ls1 ws6 problem

**ws6_34** · 05-23-2011, 09:30 AM

i have a 2001 pontiac trans am with the ls1 and it just recently started blowing white smoke out the exhaust and has a extreme gas smell to it too. ive always been told if its white smoke then its coolant but i dont have milky oil for it to be a blown head gasket or intake gasket. ive also been told it could be a stuck injector and i unpluged them indivdually and it never stoped smokin. it does keep on thrown the p0343 cam postion sensor code as well. anyone know what could be wrong?????

**pajeff02** · 05-23-2011, 11:23 AM

White smoke out the exhaust is generally a sign of coolant being ingested in the combustion chamber. It does not take a lot of coolant to make a whole bunch of smoke.

Does it smoke all the time, or only when the car is cold? If in fact it is leaking coolant into the cylinders, the O2 senders could be contaminated by the coolant and result in your fueling being thrown off. Do you have access to a cooling system pressure tester?

An error in the cam position sensor could be affecting how the engine is running also. I have not had one go bad, so I am not certain of what all the side effects are.

**Lunatikgixxer** · 05-23-2011, 12:40 PM

my car did this and it ended up being a broken spark plug. Check your plugs.

**Jknerr** · 05-23-2011, 01:28 PM

Is the smoke consistent, or does it fluctuate with RPM.

**pajeff02** · 05-23-2011, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by Lunatikgixxer

my car did this and it ended up being a broken spark plug. Check your plugs.

Good point.

**V8MUSCLE** · 05-27-2011, 06:49 AM

had a 98ish grand prix with a bad cam sensor. symptoms were a bad idle, and would shut off randomly, the tach was also giving bad or no readings.

**TransAmX2** · 05-27-2011, 07:30 AM

Originally Posted by ws6_34

ive always been told if its white smoke then its coolant but i dont have milky oil for it to be a blown head gasket or intake gasket.

a blown gasket won't always have milky oil, if it's a small leak between a coolant passage and the combustion chamber it will get compressed, exploded and exhausted with the rest of the exhaust from the combustion chamber.

You can get milky oil if the leak is between a coolant passage and an oil passage or enough of a leak into a combustion chamber to push past the the rings or hydro lock the cylinder and then get mixed in with the oil, but by then you'll usually have lots of other noises and problems if you've blown out your piston rings.