My 400 in my 79 Continental has an occasional puff of white-ish grey smoke on start up.... and its loosing coolant. None into the oil as far as i can determine. I know it has a radiator leak... and i surmise that is where most if not all of my coolant is going, but i'm wondering where this white smoke is coming from on initial startup, and pretty much whenever i restart the car.


Any suggestions are welcomed, so i know i'm not about to tear the ole girl up!

(Sorry for a car question on a truck board, but this is the best resource i knew for info on these motors!)

 

white "smoke" is usually water, or steam. blue is oil burning in the exhaust, black is excessive fuel or oil burning in the combustion chamber. the blue and black smoke will usually stay as a cloud longer than the white "smoke" because it evaporates and disapates into the air. pull the spark plugs and find the one or more that are clean compared to the rest. the clean plug(s) will indicate which cylinder is being steam cleaned with coolant. when you have the heads off, check the deck surfaces around your trouble cylinder very carefully for warpage with a very good straight edge and feeler gages. start with .001 and work your way up until the next gage is a no-go. up to .006 can use a composition gasket, any more and you have to resurface. i would take the .006 to mean total warpage. if you find .004 on the head and .003 on the block, you are over spec. you could resurface the head and be back in spec. hopefully it's just a gasket and not a cracked head or cylinder? have you been racing this hot rod lincoln?

 

Well, i was afraid of that, but if i have to pull it apart, its worth it as i'm going to do some more upgrades while i'm in there.

As far as i know, being the 3rd owner of the car, its never been raced, but i plan to give it some time at the track here in the future, but i don't know what a 5400lb car is going to do at the track.


Hot Rod Lincoln Indeed!

 

With a good hot street 400 running around 350-375 hp it should give you 14-15 second slips with mostly stock looking car. Fast enough to embarass most kids with their sports cars and quite a few of the faster guys that can't drive.

It could go quicker, but that's just a guess.

 

I'm not really wanting to push the envelope of power right now, not until i get that thing to handle better, too much body roll which will end up causing me to over-compensate if things ever got hairy.

But back to the motor, something interesting happend yesterday, i refilled the radiator, not to full, but so it would have about 1/2 full, i took the car and ran around town, came back and popped off the radiator cap about 2 1/2 hrs later and the radiator was completely full.

I'm kind of puzzled about this, because i've never seen this happen before. Maybe it just had an air bubble in the block trapped behind the thermostat.

Still doesn't explain my puffing white smoke, unless perhaps the vacuum modulator on the trans was blown, and allowing fluid to be drawn into the motor, because the tranny will shift 1-2 fine, but i have to back out of the throttle to make it shift into drive.

Another thing i'm having issues with is, that the car will not idle. If you blip the throttle while its in park, it'll sit and idle pretty smoothly, but if you put it into gear, its going to fall flat on its face. I've checked just about all my vacuum lines and all look to be in good condition, so i've eliminated those. I did find where my carb gaskets were torn up, so i'm suspecting thats part of the problem. Also i pulled a vacuum against my EGR valve and noticed that i can feel air around the back side of the valve, and it isn't even actuating.

Keep em coming Ya'll.

 

I have a 79 f-250 with a 400 and i was having problems with idle and no power... came to find out the problem was with a pin holding a gear to the distributor shaft.. i think the pin was sheared.. quick and easy to check and fix.. dont know much technical talk.. but maybe someone else can expand on that...