somewhere though. I'd have the dealer look at it and perform a test to see if the head gasket has let go. If it has, the warranty should cover it.

You've got some serious engine concerns here on a model prone to head gasket problems. I wouldn't take the lack of overheating as an all clear on that. I'd take it to the dealer to be looked at and I'd tell them that you've noticed oil consumption, and coolant consumption, and have noticed the sweet smell and smoke. That should focus their efforts pretty quickly on the known achilles heel of the car -- the head gasket. And I believe with th recall, the head gasket is warranted for 100k?

It shouldn't cost you anything to get an estimate from the dealer on this work at any rate, and there's a decent chance it may all be warranty work.

-- Todd H.

There was a recall on OBW 2000 - 2003 models - "special cooling conditioner" ( actually sort of bar's stop leak) was supposed to be added to the coolant. Then HG warranty was to be extended to 100k miles. Your Outback just clocked on 100k , so even if you will do ( or did) the recall operation - warranty coverage is gone. Yes - judging from symptoms it is a bad HG ( or both HGs). One thing worries me - the white smoke from tailpipe. Are you sure it wasn't there every winter? If not - you HGs leak through cylinder fire rings . It's called "internal HG failure" - quite unusual for 2.5 l SOHC second generation Subaru engines. Normally those engines seep the coolant and oil externally , and as long as you keep an eye on levels of both, and add as needed and - moreover - you change your driving habits to a "lightfootedness" you should be fine. Unless you can't stand that maple syrup smell..... Normally the engine should lose coolant in the winter and oil in the summer. If it loses both regardless of the season, you may have a massive leak ( not just a seepage). And - if my worst scenario is true ( i.e. you have an internal leak), the car is basically "total loss".But I hope you are wrong about that deadly "while smoke".... Keep my fingers crossed for you guys. kd

Ok, so I have some good news and some bad news. I drove to the post office today, and I checked all of the fluid levels before I left and then I checked them when I came back. The oil was fine, but I had lost

I don't know where it is coming from. I think it's coming from the engine, not the tailpipe. I only seem to smell it when I am driving, or when the car is parked and turned off.

witht he age of your car and the lack of the 90k service, check the condition of the upper and lower radiator hoses. Are they dry rotted or cracked? Losing fluid from there?

Try to see where in the engine this coolant is dripping from. If it's around the engine block, then it's the head gasket....

Sweet smell from teh exhaust is telling us though that coolant is being combusted I think... and that's a telltale of headgasket. You don't want to let that go because coolant breaks down oil viscocity and then you get ring failure, with ring failure you get oil blow by and blue smoke in the exhaust. And a big ass repair bill if you need to replace the piston rings.

Check the hose clamps on the upper radiator hose for tightness. Hopefully they're not original. Use a flat blade screwdriver, or a

Yes, external head gasket leaks are a problem with this car. I don't think there is a water-cooled flat 4 that didn't have some kind of head gasket problem. Even the old Subarus required re-torquing head bolts as part of routine maintenance. I think abandoning this practice could be part of the problem.

Also, a lot of water vapor comes out of tailpipes on start. It's just a normal condition for modern emissions cars. You want to be sure that it is white smoke and not water vapor. If you are actually burning coolant, you should see it at high engine vacuum on a hot engine. Go down a hill in low gear with your foot off the throttle, and look behind you (or have someone follow) for the white smoke.

Take heart, even if it is the worst case scenario, I've seen these new fixes in a bottle for head and block leaks that just involves a few flushes and the uncorking of the can. You're probably only shooting for another 50-100 K anyway.

Actually, that white smoke at startup IS water vapor. The difference is in the quantity and duration. The 'normal' white smoke should be fairly thin and quit after about 2 minutes or seeing the temp gauge rising noticeably. Coolant leaking into the combustion chamber is usually dense and gets worse as the engine warms up.

Localized boiling water can bring a sweet smell if against metal. pinholing Headgasket in other words... keep after the fluids. Given income problems run it easy, idle till fan kicks on. There is always crud in the system to try and repair itself. Do not add stop leak stuff unless it is subarus (and even then I don't use it) Good Luck. Tell that husband to get off his ass and get a job the lazy bum!

Ok, this is griz. First of all to bgd I was a city maintance worker. The budget ran out and my position was termanated but this month the city had my position back and I applied for my job back. Now, you can insert your foot in your mouth!

Anyway, back to the car. The car only has white smoke when it is started from condensation in the cat's. It goes away once the car is warm. Second we use synthetic oil. It is my wifes car. I had no idea she had 6000 miles on that oil, so the no oil was from consumption from the motor. (6000 miles and 1 qt lost? That's decent for 100000 miles) There is no oil leak except for a tiny bit of ceapedge in the summer. If we go to a different oil weight it will go away.

The sweet smell is collant coming out of the drivers side head gasket. I went to check "all data"/and "mithcel on demand". When I went there I saw that 2000-2003 Subaru OBW with 2.5 had drivers side head gasket problems. Previous to those years Subaru had the 2.2 which is a much better motor in my opinion. Now some 1998-2000 had the 2.2, some had the 2.5. So not all are 2.2.

Now back to ours. . . There is no water in the oil. One more thing from all data the head bolts are strech thead so if you dont replace them you will get another head gasket leak

UPDATE:

We took the car to a Subaru dealer, not exactly in our area, but they were the only ones who agreed not to charge us $100 to put it on a lift, look under the car, and identify the problem. They were really great- it was Gresham Nissan Subaru.

I dropped the car off in the morning and it was ready by 2pm.

We DID have a head gasket leak, but it was not leaking into the motor. It was only leaking on the outside on the muffler, which was causing the smell and smoke. Apparrently, this is really common for our year and model because Subaru neglected to put a conditioner into the coolant when it was first made. So we were told.

They performed a coolant flush and added the $2.50 conditioner to the coolant, and this is supposed to close up the small hole we have. If it does not we can come back and have it fixed under warranty. This was covered under warranty as well even though our car has over

I hope this helps someone else out there with a similar problem. I want to thank everyone for their input, it was much appreciated and most of it was right on target with what we were told at the dealership.

Hee hee. Well that's turd polishing by the dealer. Subaru neglected to add it when it was first made because most vehicles don't need such bandaids to keep the head gaskets together. :-) They perhaps started adding it at the factory on later model years when they learned that the design was problematic.

Cool. I'd be hyper vigilant in looking for the leak and trying to get it actually replaced rather than this stop leak bandaid crap if at all possible. Dn't lose sleep over it, but it beats having to pay for it when the gasket inevitably fails.

Thanks for following up--great to have more data points like this.

-- Todd H.