Of course now that it is winter and it sucks to work on cars during winter, mine start to screw with me. On the way back from lunch today, the car started to lose a lot of power, and I had a strong gas smell. Once I got back to work I noticed that smoke was starting to come in through the vents, so I opened her up. The smoke was coming from the passenger side, up by the firewall. Couldn't really distinguish if it was oil or coolant, never smelled either burning before. My first thought was blown head gasket, but after reviewing everything I noticed:
1. No milky substance on oil cap or dipstick
2. No bubbles in radiator, and no discoloration, but it did smell old though.
3.Exhaust leak from the aftermarket exhaust at the downpipe connection, not big.
4. Really crappy idle/hesitation between 800 and 2k, but seems to level out at 2k.
5. strong gas smell, a lot more than usual.
6. I've had a CEL for O2 sensors forever now, but never fixed it, so the change in idle now isn't that.
7. No knocks or bearing/rod noises, just sounds like its starving/missing.
8. No leaks at fuel filter, slight oil leak (always had), don't see any coolant leaks yet.
My honda buddy says that he doesn't think its a BHG, but I don't know for sure. He's hoping it is a bad fuel filter, but this doesn't account for the smoke? The smoke had a really strong smell, so I'm guessing it was coolant, but again I wouldn't know. Would the exhaust leak cause such a drastic change in Idle? Maybe several things went wrong at the same time, but I'm not sure where to start. I want the last option to be replacing the head gasket, so I would like to know where I should start troubleshooting??
Thanks in advance!
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