gas and white/grey smoke coming out of exhaust

[sullygully]

I have a 95 golf gti, and after fueling up and washing the car, it started stumbling on me. I put some injector cleaner in the gas tank, and after a while the car ran fine again.

Then next day, it was 10 times worse, sputtering and smoking really bad.

I noticed fuel dripping out of the exhaust pipe when idling, and the check engine light is on.

Any ideas of whats going on?

[sr20s14zenki]

badly leaking injector?quite possibly its not fuel dripping out the exhaust, but coolant. Sounds like a blown head gasket.

[sullygully]

Its fuel not coolant. I put my hand under it and took a good wiff of it. Its not a head gasket i'm sure of it, so we can rule that out.

It has either something to do with the car wash, or the fuel. I sprayed the coil, dizzy and wires down, and found no sparks, it didnt' even try to stall,. So i would assume we can rule that out.

[teggypimp95]

Well one good thing abotu vw, that when the check engine light comes on. Its prettu detailed about whats wrong. So thats where i would start. Get your car scanned and find out exactly whats wrong.

[sullygully]

That the problem, I live in banff, and the shade tree machanics here don't have the proper scan tools for my car, and told me they have to self diagnos it. And it runs too poorly to drive it to calgary, or even canmore. So i'm kinda screwed, unless i get it towed

[hellraiser456]

is there a way to manually check the codes....if you have gas dripping out of the exhaust...and you really think its gas...i would go with a sticking injector. this is bad. really bad.

AS for some quick and easy diagnoses..lets rule out osme things rather than just guess....first being...make sure you have spark at all FOUR cylinders. and i can't stress this enough...test each plug wire with a spare plug....if you have spark at all your cylinders...great...if not..that is where you start. if you have a fuel cut off..or you can remove the ecu fuse...do so to prevent fuel from flowing into the cylinders.

if you have spark....(which i doubt you do) i would then run the car until it starts to bogg and miss fire then shut it down immediately...try to get the car to normal operating temp..now do a compression test (buy a tester from CT or anything of the like). You want to make sure you have an even compression across all cylinders...that is within spec to your car. once again if you find low compression (which would likely be a result of pooling gas) you now know which cylinder is to problem. now you can typically use a screwdriver and put your ear tot he injector to see if its opening or closing...simply take the screwdriver...put the blade end to the injector of the problem cylinder..and then put your ear to the other end...make sure the car is running (if it can). and listening for a ticking noise...most of the time you should hear it..if you don't...move to another known working injector and see if you can hear the ticking noise...if you can...go back to the suspect injector and listen again...if you can't hear the noise then that means your injector is possibly sticking.

now the fun part...if you have spark, ...you have no obvious fueling issues..you have now eliminated the basic of what a car engine needs to run(aside from air)...and now its time to start thinking outside of the box...and this is where getting those codes checked would be a great idea. because the problem could likely be electronic or electronic related. from here it will be really difficult to track down the problem as most electronic problems give the same few symptoms....typically running rich...misfire/rough running, idling...and loss of power. points of interest though would be to look into your air metering system (i believe most VW's use a MAF) which is typically a device...that is located after the air filter but before the turbo. however there are variations to that. none the less it shoud be obvious(do some research) as to how the car meters its air. point being most of these devises can be checked to see if they are working with a multi meter...you will need to find the testing procedures...or find a known working one and test is and rule it out. Next devise would be your O2 sensor...easy part to find...it will be located on the exhaust track somewhere...likely near or on the exhaust mani and possibly one further down the exhaust track...you can test these with a multi meter(once again you will need to find out the specs for your car) and test that...if that checks out....then you start getting into some of the more finer points of your cars electronic system and once again its starts getting harder....and once again getting those codes becomes more important.

You may be able to buy a code reader for your car. this is something you need to look into however. your car is a 95 so it is possible that there is a way to check your codes without a code reader...likely some procedure to do so.

anyway there's somewhere to start. let us know where you end up.

[sullygully]

Good news. I decided to go for broke, and take it to the shop to get it professionally looked at. And what he found, as that the engine harness had moisture in it! So thats why is was acting all retarded and smoking.

Thanks for all your help

[schurchill39]

Wow props to hellraiser456. Thats what beyond is about. Even though sullygully didn't end up using the info, hellraiser gave useful information that that could help alot of people in the future. Take notes noobs