TD5 white smoke

[age]

Any ideas folks?  2001 td5 CSW, 145k miles.  Over this winter on damp/cold days its taken to chucking out a real smoke screen of white smoke/vapour for maybe a mile - then runs usual smoke free (ish) fashion.

Embarrassing amounts - keeps the following cars a safe distance I suppose....  I'm inclined to think its excess diesel due to no/poor pre-heat? (does start a bit lumpy too)  Any way of checking the glow plug loom/performance?  Am I barking up completely the wrong tree as usual?

Any thoughts gratefully received!  A

[Frankie-Boy]

White smoke is usually indicative of a head gasket problem, hope it isn't that though  :(

[Dennis the diesel]

SWMBO had this problem, or something similar on her Td5 90 - white smoke and ran like a bag of bolts.
Booked it in to the local stealer - somehow, even with a snorkel, the air filter box had a load of water in it!
It had also knacked the Air Flow meter, but a new AFM and a filter has cured the problem - still not a clue on how the water got in there in the first place tho

HTH
Regards,  Chris

[Range Rover Ron]

Hello Mate,
It copuld be a number of things but white smoke is normally caused by water in the cylinder when it fires.
How could it get there????
As I say just think of how many chances water has to ingress...........
If you've noticed a drop off in power it could well be the head gasket as mentioned above.
It could be a bad batch of fuel (do you get your fuel from the same supplier?)
Probably the best thing to do is take it to a diesel fitter.
Hope that's been helpful,
good luck.

[age]

Thanks for the ideas.  I didn't mention that I'm also losing coolant at about half a litre a week......  Head gasket kind of goes up the list doesn't it??  Had a new one 18 months ago - sounds a bit suspect - into (a different) workshop methinks.  Cheers, A

[TDi90]

H G

sorry.