infrequent billowing think white smoke

[WillyG]

infrequent billowing thick white smoke

Hello all,

would anyone have come across an infrequent billowing of very thick white smoke from the exhaust of their Mercedes with apparently no loss of coolant?

I took a freind's ML320 yr 2000 (W163 I think) for a long test drive today. At about mile 45 of the trip, I accellerated and produced a very thick cloud of white smoke from the exhaust which was enough to blind the drivers following me for a moment. this had not been apparent to this point and having pulled over, it stopped and did not appear again for the rest of my trip (approx another 30 miles). this has happened a couple of times to my friend and his wife and he has had his garage investigate but they have found nothing that may have caused the cloud.

Obviously this concerns me and may very well be a deciding factor in whether or not I buy the car which is otherwise very nice.

What information I have is as follows:
yr 2000
95,000 miles
Petrol ML320
coil packs recently replaced
serviced 500 miles ago

 

[giuseppe]

Hello all,

would anyone have come across an infrequent billowing of very thick white smoke from the exhaust of their Mercedes with apparently no loss of coolant?

I took a freind's ML320 yr 2000 (W163 I think) for a long test drive today. At about mile 45 of the trip, I accellerated and produced a very thick cloud of white smoke from the exhaust which was enough to blind the drivers following me for a moment. this had not been apparent to this point and having pulled over, it stopped and did not appear again for the rest of my trip (approx another 30 miles). this has happened a couple of times to my friend and his wife and he has had his garage investigate but they have found nothing that may have caused the cloud.

Obviously this concerns me and may very well be a deciding factor in whether or not I buy the car which is otherwise very nice.

What information I have is as follows:
yr 2000
95,000 miles
Petrol ML320
coil packs recently replaced
serviced 500 miles ago

this happened to me in an MGB years ago, it was caused by a dodgy "O" ring in the break servo which is connected to air intake manifold to create a vacuam and assist in applying pressure to the breaking system, it sucked in the brake fluid, check the level, created lovely clouds behind, hope this helps.

 

[hairyg]

I had exactly the same problem with my old W202 C200.

It was caused by the auto box having slightly too much fluid. When the box heated up on the motorway the excess would escape via a breather and get on the exhaust. Result - thick clouds of white smoke, very worrying.

Drained a small amount of ATF from the box and the problem disappeared.

 

[hairyg]

I had exactly the same problem with my old W202 C200.

It was caused by the auto box having slightly too much fluid. When the box heated up on the motorway the excess would escape via a breather and get on the exhaust. Result - thick clouds of white smoke, very worrying.

Drained a small amount of ATF from the box and the problem disappeared.

Second thoughts, too late to edit my first post. It should be fairly easy to check to see if there are any marks on the exhaust pipe where the fluid has burnt. If there are it is a simple fix.

 

[Bigtee]

It's a large exhaust with large silencers condensation sits in the exhaust from not been used enough to get hot short trips do this.

So when the exhaust reaches temp the steam comes out much more noticable with this very cold weather look at other cars you will see steam from exhausts, cars need a good run to get the exhaust hot they all do it but yours has a large exhaust and it traps moisture.