96 Quest power loss white smoke

[hevi99]

I have 1996 Quest that just turned 100k miles, Last week I was driving it and it totally lost power and a huge cloud of white smoke came outta the exhaust. After letting it sit it ran great but now on occasion it loses power and wont go over 5mph, there is no smoke anymore but the power loss continues occasionally, any ideas?

[ezb57e]

Are you losing coolant?

[hevi99]

Nope coolant and oil levels are fine.

[kcducttaper]

About the only thing that causes white smoke is water (coolant) turning into steam and being burned in the engine, which would probably indicate a blown head gasket.

Take a peek inside your radiator and see if you're actually full on coolant in the system. I recently had a bad thermostat cause my coolant to be shoved back into the reservoir while draining the radiator.

Did the engine overheat just before this by chance?

[hevi99]

Ok here's an update, It's fixed and running great again. I'm not sure where the smoke came when this all started, but the problem was as simple as the plug wires. I ran it about 20 mins on the OBD II to try to get it to throw codes it had the codes for knock sensor and cylinder 1 misfire in the bank, after about 20 mins of running the CEL came on, no new code showed up but the cylinder 1 wire was arcing all over the engine. Went to Autozone got new wires, Runs like a champ again.

[kcducttaper]

Glad you got it working again.

I'm still puzzled about the white smoke thing though. I know sometimes on cold days, I can tootle around in town for a couple minutes while water builds up a bit in the exhaust system. Then, when I jump on the accelerator to get on the highway, the water that's been collecting in the exhaust system suddenly gets hot enough to turn into steam and it billows white smoke for a couple seconds while the water burns off. It wouldn't happen to be similar to that, would it?

[hevi99]

I don't think so, I was putting around town when all this started i was doing about 35-40 at a steady pace I wasn't getting on the gas. I'll watch over it the next couple days. I've put about 150 miles on it since I changed the plug wires, no smoke, no CEL and it's running great.

[kcducttaper]

Weird...