I killed her :(

[Johan]

Hi everyone, I have been reading here for a couple weeks now out of curiosity but I haven't posted because I haven't had to much trouble out of my truck. It's got 185k on it and hasn't had any trouble at all until the other day.

Whilst driving home Saturday I was coasting down a hill with the clutch in and when I got to the bottom I let off and was going to just drive on like normal but this time I let off and was greeted with a loud pop and a cloud of whiteish smoke behind me. After the mandatory swearing and trying to coo my truck back into not being busted I managed to get it back to my house where it has sat since then because I'm to afraid to drive it.

My grandpa is a total shade tree and tried to teach me as much as he could but between school and working I've not been able to pick up as much as I know I'll need to deal with something like this.

I started it up yesterday to idle so I could sniff around and the smoke is a light blue with a somewhat gassy scent. My first thought when I saw the cloud was that I'd just blown a gasket but it hasn't been overheating and I have never had to add oil between changes. I have noticed that it was losing power for a while now, 5th gear felt like it was barely maintaining the speed from when I switched from 4th much less accelerating at all.

What I'm hoping for from you guys are ideas on what might have happened since I'm finding myself woefully under-prepared and underfunded for a visit to a shop at the moment. Any ideas just to give me an idea of what I'm in for would be helpful. Sorry if there is another post about this kind of thing already, I looked around but it seems kind of situational to me so I thought the setting in which it happened would be helpful to know.

 

[Mark_88]

Hmmmm...white smoke sounds like the head gasket letting water into the combustion chamber...the light blue with a gassy smell could mean you've got some oil in the mix...gassy means burning rich or not firing properly...

You could start by pulling the plugs and telling us what they look like...if they are oil coated, brown, whitish or burned...there is a chart at the back of my haynes manual that indicates what the plug colors are telling us...

Were you able to get it to idle and rev normally? Did the smoke clear after a few minutes of running?

Start with the plugs...and check the oil level and see if there is anti-freeze in the mix...and check your cooling system also...

These things don't take a Shadetree level of understanding...and they are things you can do with a few tools and a bit of time...