I am getting white smoke out the tailpipe of my 2001.5 1.8T. In the
start of all this I was driving down a road and the oil light came on and
all the sudden the car started actin funny, so I pulled over and was
like ok it just needs oil its been about 10K miles (I put in the Mobil 1
15K oil) so I got some oil and threw it in, and it didn't solve the
problem, so I threw some gas in it because the gas light had come on just
before the oil light, and it was running rough so I was like oh fuel
filter, slowly drove it home and replaced the filter and I thought it had
fixed. I got tired of guessing and just broke down and bought a
scanner. It said misfire on cyl. No. 2 and 4, as well as timing off, so I got
1 ignition coil because that's all they had, and swapped all 4 in and
out until I didn't get a misfire code. The next day it was running
nice and I took it somewhere around 20 miles away and when I got to my
destination it started kicking and it sounded like the tires were
chirping, as well as an extremely loud clicking noise in the engine bay. I just
made it into a parking lot and popped the hood, to find the Cyl. No. 3
ignition coil had popped out about an inch. So I pushed it down and
disconnected the battery in hopes that that threw the timing off and the
comp had to "reset itself" to function, this worked fine and I started
getting white smoke out the back but it went away after giving it gas
down the road, after about 10 miles the clicking slowed immensely and
seemed to be good, I ordered 2 more ignition coils because that's all
they had and got spark plugs too, the old ones were all corroded when I
pulled them, now the coil doesn't pop up anymore but I still get the oil
light beeping and then the clicking starts pretty loudly as well as it
sounds like the fan is loose or something but its not, and because I
had it overfilled with oil I figured that had something to do with it, so
I changed the oil and started it back up and now no beeping but there
is clicking and lots of bad smelling white smoke out the rear, no codes
are being thrown, and I also don't get the connection between the oil
light and the timing??? When I drive it for a little while around the neighborhood the white smoke kind of dissipates but if I leave it idling for 20 mins or so white smoke will start coming out again. If I let the car sit for a few days and fire it up the white smoke is so bad I look like a steam engine going up the street. I drove it maybe 15 miles with too much oil total before I fixed that. So I am hoping I didnt do too much damage to the top end. I drive 90 miles round trip every day so I
really need my car back up, what could this be? Oil looked fine coming out
by the way when I changed it

 

The white smoke is coolant that is seeping into your cylinders. You have a bad head gasket most likely. I know you said your oil looked fine but did you see ANY type of milky looking stuff in there?

Josh

 

I was always under the impression a bad head gasket meant milky oil. I made sure to watch the oil being drained and it looked fine. Is there a chance that because it was overfilled with oil that there is oil leaking into the cylinders? And the white smoke dissipates when I drive it after about 5 minutes of driving, but comes back when idling. The engine temp reading is fine and it doesnt overheat.