E61 535d EGR cooler / steam - white smoke problems
Discussion
Hi all, Let me regale you with a tale and hopefully some helpful chap will point me in the right direction.
Last week i broke down at on the side of the autobahn with white smoke / sweet smelling steam violently exiting the exhaust. I assumed at that point it was head gasket and the ADAC agreed and towed the car back to my garage for me to fix it. A friend pointed out that it could also be the EGR Cooler as its an obvious place for coolant to get into the combustion chambers / exhaust. There was no smegma on the oil cap or bubbles in the header tank so i went with egr cooler.
I ordered a second hand EGR cooler from ebay. On removing it appeared as it had been jet washed by coolant
my one with cleaned internals and wet
replacement ebay one all coked up and dry
So, today i fitted the replacement egr cooler. It was a fairly easy job and there were no hiccups. Thats about the end of the good new...
So, i started it up with a bluetooth diagnostic reader so i can keep an eye on the temperature. I set the heating on high to ensure the matrix cleared out any airlocks etc. Once it got upto about 70c white smoke started to appear again from the exhaust.. Gutted, i took the egr pipe off again, but it was bone dry. So, i figured that maybe when it originally failed it filled the exhaust system with water (it drained all the water and set the low coolant light off) and now that is starting to evaporate . I took it for a drive to hopefully evaporate all the water off. It didn't work.
After about 10km there was a constant cloud coming out, hard acceleration produced a massive cloud initially and then nothing. i pulled over, let it cool and then limped it home. By the time got home it was still coming out, and had turned blueish. With the car turned off, smoke was still flowing out of the exhaust for 20 minutes. This didn't smell sweet, more acidly
So, Where should i search next? Is it possible the EGR failing has taken something else with it causing the blue smoke? Im not sure what the issue is now. Is there a way to check the head gasket without a strip down?
Cheers.
confused
Last week i broke down at on the side of the autobahn with white smoke / sweet smelling steam violently exiting the exhaust. I assumed at that point it was head gasket and the ADAC agreed and towed the car back to my garage for me to fix it. A friend pointed out that it could also be the EGR Cooler as its an obvious place for coolant to get into the combustion chambers / exhaust. There was no smegma on the oil cap or bubbles in the header tank so i went with egr cooler.
I ordered a second hand EGR cooler from ebay. On removing it appeared as it had been jet washed by coolant
my one with cleaned internals and wet
replacement ebay one all coked up and dry
So, today i fitted the replacement egr cooler. It was a fairly easy job and there were no hiccups. Thats about the end of the good new...
So, i started it up with a bluetooth diagnostic reader so i can keep an eye on the temperature. I set the heating on high to ensure the matrix cleared out any airlocks etc. Once it got upto about 70c white smoke started to appear again from the exhaust.. Gutted, i took the egr pipe off again, but it was bone dry. So, i figured that maybe when it originally failed it filled the exhaust system with water (it drained all the water and set the low coolant light off) and now that is starting to evaporate . I took it for a drive to hopefully evaporate all the water off. It didn't work.
After about 10km there was a constant cloud coming out, hard acceleration produced a massive cloud initially and then nothing. i pulled over, let it cool and then limped it home. By the time got home it was still coming out, and had turned blueish. With the car turned off, smoke was still flowing out of the exhaust for 20 minutes. This didn't smell sweet, more acidly
So, Where should i search next? Is it possible the EGR failing has taken something else with it causing the blue smoke? Im not sure what the issue is now. Is there a way to check the head gasket without a strip down?
Cheers.
confused
So, just to sign off the thread incase anyone else has the same issues as me.
after asking the same question on bimmerforums a couple of posters thought that it was just a matter of letting the excess evaporate off.
Last night i drove the car around for an hour, found a quiet local lane and cruised up and down monitoring the engine temp and also what was exiting the exhaust. It appears that the posters who said it was just excess in the exhaust were right, no more excessive steam after 30 minuites, just normal exhuast gas (cold night).
so, my advice to anyone who replaces thier egr cooler that failed in a big way (i.e, dumped a lot of coolant into the combustion chamber / exhaust) is to trust your work and just let it all evaporate. I estimate it took just over an hour of running at 90c to get it to normal.
Drove into work this morning and just checked the coolant and its not used a drop..
job jobbed.
after asking the same question on bimmerforums a couple of posters thought that it was just a matter of letting the excess evaporate off.
Last night i drove the car around for an hour, found a quiet local lane and cruised up and down monitoring the engine temp and also what was exiting the exhaust. It appears that the posters who said it was just excess in the exhaust were right, no more excessive steam after 30 minuites, just normal exhuast gas (cold night).
so, my advice to anyone who replaces thier egr cooler that failed in a big way (i.e, dumped a lot of coolant into the combustion chamber / exhaust) is to trust your work and just let it all evaporate. I estimate it took just over an hour of running at 90c to get it to normal.
Drove into work this morning and just checked the coolant and its not used a drop..
job jobbed.
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