Help 1.8 freelander - white smoke

Good morning

I wonder if one of you brain boxes can tell me what to do with my Freelander 1.8 (not put it in the crusher)

I had the head gasket and thermostate done in Feb of this year, it has only done 1000 miles since and running perfectly untill 2days ago when it started putting out white smoke, I have checked the oil which is showing no signs of water in it and the coolant seems at a normal level, how ever I can see that there may be a very small leak of oil by the rocker cover,

It seems that after a while of running the white smoke stops or should I say it did yesterday, this morning the little bugger seems not to want to play and the white smoke continues.

The white smoke smells a little like fresh tarmac - which is wierd, there is no misfiring, or pinking of the engine whilst in idle.

When do the fans kick in? as the dont seem to be coming on

I have change the fuses and they still do not come on, I dont have a techy manual to see what else it could be.

Any help or guidence would be great

So much for going climbing today

Many thanks

Helen

Um - is this petrol or diesel? If it's diesel, white smoke with a cold engine (smells of diesel) means your glow-plugs are not too good. With a hot engine (petrol or diesel) it usually means cracked cylinder head. But then it usually smells of anti-freeze. From your description of the smell my guess is you've actually got blue-ish smoke and you're burning oil. Which means a problem with a valve or a piston ring. You need a mechanic. Indeed you may well need a new engine.

Put it in the crusher.

There are quite a few issues which could be the problem. It's the dreaded K-Series. Did they change the inlet manifold gasket when the last bit of engine work was done? Sometimes this isn't changed, and this allows coolant to leak into the combustion chamber and/or leak externally down the back of the engine. The older black type gasket needs to be the newer green one as per the LR TSB on this issue.

You will probably start getting fault codes stored (and a MIL) as a misfire starts and the coolant affects the oxygen sensors and cats.

Are you checking the coolant level? Has it lost any since your initial post?

Another thought could be the rocker oil leak finding its way onto the exhaust. This would cause some temporary smoke and smell a little like tarmac.