2002 Carrera 4s with less than 37,000 miles started this morning and I noticed it was blowing enormous amounts of white smoke as I went to reverse. No lights have tripped, no grinding, banging, or exploding sounds. It is low on oil with only 2000 miles since last change. I've never noticed any significant amount of white smoke previously. No fluid or metal under the car and no oil readily visible in the engine compartment.

I'm in full panic mode. Any thoughts?

 

1. Search "white smoke on cold startup"
2. Leave panic mode.

 

This is well beyond what I would call a "puff" of smoke. I've seen that from time to time and never thought much of it. This morning it filled the garage. :-O

 

Hmmm... weird. It stopped though, right? Definitely keep an eye on it. Hopefully it was an isolated incident for some reason.

 

White smoke in quantity is normally associated to coolant leaking into the cylinder (black smoke is oil). Things I would check:
- check your engine oil for signs of coolant in the oil
- check/mark you coolant levels and see if it is noticeably reducing

 

Possible AOS do a search on it.

 

White smoke lasting alot more than a couple of seconds is one of the signs of coolant leak into the cylinder which can cause engine failure in very little time. It might be nothing, but you should definitely take the car to get checked out at an OPC or Indi as soon as you possibly can.

 

If it happens on crankup all of the time, then check the AOS otherwise apparently its common for some on the rare occasion. I had a boxster that used to be every 3rd or 4th time I would crank it, had it checked it was the AOS, no big deal (not to mention when it smoked upon crank up, it was serious, lol but would quickly go away).

If you always have smoke, especially when your driving, then get it checked out.

No need for panic mode though, on the rare occasion that it does smoke on startup like this, you will think your fogging the neighborhood for mosquitos, but it is common. I was surprised when the Carrera I just bought didn't, lol.

 

AOS....i have the same issue before...

 

Had you washed your car before? I get that upon occasion after washing mine... I always open the engine boot and if I am not quick enough water drips into the air intake... when I fire the engine...poof... white smoke.....

 

When I run my 2006 C2S HARD at the track I would get TONS of white smoke after I parked the car, shut it off, and then re-started it later. I mean the white smoke was in abundance upon the re-start. Long ago I posted this situation here and was told that this was not unusual if I was running the car at close to 10/10ths (which I was). The solution was to let the car idle for at least 5 minutes after the track session. Doing this cut down on the quantity of white smoke, but there's still some.

So, have you been running your car hard??
Mr. B

 

Not track hard, but I did a couple redline run ups in the 18 mile jaunt home. Before going home I had no issue. Parked about 4am and then started it at 9am, turned around to back out and it looked like a brush fire. Got out and looked around back.. worse out of the right than the left. Shut it off. I started it again a few hours later and let it idle up to operating temp and the smoke was greatly reduced when warmed up but still pretty apparent.

 

My white smoke goes away. Hasn't your??
Mr. B

 

Like someone else says... it spews like a fogger at first and then less but still smoking. It hasn't stopped

 

I recommend that you get it into your Porsche dealership.
Mr. B