when i drive, sometimes i get this wierd oil smell that goes through out my whole car. One time i stop to take a look at the engine and i saw a very little amount of smoke coming out of my grill, when i opened the hood a little puff of smoke puffed out of the left side. everyone is telling me that i probably just got some oil on the manafold, but i think it's much worse than that, can someone help?

 

probably a leaking valve cover gasket, not a really big prob and a pretty easy fix

 

i have the same problem...smoke from the same side also...thinking about doing the entire upper gaskets including the head gasket. i put some dye in the engine and im gunna do a black light test tonight

 

Its extremely rare for the head gasket to go out on the 1.8t engine. If your head gasket was bad, youd have smoke coming out your muffler, not your engine bay (unless you have a manifold/cat leak) which is also pretty rare. The smoke you see on the side of the engine is common from oil leaking out of the valve cover gasket and dripping onto the block/ manifold and burning up-like said.

 

its not a 1.8t is a 2.8 but from what iv found is even more rare for the headgasket to go out on a 2.8 than a 1.8t. im doing the timing belt and figured i might as well do the headgasket and upper gaskets while im at it to make sure i have no more leaks.

 

btw iv already sealed the valve cover gasket and it didng help any. sometimes i get a (small) puff of smoke out the tail pipe and my coolant keeps getting low.

 

I had an odor coming in from the vents that smelled like oil/burned gas and it happened at low speeds/stopped. Turned out to be the PVC hose that holds the pcv valve the the flimsy plastic housing adjacent to that. There was also a lot of rubber decay and other build-up in the hoses possibly causing a overpressure condition in the engine and thus pushing oil out when it runs over seals. I am losing oil like major, and so im hoping this fixes it. I WILL update this in a few weeks to say whether this fixes the oil leak or not. It did fix the smell if that wasn't clear.

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