Perhaps some of you have had this problem. I never thought of it until it happened to me last night. I searched around here in a bit of an "aww hell..." mood and only found one reference by Jerod sometime back as a possible "maybe" to a suspect headgasket...
I pulled into my drive and noticed the brake pedal was solid... realy had to mash it. But I forgot about the breaks pretty quick as the truck began belching plumes of smoke from the exhaust (and the engine compartment as I have a perpetual problem with blown exhaust gaskets). It was also running like crud. I shut it off and grew sad. I had been up in the mts with a friend and pushing the truck pretty hard. I kept thinking, the headgasket went or a valve stuck. Maybe I overheated the head by not fixing the exhaust... And so on.
I ran the truck again... Still smoking. Rats. Oil pressure: good. Temp: good. Bad noises? no more than usual... and then the smoke began to clear... I stomped the breaks and immediately more of the same.
Turns out the master cyl had been letting break fluid into the booster, which I presume ate up the diaphragm /seals inside and now the motor is sucking fluid up the vacuum hose into the motor and burning it.
I never heard of this happening before, but it makes sense now that I thought about it. Was scared there for a bit...
Plugged up the vacuum hose and no more trouble (except no more power brakes)
I can't get the booster locally through NAPA. Probably will need to drive to the city... But out of curiosity, how hard is it to get the booster apart and rebuild it? It looks crimped together.... better to buy new or worth repairing...?
Anyway, mostly just posting to fill a gap in the search engine. But this place has provided lots of moral (and actual) support in the past so maybe someone else is bumming over a smoking engine and can hope for a simpler solution to a somewhat ominous symptom.
Cheers-
DB
I pulled into my drive and noticed the brake pedal was solid... realy had to mash it. But I forgot about the breaks pretty quick as the truck began belching plumes of smoke from the exhaust (and the engine compartment as I have a perpetual problem with blown exhaust gaskets). It was also running like crud. I shut it off and grew sad. I had been up in the mts with a friend and pushing the truck pretty hard. I kept thinking, the headgasket went or a valve stuck. Maybe I overheated the head by not fixing the exhaust... And so on.
I ran the truck again... Still smoking. Rats. Oil pressure: good. Temp: good. Bad noises? no more than usual... and then the smoke began to clear... I stomped the breaks and immediately more of the same.
Turns out the master cyl had been letting break fluid into the booster, which I presume ate up the diaphragm /seals inside and now the motor is sucking fluid up the vacuum hose into the motor and burning it.
I never heard of this happening before, but it makes sense now that I thought about it. Was scared there for a bit...
Plugged up the vacuum hose and no more trouble (except no more power brakes)
I can't get the booster locally through NAPA. Probably will need to drive to the city... But out of curiosity, how hard is it to get the booster apart and rebuild it? It looks crimped together.... better to buy new or worth repairing...?Anyway, mostly just posting to fill a gap in the search engine. But this place has provided lots of moral (and actual) support in the past so maybe someone else is bumming over a smoking engine and can hope for a simpler solution to a somewhat ominous symptom.
Cheers-
DB
