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Hey everyone! Just recently noticed I have pretty heavy smoke coming from my exhaust. Only happens when I'm at a red light for too long. Not during idle but during acceleration... Thought it might be carbon build up. I did the head gasket less than a year ago.... Any thoughts? 49 22nd

What color is the "smoke"?

(o[]o)

Here is a small list of colors and causes from the central cal CARB site. No matter the color or cause, hope you can get it fixed pronto if you want keep driving the car.

A friends 54 daily driver was turned in because it had some smoking issues. Air resources sent him a letter and "invited" him to bring the car into a check station. Next thing he knows DMV suspended the registration until the car was repaired and passed another check.

AFAIK, southern cal air resources are as big a pain to deal with as the valley region. Up here, all it takes is a phone call and license plate number from a disgruntled person. In SoCal I believe you can also get hit by driving past one of those infrared checkers that are stationed at some of the on ramps.

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Thanks for the info... I believe it's a dark grey... It's hard to tell, I've accelerated at idle and doesn't seem very heavy. The only thing I've done in the passed month has been the spark plugs... From Autolite to M8's. I've yet to do any carb work since the cars revival... Ive been meaning to replace the vacuum advance as well. A vacuum pump test showed that it moves and holds but not sure if it's 100%. A friend said it my be bad rings... I'll try a wet test this evening and get some readings before I get too deep.

Blue smoke during acceleration is rings.

Black smoke during acceleration is either weak ignition or poor carburetion. If the plugs are velvet black then check for weak ignition.

As much as I like Packards I don't think it makes any sense to drive one as transportation in California. Today I was in Warren Ohio and saw a Model A pickup going down the street. But this was a farm road with no traffic density.
In California there are bandits that slam on the brakes to cause collisions and then collect welfare. If that happens in a Packard you are dead.

Road speeds today are so high that even my OBDII car is working hard to keep up. Typically traffic on highways is moving 75-80. The only thing preventing carnage on the Ventura highway is the constant traffic jams.

California is going to run out of water so these environmental kooks can happily die of thirst and become environmental martyrs.

Alright! So I did a compression test, everything still reads fine. 95psi at every cylinder. Which is consistent with (pre-smoke) readings last year after replacing the head gasket. So no compression has been lost. The M8 plugs all seemed standard, light grey char look at spark ends. I did however notice some oil leaking from the carburator base, I'm assuming from blow-by. I just remembered, I did place 2qt. Of 5-20 oil in it prior to the smoke, I usually use a 30 weight. I'm really fighting the idea of bad rings... But it seems to all be pointing in that direction. Is their anyway of getting around paying $5000 for this fix, that seems to be all I keep hearing from all the shops nearby!

5w-20 sounds like a thin oil for these cars. Some on here even run 15w-40 oil in their cars.
John

Teardowns are expensive and you are in a high price area so if that 5K is for a full rebuild entirely done by a shop the amount doesn't surprise me. If you were going to do the removal and disassembly and just let professionals do the machine work then maybe a bit high. Been a long time since I had an engine done though so I may be all wet.

If after all is said and done and all the tests do indicate rings then I don't see what you would have to lose by using one of the snake oils that claim to stop oil burning and increase compression. One says it works by building up the surface and "restoring" worn cylinders and rings. The stuff may not be worth a darn but on the other hand it's relatively inexpensive and might actually do something to buy some time.

Your compression readings are impressive, means valves and top rings are 100%. By putting 5w 20 into your 30W you have diluted it and decreased the viscosity. The black/grey smoke is not from oil consumption so a $5k rebuild which would include valve job and new rings would do nothing for black smoke which is from a fuel or ignition problem.

Follow a logical trail and diagnose the problem(s). Oil at the base of the carb cannot be from blowby as compression blowing by the rings wind up in the crankcase and exits via the road tube down near the road. Impossible to travel upwards to the carb base.

If the only problem is some black smoke on acceleration and you do nothing, what will be the problem driving like that ????

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If the smoke is persistent and visible or heavy enough to be seen and reported or sensed remotely -- particularly in the Los Angeles and Central Cal air basins -- we have a little bureaucracy out here called the California Air Resources Board. If the car is reported or picked up by a sensor they will ensure the car is fixed or parked by suspending the registration until it passes a test.

You may have read about a "clunker" program a few years ago where thousands of otherwise perfectly good older vehicles were turned in for a voucher worth a few bucks. The cars engines had to be scrapped and destroyed so none of the engine parts could be salvaged and reused. That was all part of CARB's unrelenting efforts to get anything that smokes, stinks, or "pollutes" off the road.