I have a 997.1 S with 72K miles. I drive very short distances to and from work since moving to OKC from San Antonio - ~ 5 miles, and this has been since May of 2017. Today, as usual I drove to work, never take the car over 2K to 3K RPM while cold. I drove home from work, oil still not at temp. I took her back out to pick up a pizza - still cold. Hours later, I started her up only to see white smoke in the garage. It dissipated, but wondering why that would be? She had an oil change 3 months ago, and according to the sensor there's no change in level.

I never take the car over 3K when the engine oil is cold.

Thoughts?

 

All those short trips are filling the oil with condensed water and what you probably l saw was steam on that last start. Open your oil fill cap and see if there's a bunch of yellowish foam in there. If so, that's a frothed oil and water mixture. You need yo take the far for a good hour long trip to burn this off, then also check your oil as that water in there will give you a false oil level read.

 

 

is it smoking more out one side of exhaust than the other? Is there more soot build up on the tips on one side or the other? Left side soot or smoke is an indication of bore scoring

Can you remove the oil fill cap with the engine running or is there so much vacuum it feels glued on - this is a symptom of s failed AOS which could result in smoke out the exhaust. If you've done a lot of short trips where the oil level in the crankcase has raised enough to be too high because of the water mixed with it, an overfull oil condition can cause premature AOS failure. I'm sorry to say that those short trips are very bad for this particular motor.

 

One item on driving practices - while oil is under 200, I never rev the car past 3K. Given my short driving distances the only thing I recall prior to the initial engine smoke incident was short shifting up to 2.5k with throttling. Speaking to a tech he said there could be excess gas in a cylinder, or another possibility is the oil separator (can't recall exact reference to part that has a plastic bladder) that's a known issue. The issue with cylinder scoring I'm not sure is a factor given the car is never pressed when the oil is cold. The car otherwise has no oil usage or smoking and maintained oil changes every 6 months.

 

I dropped the car off at Porsche and they'll have a tech inspect it on Monday. I think there was more smoke on the right side, but it's hard for me to tell as when it occurred at start up it was very short in duration. I don't know there's a lot of soot other than the inside of the exhaust tips have always been dark

 

on a .1, you're hoping for right side smoke, not left as the bores that usually score are on the right side of the motor, but because the cats crossover to the other side, the right side cylinders exit out the left exhaust tip, providing you're running a stock exhaust setup, which would make a failed AOS the likely culprit of the smoke.

​​​​You say you don't have oil use, but if the water is mixing with the oil, the level will look fine even though the oil is low.

Interested to get Monday's report.

 

What I noticed on the first occurrence last night was smoke out the right side while in the garage. The oil was also last changed in September I think and it's always been just slightly under the top of the scale - no movement, but I get what you're stating, although if it was building with water then it would be all the way to the top and the car hasn't otherwise previously smoked at all.

By the way, can you tell me what the AOS is, and is it a major part and/or replacement in terms of labor?

 

I found it - search is a good thing - Air Oil Separator. I also noted you had a motorsports AOS for sale back in '12. This could be what the technician was referring to. Anxious for Monday and hoping for nothing worse than this.

 

Don't worry yourself, it will be something silly like AOS..all this bore score nightmare scenario is a very unlikely outcome.

 

 

 

Great news! sometimes with all the scare mongering we are too worried, couple of months ago my car cut off while driving, i knew i was low on gas..so went and got gas in a can and put in and it still wouldn't start..i thought thats it..IMS blew..lol, had it towed to mechanic and all it needed was just 2 gallon gas can instead of the 1 gallon i put in lol..

 

 

Sometimes u will get white smoke on startup if u parked at an incline....