94 accord lx 200,000

just bout the car about 2,000 miles ago. bad water pump, so i changed my timing belt, balancer belt, and water pump. it had an oil leak so i changed the valve cover gasket as well, because a friend of mine said that could be where the oil was leaking. got everything back together, and it seemed as if everything was running properly when i started to notice white smoke. i turned it off immediately. i only let it run about 2 minutes(maybe less). not a lot of smoke, but i really don't know because it was getting worse, and i turned it off as soon as i realized it was progressing. so i did a little research, and wanted to try it again to see if smoke was coming from the tail pipe. no smoke there. as i said it had an oil leak, and there was quite a bit of dried oil all over the place. so two main questions, but will take any input anyone may have.

1. could it possibly be oil burning off random hot surfaces on the engine?
2. could running it longer to determine the location do more damage?

also, oil isn't milky, and i didn't see any oil in the radiator.

thanks in advance for any help.

 

White smoke is water or coolant. As long as it isn’t losing coolant or oil enough to damage the engine you can run it. I would let it idle and keep topping off the coolant until after the thermostat opens and the radiator level drops as it is filling up the motor and try to find out where the smoke is coming from. I would be a little concerned with having white smoke after having a water pump go bad. Did it overheat when that happened?

 

no, it never overheated, just needed water from time to time, and had never smoked either. it started needing more and more water so i replace the WP. other than a small oil leak, and the water pump leaking it ran well. 30 minute commute each way everyday.

 

Was the water pump verified to be the leak?

 

it was verified visually. i don't have any dripping water as i did before so i just assumed that the WP fixed the problem.

 

i started it up again for a little longer this time to try and pin point the location, and from what i can tell it's coming from below the metal cover that says "hot" on it. i still didn't let it run a very long time. before i did it i checked oil and water again, and there was no less than there was yesterday about this time. maybe this is just me being really optimistic, but there is a lot of oil on the engine from the leak, so i scraped some off onto a screw driver and got a lighter and did a visual/smell check, and the smoke off the oil covered screwdriver smells and looks pretty darn close. anyone had a similar run in with this?

my next step is getting some cleaner and cleaning as much as i can tomorrow when i get off. any recommendations on what or how to use/where to spray, not to spray?

 

I had the same issue when I changed my timing belt about a week or so ago. My engine was really dirty from an oil leak and I cleaned a lot of it off with brake cleaner. The stuff that hit the exhaust gave off white smoke when I ran it. It went away within a half hour though. I'd start it up and let it idle for a while, just watch your gauges to make sure it's not overheating. My guess is that you'll be fine though.

 

the 1000 pound weight has been lifted off my shoulders. there were some very stressful times, a lot of cursing, and quite a bit of fast orange used, but i'm finally done. it's running like a champ. the white smoke was oil residue burning. if i hadn't been such a pu***, and just run it a little while at first this would have been much less stressful. can't thank everyone on here enough. the initial DIY's, and advice throughout were extremely helpful. thanks again