'88 Cabby with white smoke

Hi y'all,

My cabby is releasing white smoke from the exhaust and intake manifold area. It seems to be leaking oil, smells like it too. She was leaking a little oil when I bought her but not as much as now.


Would love to hear your thoughts and let me know if you need more info cause I probably explained it poorly.



https://streamable.com/k4qne1
https://streamable.com/ce5cdk
https://streamable.com/l1o1wo

Think you have answered your own question, you have a bad oil leak. From cam cover gasket or breather pipes or poss cam shaft/pulley seals.

If it's white smoke, that's usually indicates water in the engine.. Is the cylinder head gasket blown, between oil - piston - and water passage?. Check for oil in the water and run the engine with the water cap off, are there any bubbles in the header tank?

White vapor at start could be condensation in the Resonator and silencer burning off as that is normal and will normally stop after about 10 minutes.
If the smoke smells sweet that is a sign of coolant leak, or blown head gasket.

If after running for a few moments, to eliminate the condensation, and it is white smoke then that is usually a sign of a blown head gasket.

Blue or Oily smoke is Oil.

Do the coolant Hoses on your ride get really hard and balloon, as that is another sign of bad head gasket, as well as a oil slick on top of the coolant
another sign that you have a bad head gasket.
 

If the smoke is coming from the manifold area then it's likely oil leaking from the cam cover gasket and burning off on the hot manifold.

White smoke from the exhaust tail pipe is normal for the first few minutes on a cold engine, but heavy white smoke when engine is warm is a sign of head gasket failure - water entering the combustion chamber and coming out of the tailpipe as steam. Usually followed by  misfires and/or the engine overheating. And mysterious loss of coolant.

sorry for the late reply guys, i really appreciate your responses

so i took out the cylinder head to see and the head gasket seemed fine, as well as the valve cover gasket.

However the surface seemed to be a little bumpy like this picture(picture on the internet, not mine but showing for reference). Maybe it is contributing to it? prob not. idk

So i replaced it and put it back together but still having the same problem.
In terms of the coolant level, it is dropping but i think its leaking from the heat core cause i can smell it when i turn on the heater from inside the car.
The oil seems fine so i dont think coolant is leaking into it.

Perhaps ill just get a new block? I was actually thinking about doing this even before trying to fix it but it is very hard to find one where I live. lol

Also here are the updated links to the videos from the original post

https://streamable.com/l1o1wo
https://streamable.com/k4qne1
https://streamable.com/ce5cdk

Well after seeing your videos, it just looks like oil is burning off on the hot exhaust manifold….. I would be looking for where the oil is coming from.

 It is common for the cam cover gasket to fail in that area causing the same symptoms as you have….

I think I would clean off the area as good as possible with the engine cold, then start her up and and look for the leak… I'm not sure if a fuel leak from the intake manifold dripping onto the exhaust manifold would smoke like that or just catch fire….🔥

Wow, that's a serious oil leak there. You have got to clean ALL the area and watch for the oil coming out/running down. I would seriously make sure you have a fire extinguisher handy with that amount of oil burning. Most likely the rocker box gasket - less likely a split oil pressure gauge pipe, leaking head gasket