does white smoke equal cracked heads?
 

My brother in law bought a 96 acura integra. The car is nice and clean and the engine doesnt seem too bad. There are no funny noises coming from the engine and its not a shaky engine. When he got home he noticed white smoke coming out the tail pipe (after being driven for over half hour) I checked the oil cap and dip stick and there didnt seem to be any white milky residue indicating water in the oil. Does any one have any ideas as to what it could be? The white smoke coming out the tail pipe is not heavy, it is actually kinda light but it does get a little havier when you step on the gas. could it be we need to change the catalic converter? any suggestions will be higly appreciated. thank you to all that respond to this post.

Head gasket. Do a compression test.

white smoke typically means you are burning coolant. does the smoke have kind of a sweet smell? if so, its definitely coolant.

x2 on the compression test, you can rent a tester free at autozone and it takes like 10 min.

if the compression is fine. you could possibly have a bad intake manifold gasket, which is a lot easier and cheaper to change than a head gasket.

It could also be to much fuel, is there a strong smell? But if not its a HG

Fuel doesn't burn off white. Water does. Too much fuel would be black.

Make that x3 on the compression test. Sounds like a blown head gasket from what I'm hearing. Check out blown headgaskets on google pictures and it pretty much means the gasket from the head connecting to the motor itself is cracked and leaking coolant into the cylinders. Hope this helps.

Are you sure it is white & not a white/blue, which would be oil top end as a rule. But I agree compression check is in order.

I have done a compression test and the heads are not cracked so im not sure why it was blowing out white smoke. Its a lot less (hardly noticeable now) since he first got it.

What were the compression numbers?

The only other thing I can think of would be that moisture was built up in the exhaust pieces from sitting for awhile.

There is one head on the vehicle, not heads.

If you are not overheating, not losing any more coolant now, and compression checks out fine, you should be good to go.

This happened to a buddys truck from work. The truck sat for at least a month without moving. He decarbed it and just drove it for awhile and the smoke went away. His car might have sat for awhile before he bought it